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Applebee, Arthur N.Tradition and Reform in the Teaching of English: AHistory.National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana,Ill.74310p.National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 KenyonRoad, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (Stock No. 21103, $5.95nonmember, $5.50 member)

EDRS PRICE MF-$0.75 HC-$15.00 PLUS POSTAGEDESCRIPTORS Communication (Thought Transfer); Conventional

Instruction; Curriculum; Drama; *Educational History;*Educational Innovation; Educational Philosophy;*English Instruction; Grammar; IndividualizedInstruction; Language; Linguistics; Literary History;*Literature Appreciation; Progressive Education;Rhetoric; Traditional Schools

IDENTIFIERS National Council of Teachers of English

ABSTRACTTracing the broad movements in the teaching of

English--both in theory and in practice--from its origin as a subjectduring the 1880's to the present day, this book focuses on the aspectof the teaching of English which has absorbed the greatest amount ofteacher's time, energy, and enthusiasm: the teaching of literature.Chapters, following a chronological pattern, are "Early Traditions,""The Birth of a Subject," "A School for the People," "Science and theTeaching of English," "A Framework for Teaching," "Narrowed Goals,""An Academic Model for English," "Winds of Change," and "Afterward:The Problems Remaining."'Appendixes covering important dates in theteaching of English, offerings in English in the North Central areafrom 1860 to 1900, requirements in English literature for collegeentrance from 1874 to 1900, the most frequently anthologized worksfrom 1917 to 1957, the growth of English from 1900 to 1949, and majorofficers of the National Council of Teachers of English from 1912 to1974 are included, along with a selected bibliography and an index.(JM)

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tuck-ionand

eformin the Teachingof English:a History

Arthur N. Applebee

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NATIONAL COUNCIL OF TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

ACENOWLEDGNIENTS: Grateful acknowledgment is made to thefollowing authors and publishers for permission to quote from theirworks in this history. For passages from How to Read a Page by

I. A. Richards: Reprinted by permission, copyright 1942 by W. W.Norton & Company, and Routledge & Regan Paul, Lid. Copyrightrenewed 1969 by I. A. Richards. For a passage from 1;Mo:standingPoetry: .1a An lhology for College Students by Clean th Brooks andRobert Penn Warren: Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, Inc. For passages from High School English Textbooks:A ('ri Heal Examination by James J. Lynch and Bertrand Evans:Reprinted by permission. © 1963 by the Council for Basic Education.

For a passage from Slums and Suburbs by James Bryant ConantiNleGraw.ifill Book Co. and Signet Books): Reprinted by permission

of the project administrator, Conant Studies of American Education.Educational Testing Service.

NCTE EurroRIAL BOARD: Richard Corbin, Ilunter College HighSchool, New York City; Charlotte S. )luck, The Ohio State University:Richard Lloyd-Jones, University of Iowa; Roy C. O'Donnell, Universityof Georgia; Owen Thomas, Indiana University; Robert F. I logan, NCTEes officio; Paul O'Dea, NCTE es officio

STAFF EDITORS: Ann Warren, Diane AllenSTAFF DESIGNER: Norma Phillips MeyersCOVER DESIGN: William May

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74.82650NCTE Stock Number: 21103

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Contents

Preface ix

Chapter I! Early Traditions 1

The Ethical Tradition in Elementary InstructionThe New England Primer, 2; %Mister's GrammaticalInstitute, 3; Mc Guffey's Readers,

The Classical Model in School and College 5English Grammar, 6; The Prescriptive Tradition, 6;Rhetoric and Oratory, 8; Literary History, 10

The Nonacademic Tradition 11The Extracurriculum, 12; The Finishing School, 12

Reprise: 1865 13Chapter I Notes 15

Chapter II The Birth of a Subject 21The Cultural Value of Literature 21

The Romantic Tradition, 22; Culture and Education,23; Horace Scudder, 24

Philological Studies 95Philology in the UniVoNity, 26; Francis James Child,26; The Spread of Philology, 27; High SchoolPrograms ;8

Institution:dint:ion 29The College Ell trance Requirenwnts, 29; JiniformRequirements, 30; The Committee of Ten, 32:The Literary Canon, 34

English at the First Plateau 36Chapter II Notes 39

Chapter III: A School for the People 45New Goals for Educatlon 47

Changes in Philosophy, 7; Changes in Psychology,47, John Dewey, .18

i Aornos AND REFORM

filch School against College -19The Domination of the Uniform List';, 49; TheFounding of IiCTE, 51; The Fate of the Lists, 53

Toward New Methods 54The Types Approach, 55; Concern for the Child, 56;Contemporary Literature, 58; Vocational Education,59; Teaching Aids, 60

The Role or Drama 6 IThe Academic Tradition, 61; The ProgressiveTradition, 63; The Effects on the Schools, (13

The Reorganization Reports 64The Cardinal Principles, 64; The Reorganization ofEnglish, 65; Continuations, 67

Chapter III Notes 69

Chapter IV: Science and the Teaching of English 79

Overview of the Progressive Era 79The Movement in Education SO

The Concern with Efficiency, 80; ObjectiveMeasurement, 81: Rebuilding the Curriculum, 82

Studying the Curriculum in English 84Minimum Essentials, 84; The Functional Emphasis,85; Media Study, 87; Evaluating the Selections forStudy, 88; Reading Skills, 90

The Focus on the Individual 91Ability Groups, 91; The Dalton Plan, 92; Unit Work,93; Objective Testing, 94

Experimental Method 96Settling Down 99Chapter IV Notes 101

Chapter V: A Framework for Teaching 107

The Project Method 108The Method Proposed, 108; The Response, 109

Toward Experience 109Literature and Experience, 109; Countercurrents, 113

The Social Perspective 115Patterns for the Curriculum 118

An Experience Curriculum, I 18; ConductingExperiences in English, 121; A Correlated Curriculum,122; Literature as Exploration: The Final Synthesis,123

The Effect on the Schools 125The Course or Study, 125; The Literature Anthologies,128

Perspective: The Years between the Wars 130Chapter V Notes I 33

Chapter Vii Narrowed Goals 139

Progressivism as the Conve ntiunal Wisdom 140The Eight-Year Study, 140; Life Adjustment, 143;The Rejection or Correlation, 141

English as Adjustment 146Meeting Adolescent Needs, 116; liuman Relations, 1-17;Organizing a Curriculum around Immediate Needs, 150;

