How does Madonna relate to education?

While away at the NEA-RA convention, I ignored pop culture news and the sporting world for a bit. What an amazing cleansing of the mind!

However, the major story dominating headlines the day I picked up a newspaper detailed the affair between Alex Rodriguez and Madonna. Then, I turned on ESPN where the same story was featured on the highlights extravaganza SportsCenter. Aaaaargh! A-Rod’s social life is not sports! I don’t want my favorite sports recap show becoming Access Hollywood or a new Joan Rivers special. If the affair begins to affect his swing, report away. Until then, let the tabloids take care of those lurid stories.

Now, how does this relate to education?

While at the NEA-RA convention, numerous business items concerned the Iraq War, disaster relief in China, abortion rights, and other issues not directly about education. Consistently people wanted the NEA to take positions on these issues basically because the war in Iraq takes money away from education, relief sentiments show the compassion of the NEA, abortion is about freedom and choice, and so on.

Still, I just didn’t like the assembly trying to force the union to take sides with these political hot potatoes. Politically I think it could come back to bite the union, and while I am not a supporter of the Iraq War, I don’t want my union pushing these issues too hard.

I could understand the Iraq War being used as a point of argument because of the billions pouring into a war when the administration says education funding needs to be cut, but I still don’t like it used as an official stance.

As a union representative I only want to discuss working conditions, funding, salaries, and benefits. Maybe things change at the top of the union ladder when dealing with politicians, but I still felt like these issues could be outside our purview from time to time.