America’s largest teachers union, which advocated for closing classrooms and masking students during the COVID pandemic, is now being accused of rewriting history. The National Education Association has altered its 2025 teachers’ guide, essentially erasing Jews from the Holocaust.
On CBN’s “Global Lane” program, Gary Lane spoke with Garion Frankel for more about this story. He’s a Young Voices contributor, opinion writer, and Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University.
GARY LANE: How can they consider themselves serious educators without teaching American children that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews? Who are they saying Hitler and his accomplices killed?
GARION FRANKEL: They’re saying that Hitler and his accomplices exterminated minority groups without emphasizing the centrality of the Jews to the Holocaust.
And what this really illustrates is that the National Education Association really isn’t interested in education. It’s a left-wing political arm that cares a bit more about Palestine than phonics. It cares more about distinguishing anti-Zionism from antisemitism than it does than making sure that our children are getting a quality education. And perhaps most importantly, it shows that politics are always going to be the flavor of the day and the interests of the more than 3 million American public school teachers who really aren’t that concerned about any of this, they’re more concerned about making sure that they teach math and their students aren’t throwing chairs at them, are totally unheard of. So not only are they being antisemitic over at the NEA, they’re being utterly ineffective at what they’re even supposed to do, which is advocate for American teachers.
LANE: Well, also the NEA guide revises history by stating that the state of Israel was founded through forced violent displacement and dispossession. Is there any mention of the San Remo Conference, the Balfour Declaration, Arab countries waging war against Israel in 1948?
FRANKEL: There’s no mention of it at all because that would counteract the antisemitic narrative that they’re trying to propagate.
The issue for the teachers’ unions when they look at actual history is that they find that it’s messy. And if they really want to put the blame on somebody for Israel’s existence, it would really have to be the British or the French rather than the hundreds of thousands, millions of Jews that came to Israel in order to flee persecution from their neighbors, in order to flee genocide in the case of the Holocaust and in some of the attacks against Mizrahi Jews in the Middle East later in the century. But all of this messy history is unfitting for their unadulterated left-wing ideas. So they just pretend they don’t exist.
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LANE: Well, there are three million teachers in the NEA. So who’s behind this revisionist history and why?
FRANKEL: Well, the problem when it comes to teachers unions is that they’re so large, and in many states, even though membership isn’t officially required, you run into problems if you’re not a member. So the rank and file isn’t really interested in this. All this is coming from a small segment of really, really, really passionate progressive radicals that take over these institutions in order to orient them towards their desired political direction.
So ultimately, you’re hearing from a very, very small fraction of American teachers, the vast majority of whom are normal. But because the radicals have taken control of the NEA, they get control of the money. They get control of the political influence. They get control of curriculum development in some cases. And that’s why we’re experiencing all these problems.
LANE: Sounds a little bit like the Democratic Party right now. And at a time when Columbia University settled with the Trump administration and its Jewish students for violating civil rights during recent pro-Hamas protests, the NEA membership voted to suspend ties with the Anti-Defamation League. And they said its union members felt they must support Palestine. Now, the NEA board and executive committee reversed that decision. And you recently wrote a published article about it. Is the NEA membership becoming antisemitic? Tell us more.
FRANKEL: I think NEA leadership is certainly antisemitic. And they’re taking the membership, a lot of whom don’t really know what’s going on in the union, along for the ride. But the reason that this is so destructive, even though it’s a small fraction of American teachers, is because the Anti-Defamation League, for all of their political problems, was responsible for a lot of the really high-quality Holocaust education that was making its way into American schools. And if the NEA is now positioning itself as being hostile to this form of really high-quality Holocaust education, then they’re, in effect, positioning themselves as being hostile towards Jews. And if the nation’s largest union, largest teachers’ union at any rate, is going to position itself as being so antagonistic towards this country’s Jewish community, that’s going to be a real big problem and one that we’re going to need to address.
LANE: Garion, so what should be done about it? Anything? I mean, this was the largest teachers’ union in the USA.
FRANKEL: Well, the way to do this is to just neuter the union’s power. My home state of Texas has teachers unions, but they’re prevented by state law from engaging in collective bargaining. And I think other states are just going to have to take the initiative and be willing to go to war with the union in order to make sure that their students are protected from these far-left political interests.
LANE: Okay, and maybe moving to charter schools, homeschooling, things like that. Our best to you as you prepare your PhD thesis.
Since the story broke about the NEA dropping Jews from its teaching guidelines about the Holocaust, the teachers issued the following statement from NEA President Becky Pringle, defending its actions:
“The National Education Association has opposed antisemitism throughout its history and is deeply committed to ensuring the safety and inclusion of Jewish educators and students. NEA regularly shares resources and supports educator workshops on Holocaust education, antisemitism, and ways to promote understanding of Jewish culture, heritage and history. This reflects NEA’s ongoing commitment to teach about Holocaust history and to counter the antisemitism that laid the groundwork for the systematic murder of six million Jews and the persecution and murder of millions of others by the Nazi regime. This document is not a handbook for use in the classroom, but a compilation of the more than 100 new business items adopted by NEA last year, which largely relate to the variety of materials NEA provides. These new business items also include calls to stand up against antisemitism, promote Holocaust Remembrance and education, and promote content to mark Jewish American Heritage Month.”