(70NTENTS VII

Selecting Materials, 151; Literature for the Adoles-cent, 155

Developing Competence in Language 156Language and Communication, 156; Reading, 160The New Critics 162Changes in Literary Theory, 1G2; The New Criticsand School Programs, 164

The Changing Curriculum 166The NCTE Curriculum Studies, 166; The Courseof Study, 169; The Anthologies, 170

Summing Up: Literature in the Progressive Era 174Chapter VI Notes 177

Chapter VII: An Academic Model for English 185Critics of the Schools 185

The Academic Critics, 185; A Crisis of Confidence, 188English as a D; 189

"rn ('or the Talented, 1891 A New CurriculumModel, 191; The Basic Issues Conferences, 193;The Spiral Curriculum, 195; The Commissionon English, 196

Federal Support for English 198The Struggle for Funds, 198; The First Programs, 201

Changing Programs 20 -I

Literary Values and the Threat 01' Censorship, 204;Other Materials, 207; The Humanities Course, 208;The National Study of High School English Programs,210

1ligh Points and Low Points 213Chapter VII Notes 216

Chapter VIII: Winds of Change 225The Other Half of the Curriculum 225The British Model 228Industrial Models 232Toward a New Curriculum in English 236Chapter VIII No' 's 240

Chapter IX: Afterword: The Problems Remaining 245Teachers of literature have never successfully resisted the pressureto formulate their subject as a body of knowledge to be imparted.245

The acknowledged goals of the teaching or literature are in con-flict with the emphasis on specific knowledge or content, 2.16Teachers of English need to make the distinction between knowl-edge which informs their teaching, and that which should beimparted to the student, 246There is a need to reconceptualize the "literary heritage" and itsimplications for pal ents of teaching, 247The teaching of literature is a political act, . 248Language skills have been narrowly conceptualized as an indepen-dent and functional aspect of the English program. 243

VIII TRADITION AND REFORM

A focus on correcting taste has obscured the need for fosteringresponse. 250The educative effects of the act of reading need to he defined.251

Goals for the study of English depend upon prior assumptionsabout the nature and purpose of education. 252

Sequence in the study or English must derive from psychologicalrather than logical principles. 253

The Next Chapters 255

Selected Bibliography 257

AppendicesI. Some Important Dates in the Teaching of English 271

II. Offerings in English in the North Central Area, 1860-1900 274

III. College Entrance Requirements in English Literature, 1874-1900275

IV. Alost Frequently Anthologized Works. 1917-1957 278

V. The Growth of English, 1900-1949 280

VI. Major Officers of the National Council of Teachers of English,1912-1974 281

Index 284

Preface

Though English is a young subject, less than onehundred years old, its teachers have from the beginning been leadersin the reform of school programs. The emergence of the subjectduring the 1880s and 1890s was itself part of one battle between the"ancient- and the "modern" subjects for control of the college pre-paratory curriculum. With the position of the moderns secure by theturn of the century, English took the lead in throwing off thesepreparatory school functions and establishing a new pattern of com-mon school education. This was part of the first wave of the progres-sive movement in education, and -though teachers of English re-mained suspicious of the movement in its institutional form, theyremained true to its spirit and moved in the same directions. As aresult, the 1920s and 1930s can be seen as a grand experiment inimplementing progressive education in the English classroom, anexperiment that overreached itself during the 1940s and early 1950s,losing sight of its own original principles. This in turn provoked areaction, short but intense, which brought the profession together insupport of "academic" goals during the 1960s: teachers from elemen-tary school through college recognized a unity of purpose that hadsometimes been forgotten. This academic resurgence, though itbegan in a rejection of progressivism, in the end led to the reestab-lishment of the authentic parts of the progressive vision, allowingteachers in the l970s to begin again, with new insight and newcourage. the difficult task of fundamental educational reform.

The factors which have led to these changes in the teaching ofEnglish are complex. Shifts in school populations, educational phi-losophy. psychology, and the scholarly disciplines from which Eng-lish as a secondary school subject derives have all had a more or lessdirect influence upon instructional patterns. Flow these interact withone another, with goals for English teaching, and with classroompractice are major concerns in a history such as this. Our knowledgeof the history of the teaching of English is not yet definitive, but weknow enough to trace the broad movements in the theory and prac-tice of the teaching of English from its origin to the present day.

The universe of concern in such a study is large, almost limitless.I t moves outward on the one hand through general trends in educational thought to patterns of social and moral philosophy, and on the

ix

THAntrior: AND REFORM

other through the disciplines of English to patterns of scholarshipand definitions of knowledge. And it naives inward toward thespecific changes in classroom practice in the schools and classroomsof the nation. The approach taken here is a compromise betweenthese competing demands. We will sketch enough of the generaltrends to understand the forces to which English was responding,and enough of the classroom practice to give a sense of what washappening in the schools; bat the emphasis remains on trends andmovements in the teaching of English as a whole, broad strokesrat her than fine details. The universe has been simplified, .too, byfocussing on the aspect of the teaching of English that has, since thebeginning, taken up the largest proportion of the teacher's time.energy. and enthusiasm. the teaching of literature. This focus onliterature rather than on English instruction will cause little distor-tion in this history: the goals and emphases have moved in parallelfte- the major components of the course. Where there have beenimportant devehmnients which do not impinge upon literature di,reedy. I have tried to point to them at least in passing.

The general 1)8U: tit of the discussion is chronological, thoughmore in n sense of "epochs" and "movements" than a year-by-yearrecital of events. This introduces another kind of distortion at somepoints in the narrative, with movements parallel in time but distantin motivation discussed at some distance from one another: this isespecially true of transitional periods when one era is coining to anend and another beginning. Again. I have tried to indicate paralleldevelopments at least in passing, pointing the reader forward orbark to fuller discussions; but the real solution to this problem is toemphasize that the separate chapters are not meant to he a chronicle,and provide one only when the book is taken as a whole. For thosewho want it, Appendix I offers a brief chronology.

For the teacher of English. a book such as this is both an end anda beginning: it gives a sense of where his profession has been in thepast, and a sense of the issues and the forces which will shape it inthe future. In offering this history in the form I have chosen, lookingat the past on its own terms rather than using it to provide "per-spective- on contemporary issues, I am inviting others to use thematerial provided here for their own ends: preliminary versions ofthe manuscript have already been used as evidence of "clear trends.'with which I do not agree. One point in particular that has arisenseveral times has been an analogy between developments in Englishand a pendulum swing between student and subject. affective re-sponse and cognitive discipline. In spite of its apparent applicability,I think this is a misleading metaphor: for all of its apparent motion,the pendulum never moves forward, never changes. never offers ussomething new. The teaching of English, on the contrary, has had arapid and healthy evolution. I think it is better today than it has everbeen in the past: it is certainly different.

