NCTE Counciletter: The Disadvantaged

T HIS is a year to think of the disadvantaged English teacher. So much sympathy has been generated for the disadvantaged student: for the dull and the apathetic, for the unmotivated and bored, for the one who turns off the school, for the one who claims to be frustrated by the non-relevance of his intellectual experience, for the drop-out, and for the passive sit-in. But these are not the disadvantaged to whom I would draw your attention at the close of the '60s. This is not to say that these students do not deserve the sympathy and the creative talent of imaginative teachers. They do, indeed they do. However, part of the problem of the disadvantaged student is the frustration of the disadvantaged teacher. There are a great many things which are right with English teaching and with teachers of English. But let us not be complacent. It is the weak link which causes the chain to break, no matter how strong most of the links may be. If we do not look to our weaknesses, our strengths may not be sufficient. I should like to consider three of the dilemmas of the profession: many teachers of English are overworked, some are frustrated by paradoxes in the carrying out of educational philosophy, and some are out-of-touch. Ten years ago, in 1959, James B. Conant in American High School Today presented Recommendation 6: English Composition ... In order that teachers of English have adequate time for handling these themes (one a week), no English teacher should be responsible for more than one hundred pupils (page 51). And then he goes on to say, Obviously, adequate instruction in English composition requires that teachers not be overloaded. Obvious, it may be, but far too few schools are even attempting to work toward a reasonable load for the English teacher. National Interest and the Teaching of English in 1961, two years after Conant, in The Need for Better Teaching Conditions, makes a strong case for the improvement of the conditions under which English is taught: Specialists in English consider four classes of 25 students each as the teaching load necessary for effective learning. present overload of teachers of English prevents students from receiving needed instruction and discourages recruitment (page 89). Then again in 1964,