PREFACE Xi

Such disagreements are themselves healthy, and if this book canserve to generate many more of them it will have served one usefulpurpose. Still, 1 have come away from my study of the past with anumber of quite specific lessons which I- think it has taught me.These arise from the fabric of the history, rather than from itsargument: they arc certainly not theses defended in the course of thenarrative. Yet I think they are important and have drawn themtogether in the last chapter.

There has been very little systematic exploration of the history ofI he teaching of English, though the are a few very useful begin-nings. Much of Ilse material is relatively inaccessible. in doctoraldissertations and outof.print reports: this has meant. inevitably.that each discussion has had to begin without any assumptions ofprior knowledge. I hope this book will change that, reducing the needfor each writer to recapitulate the universe. There is much to learn: Ioffer the book confident that it is accurate in its general tenor andemphasis. and equally sure that it must be wrong in some of its

Many people have courageously worked their way through early .

drafts of this manuscript, pointing me in new directions and correct-ing my errors. Early in the project...I asked a group of prominentmembers of the National Council of Teachers of English to list for metitles which they felt had "significantly influenced" the teaching ofliterature in American secondary schools. It was a deliberately am-biguous and difficult brief, but they responded generously and indetail. Their suggestions ranged across all fields, frdm literary criti-cism to educational philosophy, psychology. tnd sociology. All thereferences were eventually followed up, and some led me in new andunexpected directions. For these lists, then, special thanks to G.Robert ('arisen. Alfred II. Grommon. W. Wilbur Ilatfield, Lou L.1.allrant, Albert 11. Nlarckwardt, Joseph Mersand, and James It..Squire.

The manuscript itself has been read in whole or in part by manypeople. A few of these have influenced it deeply, forcing me to redraftand revise again and again. For asking the difficult questions, then,thanks to James R. Squire. Lou L. LaBrant, Roger K. Applebee.and Marcia Lynn Appleby°. The last of these has had the dubiouspleasure of reading each of the drafts in all of its versions.

My final debt of gratitude is to Robert L. Church. His comments.uttered as an historian rather than a teacher of English, were themost fundamental of all. Ile taught me to ask a different set ofquestions than I had asked before, gave enough encouragement tokeep me going, and enough criticism to force me to begin again, andyet. again.

London. England A.N.A.February 1973

Above all things. let the Scriptures be the chief and most frequently usedwading book, both primary and high schools and the very young should bekept in the gospels. Is it not proper and right that °vet), human being, by thetime 1w has reached his tenth year, should be familiar with the holy gospels.in which the very core and marrow of his life is bound?

Martin Luther.'

'b define a uniformity and purity of language in Americato destroy Ikeprovincial prejudices that originate in Ihe trifling differences of dialect, andproduce reciprocal ridiculeto promote the interest of literature andharmony of the Stalesis the most ardent wish of Ike author.

Noah Webster, in the Preface tohis Blue-Backed Speller (1783)2

familiarity with Greek and Roman writers is especially adapted to formthe taste, and to discipline the mind, both in thought and diction, to relish ofwhat is elevated, chaste, and simple.

The Yale Report of 1828a

It is nog what a boy learns at school that makes The man, bid how he learnsit. . If the acquisition of knowledge were the chief object in education,very useful as an acquaintance with the dead languages is, indispensable infact to the man of letters, one might with propriety doubt the expediency ofspending so large a portion of youth and early manhood in the study. Rut theearnest, laborious stollen; of language develops a power which no other(raining could possibly give hint, and in comparison wit/z which all hisacquisitions of mem knowledge sink into utter insignificance.

Francis Gardner, Headmaster ofBoston Latin School, 18674

Latin has come to be (aught confessedly as a gymnastic . .. and Latin sets Ompattern for English.

Samuel Thurber, Master at Girls'High School, Boston, 1902"

Chapter I

Early Traditk,ns

Though English did not emerge as a major soboolsubject until the 1890s, the instructional traditions whhh haveshaped it are much older. At least three traditions vieni already fullyintertwined in the English curriculum of 1890: an 4,1rical traditionwhich placed its emphasis on moral and cultural entelopinent, a.classical tradition of intellectual discipline anti close iiixtualand a nonacademic tradition more concerned ,vith "enj,ymunt and"appreciation.- The interactions of these various traditiom in I.heearly history of the teaching of English represent less ttletween conflicting points of view than a web of accepted assuuiplioini.all the more pervasive and far-reaching because they were nevermade explicit. To untangle some of this web, we will be,:tib with theethical tradition, and the earliest form of systematic institution inthe vernacular the leaching of reading.

The Ethical Tradition in Elementary Instruction

The roots of elementary reading instruction as it deceloycd in theAmerican colonies go back at least to the Council of Mainz 031:3I,which firmly linked religious instruction with the teaching of reml-ing. After some seven hundred years, this tradition was C13 IC tied overinto the teaching of English through the translation of t he"Book of Hours" as the Prymer of Salisbury Use tea. 149C1 Thoughthe primer and the ABC were initially separate, they were t imbruedtoward the end of the sixteenth century to lower print:fig coat,:.

1

2 TRANI to% Attat

Through this practice the beginning reading book acquired bath atitle. "primer,- and a heritage of ethical concern."

'I he typical early primer included an alphabet and syllabarium, acreed, a catechism, and a collection of prayers and devotional mat-.ises. Though these materials were originally included simply be-cause they were considered important for the child to know, duringthe Reformation they became caught up in the struggles betweenconflicting faiths. As catechisms proliferated, primers multipliedLump.

The New England Printer

In the New World the tradition of instruction through sectarianprimers continued unabated. Though at first relying on British im-ports. the American colonists soon began to issue their own editions,culminating in The Net,' l.:ngland issued by BenjaminIfarris, a Boston printer, sometime betttql0e0 IBM and 1690. Harrishad previously !Winking] at similar book in London. tinder the titleThe Protestant Tutor for Youth (16791. For the New England ver-sion 1w reduced the size of the book and gave it a new title, but thepartii. remained those with which the colenists were familiar: eachbegan with the letters of the alphabet, followed by a syllabarium, theLord's Prayer. at lean "- one catechism, and various other religiousand instructional pieces, often heavy with moral lessons. One of themost famous is the child's prayer beginning. "Now I lay tr., down tosleep,- which appeared for the first time in a 1737 version of thePrimer: its author is unknown.'

little else in the Primer was as literary as this little verse. For themost part the selections were didactic, chosen ;Or the virtue of theitdogma rather than for their suitability for children learning to read.The hook had one major advantage over its predecessors, however.;as a result of the Westminster Assembly 11613.49), there was for thyfirst time a single generally accepted catechisni; Incorporating thincatechism in a familiar instructional format, and with a title pitchedtoward the colonists' regional pride, The New England Primer wasan immediate swcess. For over a hundred years it via,' withortserious challenge us the instrument of beginning reading instructionin America. and for another !Mildred years it. was frequently r_,-printed.

The Primer urns(' out of a particular tradition of instruction tofulfill the particular needs of the American colonists. By its verysuccess. it generated challengers and imitators. and though the firstof these soon fell away, other forces eventually reshaped the Amer-ican landscape, demanding new naterials for use in the :44! h ou sThough the Printer itself attempted to reflect changing nationalconcerns in its successive editions, the basic character of the work

Emus Tamatioss 3

was in Movable. The young 1..1 nited States, on the other hand, waslaced with problems other than those Which had dominated its cob-mai .lay-4. Chief among these were problems of unity; how to providethe disparate colonial states with a common tradition of culture andpw, z Milent , a common spirit of responsible republican citizenship. acommon language that would transcend the regional dialects. Reli-gious dogma, which had determined the history of the primers andgiven them their internal structure, was no longer of prime impor-tance.

Wc"ister 's Grammatical Institute

The hellei in the power of the primers to achieve aims far beyondthe limited goal of learning to read, however, continued. Noah Web-ster clearly bad faith in it when as a teacher in Orange County. NewYork, he compiled a spelling hook designed explicitly to foster theunity and common culture which he sensed that the nation lacked.Pulilisned in 1783 as The First Part of a Grammatical Institute of theEnglish tanguage. his Blue-Backed Speller also filled a need for anAmerican source of hooks at a time when the usual supplies fromBritain wore upset by the war.' A true .desc'enden't of the earliertexts, Wyk tor's Speller combined under one cover alphabet, primer,speller, and reader, using materials which were unabashedly adultand didactic. Thus a section entitled "Precepts concerning the SocialRelations" offered advice to young women:

Ik cautious in listening to the addresses of men. Is the suitor addictedto low vices'? is he profane? is he a gambler? a tippler? a spendthrift? aimunteror tat eras? and, above ads. is he a scoffer at religion?- Banish

-ich a auto Irma thy presence. his heart is false, and his hand would leadr'ncete rho loess and ruin.

Still it was not the lessons but the spelling lists which were the mostimportant part of the hook. Wehster set out consciously to reformand simplify the erratic American spelling system of his day. and toimpossan order on the chaos that had previously been the rule. Withhis slicker and. later. The American Dictionary 118281, he to a largeextent succeeded. lake the Primer hefore it, Webster's Speller be-calme it nvarlt universal medium for instruction; it was still in use insome areas of the country as late as 1900.

The third part of Webster's Grammatical Institute is also impor-tant for our purposes, for An American Selection of Lessons inBeading and Speaking (1795) was much closer in format to a schoolreader in the modern sense. In this volume, Webster continued thesecularization of school materials: rather than the Catholicism orProttrtantism of early books, selections were chosen for patrioticrinitent ethical emphasis, and usefulness in the development of the

I TsAnrrios AND REFORM

speaking voice. (Oratory and elocution had become important con-cerns to a nation newly constituted as a republic and destined to begoverned, or so it seemed, by the constant disputations of its Con-gress.) Though Webster no longer defined appropriate selections inthe rigid terms of the early primers. one of the major functions ofschool materials, as he wrote in his introduction, remained to "im-press interesting truths upon youthful minds,"" Webster's Amer-ican Selection, together with the grammar that formed the secondpart of the Grammatical Institute, never attained the overwhelmingpopularity of the Blue-Bucked Speller; nonetheless it dominatedinstruction for nearly fifty years, and set a pattern which most of itsimmediate successors followed.

A number of collections similar to Webster's were quite popular ata regional level. Nlost noted were those by Lindley Murray and CalebBingham in the 1790s. and John Pierpont a few decades later. Int heir editing and choice of selections, these books reflected a Protes-tant ethic of thrift, honesty, ownership of property, love of countryand of God, and dedication to work. Though increasingly secular incontent, they continued in their own way the colonial tradition ofmoral education as a primary function of reading instruction. TheSpectator papers and other works of the Augustans dominated dur-ing the early part (f the century, being in turn supplanted by theworks of the then-contemporary Romantic writers during the 1820s.Still, it was not until the 1830s that secular began to consistentlyoutnumber biblical selections in school readers."

The texts which followed Webster gave increasing attention to theliterary quality of the selections, Lindley Murray's three books(1799-1801) were devoted half to poetry, while Pierpont's series(1820-30) included, for the first time, excerpts from Shakespeare.Nonetheless there was a strong counter-movement toward "content"readers in which rending exercises were subordinated to the study ofother subjects. The century produced, among others, The ChristianReader (made up entirely of tracts and hymns) and The Farmer'sSchool-Book, with offerings on "Making and Preserving Cheese,-"Raising Calves," and "The Nature of Manure." The excesses ofthese readers helped literature to emerge in the 1880s as the acceptedvehicle for reading instruction, but only after a long and oftenvituperative professional debate."

McGulley's Readers

But before literature emerged as a school subject in its own right,there was one more giant in the teaching of reading. This was asix-book series by William Holmes McGuffey, the first volumes ofwhich appeared in 1836: as with the two earlier texts, their use wasvirtually universal for the next fifty years.

EARLY 'PHA DITIONS 5

The content of this series was again decidedly moral, though notovertly religious, advocating a stern Protestant ethic through care -IulIv chosen selections from a wide variety of American and Euro-pean authors. Patriotism was fostered and American productionsgit en a solid place, but the readers were not as narrowly nationalisticas Webster's had been The hooks were graded by level of difficulty,with selections of real literary value predominating in the fifth andsixth readers. though all of the lessons remained shortusually apage or two at most. And finally, the teaching materials surroundingthe selections placed strong emphasis on the mechanics of readingaloud. presenting such topics as "Articulation." "Inflection," "Ac.cent." "Ernithasis," "Nlodulation," and "Poetic Pause.""

These three early educational giantsThe New England Primer.Volister's Grammatical Institute, and the NIcGuffey readersdidmore than just embody the changing interests and pedagogy of thenation they served. They also provided a common background ofculture and allusion, a common heritage for a nation too young tohave any other. The Primer spread a common catechism, Webster'sInstitute advanced a common system of spelling and promoted achauvinistic nationalism, McOufky's readers created a literary heri-tage, even if one based on fragments and precis. This sense of anethical and cultural heritage has certainly remained as one of themajor goals of the teaching of literature, though later generations ofteachers would come to question the kind of heritage a collection ofexcerpts could offer.

The Classical Model in School and College

Even as the ethical tradition was developing as part of readinginstruction. other pedagogical models were emerging in the secon-dary schools and colleges. Most of these models developed from ananalogy between the studs of English and the study of the classicallanguages, an analogy conditioned and reinforced by the prevailingdoctrines of "mental discipline" and "faculty psychology." Through-out the period under discussionroughly from 1750 to 1865 thefate of English studies in the high schools is similar to that in thecolleges. Sometimes one exerts the leading influence, sometimes theother. but the difference between the two is never great.

TI-'ugh the roots of English studies can he traced back at least tothe Latin catalogs of John Leland and Bishop John Bale in the15.10s, it is not till the end of the nineteenth century that there wasanything even approximating what we now roughly subsume underthe heading "the study of English."' The pedagogical theory ofmental discipline was at the root of the long delay: it held that the

titthrlitiN AND RHAIICAI

purpose of education was to exercise and train the mental faculties,in particular the faculties of "memory- and "reason."' The value ofan given subject was directly proportional to the degrie of internalstructure which the subject exhibited, the apparatus of rules and"knowledge" which a student could be required to master. Thecomplex vocabulary and rules of syntax of the classical languageshad °tiered an obvious and fertile field for such training. Othersubjects could compete for attention only as they demonstrated thatthey, too. had a substance that would insure the same discipline ofthe mind that the classical languages provided. Thus the problemw hick English, and in particular English literature, had to surmountwas that. as far as the classicist could see, it was too easyit had nosubstance, no organized body of knowledge, no rules, no theory. inslug.' nothing to promote the rigorous mental training. the disci-pline, that was the justification of an education. Only by beinggrafted' onto -1)t her disciplines with more evident justifications didliterature find a place at all in the early curriculum, for it was only insuch a firm t hat it seemed to offer more than the "mere chatterabout Shelley" of which so many complained.:

;raraM Mar

Grammar was the first formal study of English to become aidespread part of the curriculum, and it did so by -taking up the

methods and approaches which hacl dominated in the teaching of theclassical languages. Grammar was an especially powerful modelbecause of the various traditions in its own history once "Englishgrammar" had become respectable. a variety of speculative.. his tor.ital. rhetorical. and textual studies that were loosely related to itwen. similarly legitimized: some. like rhetoric, were so revitalizedthat they became permanently separated from their parent subject."

Grammatical studies in the classical languages had traditionallyemphasized two elements: the learning of rules. and their "use- orpractical application. An extensive methodology had grown uparound both aspects. and this was transferred more or less intact tostudies of English grammar,'" "Parsing.' and analysis of sentences.diagramming, the learning of paradigms, and the correction of"errors" in usage all entered the curriculum through this tradition.together with the rite memorization of definitions and rules for the%Arians grammatical categories. Such studies claimed to be teachingthe practical use of language. as well as to offer formal discipline inthe best classical tradition.

flu' Prescript ire Tradition

The 'shift of grammatical studies from the classics to Englishinvoked a shift from a method of teaching a foreign language to one

Emu Titan: rioNs

of correcting a native one. I hiring the eighteenth century this wasaccentuated by an attempt to regularize the English language on themodel of Latin and Greek. leading, among other results, to BishopWilliam lVarburtoris editions of Shakespeare and Richard Bentley'sof \lilt on. Bent ley's comments on the last lines of Paradise Lost arewell known, but they are worth quoting again as an illustration of11w kind of criticism that vi as developing, as well as of the breadth ofinterest of the studies that were then subsumed under the heading of"grammar.- Bentley's demands for "proper" usage and his ulti-mately specious adherence to logical canons are typical of the ap-proach when it was codified, though his works were repudined bymany who shared his general point of view. Ile concludes his "NewEdition" of Parodist, Lost 11732) with a lengthy note.

And how an the Expression be justified, with wand'ring Steps andslow'? Why wand'ring? Erratic Steps? Very improper: when in the Linebefore. they were guided by Providence And why Slow? when oven

c pro les s'd her Readiness and Alacrity for t hed onrney . And whytheir .solattry way? All Words to represent a sorrowful Parting? Wheneven their former Walks in Paradise were as solitary as their Way now:there being no Body Iwsides Them Two, both here and there. Shall Itherefore, alter so many prior Presumptions. presume at last to offer aDistieb. as rinse as may be to the Author's Words, and entirely agree-able to his Scheme?

\ hand in hand with h SOCIAL steps their wayThrough EDEN took. WITII 1 11:At-NIX COMFORTCHE4.11'11.

W hen flugh Blair and his colleagues separated rhetorical from gram-. matictil studies later in the century, they approached literature in asimilar way_

The prescriptive tradition of language instruction became domi-nant between 1750 and 1800, finding its way into the schools where ithas flourished ever since. Noah Webster included a school grammarin this tradition as the second part of his Grammatical Institute117) and Caleb Bingham prepared a similar volume as part of hisown series 117991,-1 Though both enjoyed a moderate initial success,they were soon supplanted by Murray's Grammar, published inEngland in 1705 and soon in use in America. This text was moresystematic in its approach than the others had been, and virtuallydominated the held for the next several decades. By 1850 it had gonethrough some two hundred editions,' Lindley Murray has beendubbed -the father of English granunar as a result of this text,though he is a lather figure whom many generations of schoolchil-dren, and not a few of their teachers, would have been happy to dowithout.

With a ready supply of texts, an inherited methodology, and arecognizable justification in the theory of mental discipline, English

TUA1/11111s AND itEwkst

grammar was ollewd in most American schools by 1810. This wastacitly recognized by the College of New Jersey (which later becamePrinceton University), when it asked its 1819 candidates for admis-sion to be "well acquainted- with English grammar: it was the firsttime that competence in any aspect of the vernacular had beenrequired for entrance to any college in America. By 1800 mostcolleges had introduced similar requirements.'

Ithetorie and Oratory

Grathmar, however, was considered more or less a school subject,a prerequisite for the higher studieS of the college but not, usally, astudy which would he continued there. The growth of English stud-ies at a more advanced level owes its first impetus to a group ofScottish educators who divorced the studies of rhetoric and oratoryfrom their early roots in grammar during roughly the same periodthat grammar was itself becoming an important school subject. Thegroup. included, among others. Adam Smith, David Hume, LordEames. and I lugh Blair: they argued in the decades after 1740 thatthe arts of public reading and speaking deserved an important placein the education of clergy and laity alike.

under which the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and "com-position- hod often been subsumed, was the immediate parent.Edinburgh the birthplace. Here from 1730 on, Professor JohnStevenson devoted the first hour of his two-hour-a-day logic class torhetoric, illustrating the classical rules of composition with extractsfrom Dryden, Addison, Pope, and other English and French writers.Byre in 1748 Adam Smith began a series of public lectures onrhetoric and belles lettres, the first time that literary criticism hadbeen dealt with in a separate course of lectures.' When Smith left forthe University of Glasgow in 1751. to become like Stevenson aprofessor of logic, the series continued under Robert Watson whoin turn left to take up a chair of logic, rhetoric, and metaphysics atSt. Andrews in 1750. In 1759 Smith's mantle descended to HughBlair. an Edinburgh clergyman and literary figure well known in hisday both for his published sermons and his championship of thespurious poems of Ossian, Under Blair, the lectures were for the firsttime given within t he university, rather than as part of an extra-mural series: Blair himself became Regius Professor of Rhetoric andI ielles 14ettres in 1762.

Blair apparently borrowed Adam Smith's lecture notes, and cer-tainly there was little difference in the approaches of this early seriesof teachers. Whereas the grammarians were concerned with syntaxand morphology, the rhetoricians placed their emphasis on "expres-sion,- both written and oral (the latter eventually evolving into theseparate studies of oratory). Diction, style, figurative language, the"flowers" of rhetoric-- these were the concerns to which they turned

EARLY TRADITIONS u

their attention and which, until a new movement in the 1880s andI890s began to argue that practice was more important than theory.constituted the teaching of composition in American secondaryschools and colleges.; Like the grammarians who were their profes-sional colleagues, the rhetoricians were prescriptive, filling theirtexts with rules to be followed, and with examples of errors ofexpression as well as of the successes of the hest writers. The mainpoint of reference was the Latin and Greek tradition, now translatedinto English. Blair made ext ensive ase of classical illustrations in hislectures, discussing Virgil, Cicero, Aristophanes, Tasso. and manyothers. At the same time, however and this is the significant de-parture which Blair shared with John Stevenson and Adam Smith -1w wanted to argue that the principles which they followed areuniversal and could he applied to English and French authors ascell. Favorite examples included Addison. Pope, Swift. Dryden,Milton, and Shakespeare, though the latter violated many of therhetorical "laws." (Blair explained Shakespeare's transgressions as"blemishes- due to the grossness of the age in which he lived."1" Itis interesting to note that, while the "greats- of English literaturewere acknowledged, many of the most thoroughly discussed authorswere contemporaries or near-contemporaries of the rhetoricians.Pope and Swift were still living when Professor Stevenson began-hislectures in 1730: the Taller (1709 -11) and Spectator (1711-12) paperswere just twenty years old. All were at a peak of popularity.

Blair published his notes as Lectures on Rhetoric and BellesLett MS in 1783 and retired from active lecturing the following year.The batik quickly became a popular text in America as well usEngland. Yale adopted it in 1785, Harvard in 1788, Dartmouth aslate as 1822: during the nineteenth century it also found its way intomany secondary school classrooms.n

Though the Scottish rhetoricians made a clean theoretical separa-tion of grammar and rhetoric, in practice both approaches weresimultaneously applied to literature. Throughout the nineteenth cen-tury, "rhetoric, "analysis,- and "criticism" usually indicated muchthe same course of study. in which a literary text would be criticallyexamined to insure that it conformed with the prescriptive rules ofgrammar and rhetoric, all in the ultimate service of the student'sown speaking and writing skills."

Thu rhetorical approach of Blair and his colleagues did not requireany literature to be read at all, but by the 1840s some schools weresupplementing the rhetoric handbooks with individual works forparsing and analysis. This was an important shift, yet it was achange only in t he material and not in the method of instruction. Thetexts were few in number till the end of the century, and approachedwith the same exhaustive line-by-line analysis that the handbookshad illustrated. Paradise Lost found its way into the curriculum bythis route in the first half of the nineteenth century. and it is not

14) TRAIIITOIN atiu 121411ItSt

accidental that it is also the most Latinate of our English classics. Itwas (Men joined by Pope's Essay on Man. another favorite illustra-tion in the books of the rhetoricians."' l'hese works provided anexcellent exercise ground for the grammars and dietaries of the Lime,and though they must he seen as the forerunners of the schooleditions of English authors that would domMate instruction at theend of the century. it is clear that any interest in literature thatmight emerge from such studies would arise in spite of rather thanthrough the approach that w is taken.

hose studies were the first of the English studies to win ac-ceptance at the college level, though they were generally thought ofas a rather minor aspect of preparation for the clergy. It was undertheir umbrella that America got it s first professor of English, in theperson of a clergyman. Ebenezer Kinnersley. Kinnersley was thesecond head of the "English School" of an academy in Philadelphia,and w as appointed professor of the English tongue and oratory whenthe academy became a college in 1755. (Still later, it became theUniversity of Pennsylvania.) Kinnersley was also a scientist of some!nay and a friend of Benjamin Franklin: his successor in 4773 was alawyer by trade. Other universities slowly followed the same pattern;Harvard. for example. established its Boylston Professorship ofRhetoric and Oratory in 1806, with John Quincy Adams as the firstineumlwnt 11806-091. During the tenure of Edward Tyrol CharmingI8195 1 I, the work at Ilarvard was expanded to include individual

texts for parsing and analysis. but. as in the high schools of theperiod. the literature was still well subordinated to the rhetoricalstudies. Though Amherst experimented with a course in Englishand American Literature in 1827 and Dartmouth mentioned Englishliterature in 1822, before 18(R) English studies in most collegesconsisted of rhetoric and oratory, and nothing more.'

Literary History

liy the late 1840s, riding a crest of interest in historical andbiographical studies. literary history had also emerged as an impor-tant aspect of English studies. This took as its model the stt«tics ofancient civilization, which were a well-established part of the classi-cal curriculum. Though both the classical course and its Englishtranslation began with broad and humanistic goals, an emphasis onone memorization and on names, dates, and places. dominatedvirtually all applications."

The first textbook in this tradition to be widely used in Ameri,..awas Thomas Budge Shaw's Outlines of English Literature, pullfished in England in 1848 and reprinted in America the followingyear. The hook was a simple narrative and included no selectionsfrom the authors at all, but it was very popular and went throughmany editions before the end of the century." Charles D. Cleveland,

A HIV TR.% MT IONS II

A Philadelphia schoolmaster, also published a history of Englishliterature in 1849 and followed it up with n history of Americanliterature ten years later. These were very successful. Boston EnglishHigh School. having been content with Blair's Rhetoric, for twentyyears. introduced Cleveland in 1852, substituting Shaw six yearslater. ''

The entry for each author in Cleveland's series was rather similarto an encyclopedia listing all the claws, the hooks, the immediate.111(1 historical reactions. Though generous excerpts were also pro-vided, the "Questions for Et.am Motion" which conclude his volumesreflect the real emphasis. Of Lady Russell they ask. "Whose wife?. . What does Burnett say of her letters?" Of Robert Dodsley,"What was his first publication?" Of Milton, "What is his firstpoetical work, and what its subject? What the second? Third?Fourth? Fifth? Sixth? Seventh? Eighth? Ninth? Tenth? . . Whatdoes lirydges say of Johnson's Life of Milton?'" To our eyes suchhooks are unattractive and even unpedagogical, but they take theirshape from the ern) basis on formal discipline already noted. If thevalue of a subject lies in its structure and in the demands that it putsupon memory, then pedagogically the soundest approach is thecompendium (whether of grammar, rhetoric, or history) which pre-sents that structure and that material in the most elaborate detail.

Histories such as Cleveland's and Shaw's became very popular(luring the 1850s and 1860s, and with their introduction schools forthe first time began to claim to be teaching "literature" rather thanrhetoric, oratory, or reading,'" Still, though literary history was apopular subject. the curriculum was very unstable; schools changedfrom one text hook to another, and then changed back again pre-sumably because none of the texts n ere really satisfactory. By 1870the emphasis on information in literary studies was well established,with examination quest ions like those Cleveland had proposed facingstudents throughout the country.17 Such studies of facts about liter-ature remain an element in high school instruction to the presentday, though their justification has changed from mental discipline toknowledge of our literary- heritage.

The Nonacademic Tradition

While an ethical tradition was emerging in elementary schoolreading materials, and a classical one in secondary schools and(.'alleges, a more amorphous but equally important nonacademicradition of English for "appreciation" was developing outside of the

traditional curriculum. This made no attempt to justify Diglish asan academic study, championing it instead on other, and at t he timeIcss arguable, grounds.

12 THAI/1'110N AND REFORM

The Extracurriculum

One area in which the appreciative tradition flourished was theextracurriculum of the nineteenth century colleges, in particular inthe students' literary and dehating societies. The dehates andjournals of these clubs dealt with the political and philosophicalissues of the timeissues more or less ruled out of the classicalcurriculum of the colleges. In their societies, students could debatethe topics they wished, and could and did invite controversialfigures to address them. Thus Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose Divin-ity School Address 11838) had come too close to pantheism forconservative faculties to accept. was able to speak three times atWilliams, though the college had banned him from the campus. Healways appeared under the auspices of a student group, in anoff-campus building.' 'rho many literary magazines founded andsupported by the societies during this period provided a similarforum for students to debate contemporary issues, as well as topolish their skills in English composition; their college courses weremore likely to concentrate on improving their Latin and Greek.

Through their libraries, the societies also offered the literary farewhich the colleges themselves ignored. Throughout the country,these libraries were the only place for the student to read con-temporary fiction, poetry, biography, or drama: on most campusesthe libraries of the literary societies surpassed those of the collegesthemselves in both quality and number of volumes. (It would nothe until the end of the century that the great research collections int he modern languages would be established.)" All of the evidenceavailable suggests that these activities were greeted enthusiastic-ally by the students of the time, forming an important part of theircollegiate experience, if not of their formal curriculum. As onemeasure of their concern, we can tally the response of Harvardstudents to an edition of Shakespeare offered for sale in 1807; of 175students. 99 suhscribed.'"

It is important to note here that these activities were usuallyquite happily sanctioned by the colleges. What the colleges ob-jected to was giving English literature a place as a subject to betaught rather than something to be read and enjoyed on one's own.Most expected that students would read widely in contemporaryliterature, both in secondary school and college." But as willbecome apparent in the next chapter, this extracurriculum of thestudents' creation became after 1870 a major part of the curriculumitself.

The Finishing School

In the early nineteenth century, students in preparatory schoolsand colleges could expect exposure to English literature only

RAMS TRADITIONS 13

through t he ex tracurriculum. In the finishing schools. however,which sought to offer a "practical" course for the student whowould tro4 go on to college, English studies and the other modernsubjects had a somewhat better time. Benjamin Franklin, forexample, in his plans for a Philadelphia academy (ca.1750), hadseen a practical value in English literature as a model for writing,as a subject for declamation and oral reading, and as a moralexemplum: Though Franklin's program was never implemented," itwas only a few years later that his friend Ebenezer Kinnersleybecame America's first professor of any aspect of English, when asimilar Philadelphia academy became a college.

In the years that followed, the various English studies workedtheir way first into the "English" course that arose m opposition tothe Latin or classical program of studies. Blair's Rhetoric, forexample, was included in the first course of study (1821) at BostonEnglish High School; it was never used at Boston Latin School atall," In the college preparatory curriculum, as in the collegesthemselves. the literary interests of the student were left to theextracurriculutn, where debating clubs and literary societies grewup on the college model."

Girls' schools during this period were almost all finishing schools,and English studies did find an early place in some of them: thebelles lettres were considered an appropriate subject for politeconversation, if nothing else. Thus it was not entirely accidental thatmany early English textbooks were for "Young Ladies," or preparedby schoolmasters in girls' finishing schools.'" Lacking a rigorousacademic cachet. these "appreciative" studies of English carried acertain stigma, an air of being a second-best choice for those who itwas presumed could not handle the rigors of classical studies. WhenOxford, for example, finally allowed English into its examinations in1873, it was only for the pass degree; honors students did their workin Latin. And as late as 1889, the U.S. Commissioner of Education inhis annual report was tallying students taking English in businessschools and in schools for the blind, deaf, and feebleminded, but notin public or private secondary schools!"

Reprise: 1865

By 1865, schools and colleges recognized a variety of looselyrelated minor studies of the vernacularrhetoric, oratory, spelling,grammar, literary history, and reading all had their places, oftenconflicting with one another for attention." Though many of thesestudies made use of literary selections, literary study in its own righthad yet to find a place or a justification. Rhetorical and grammaticalstudies often included literary texts, but instruction was designedand carried out in the service of composition, not literature. Literary

I I TRADITION AND 11E141101

history, though the schools called it the teaching of literature, wasbiographical in emphasis and often involved no literature at all. Onlythe nonacademic tradition stressed the reading of literature for itsown sakeand this tradition had found no place in the classicalcurricidum of the colleges or preparatory schools.

'Photo is another way of viewing the situation, however, whichhighlights the potential strength of the embryonic subject; this is torecognize that by 1865, English studies had become a part of allthree major traditions. Though in each case the study of English wassubordinate to other goals. there was for the first time the possibilitythat all of these traditions might be united within the teaching of asingle subject. And this is in fact what happened in the followingdecades: English studies increasingly found ways to claim theintellect ual strength of the classical tradition, the moral strength ofthe ethical tradition, and the utilitarian strength of the nonacademictradition. It was a fruitful alliance, though sometimes a confusingone, and led in the end to a subject whose content and goals had noreal counterpart in any of the traditions from which it arose.

EARLY T, ADITIsev, P

cHArrEit I Noll*.

I. Quoted by Nila B. Smith, American Reading Instructim (Nei:York: Silver, Burdett and Co., 19341, p. 11.

2. Smith, American (leading Instruction, p. 38.3. Quoted by Theodore It, Sizer, Seconder,' Schools at the Tam (f the

Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, i9641, P. 2.4. In American Journal of Education 19 (lit701: 491. Quoted in if eiLerr

Galen Lull, inherited Tendencies of Secondar,. instruction in the Ont.,:States, University of California Publications in Education, vol. 3, no. -1(April 15. 19131; 199.

5. Samuel Thurber, "The English Studies English Leaflet 11 nitri-cember I. 19021. Quoted by John Muth Bernd, iipproaches to the cliewhiegtof Literature in Secondary School, 1900-19,56 IliEsertation,UnherukyNVisconsin, 1957; University Microfilms No. 24,4'041.

6. The name came about because the exercises began at "priwe- 09'sunrise, the first hour of the day. On the early history, seeReeder. The Historical Development of School genders unit of AtemodsTeaching Reading (New York: Macmillan Co.. 19001; Smith. Amin-banReacting Instruction; and Clifton Johnson, OH Time Schools and SchoolRooks (New York: Dover Publications. 1963).

7. Textual variants of the Primer are dis,:ussed at length n PaalLeicester Ford, The New England Primer INee: York; 'teachers r'rilleno.Columbia University, 19621. Ford also reprints he 1727 edition.

S. The catechism promulgated by the Asselably hod both a "Langerand a "Shorter!' version. In America it was further abridged and simplifiedby John Cotton as "Spiritual Milk for America]; Babes.-

9. Webster's Speller had many titles in later years, inducting TrIrAmerican Spelling-Hook and The Elementary Spelling Book. it got ctscommon name because it was usually bound between oak covers pattten oxerwith blue paper. The popularity of the spelling bee in post-revulutit trigAmerica was due in part to the impetus of this book. On its use. SUP RIY-SbY.Historical Development: Smith. American Reacting Instruction; afrihre.rui..Old-Time Schools: and J. Stephen Sherwin, Enter Problems in ;:cachhv.English (Scranton, Pa.; International Textbook Co. for the 1.13,iiottedCouncil of Teachers of English, 19691.

10. Cited in Johnson, Old-Time Schools.II. Cited in Smith. American Reading Instr(ction. p. 49.12. See Huth M. Mon. Guardia, TraciitIm: American Schaalb (ME

of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Pres.-, It;641.The use of the various series has been discussed ba several authors: herderHistorical Development, pp. 38 ff.: Smith, American Reacting Instracionpp. 51 fl; Joseph Mersand, "The 'leaching of Literature in Americart rligaSchools: 1865.1900," in Perspectives on English, ed. Robert C. Poole!; iNelsYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.. 19601. pp. 1r73-75; and Peter D WittThe Beginnings of the Teaching of the Vernacular Werature an Mi.Secondary Schools of Masscehusetts (Dissertation, Haman) University.1968; University Microfilms No. 09-11.5071, pp. 39 ff,

13. This debate was in large part funded by the publishers, 'Mita )ltrlobvious vested interests in the results. Speeches and articles pro mid Kettwere commntissioned and reprinted as sales pamphlets, The most vitriolic

16 TRAM:MON AND REFORM

debut e seems to hove wen between supporters of NI cG u fit:3°s and of Ni arciusWillsons Selling and Family series. On The Farmer's School -Ron!, see.Johnson. Old -Time Schools. p. 291.

11. These are from the 1879 edition of the Fifth Reader and representquite sophisticated studies. "Articulation," for example, included attentionto t he different "Vocals, Subvocals. and Aspirates" which are the "Elemen-tary Sounds" of English, as well as substitutions which are permissiblefrom one sound to another, and "Faults to be remedied." This text is readilyavailable in Commager's reprint edition. The emphasis on oral reading istypical; silent reading did not become important until the 1920s. MeGuffey'sFifth Eclectic Reader. with a foreword by Henry Steele Commager (NewYork: New American Library, 19621.

15. On the early studies of English, see William Riley Parker. "WhereDo English Departments Come From?" College Engilak 28:5 (February19671: 339-51. Parker's unpublished research has been extensively reportedin Walter Scott Achtert, A History of English Studies to 1883 Rased onthe Resvarrh of William Riley Parker. (Dissertation, New York University,19;2: University Microfilms No. 72.31.057).

16. These doctrines and their effects on school programs are discuSsedat length in Lull. inherited Tendencies. After 1835, when a translation ofPestalozzian methods became available in English. the faculties to hetrained expanded to include aspects of "sensation" as well as memory andreason.

17. The quote is from E. A. Freeman. Regius Professor of History atOxford, talking in 1887. To him the proper stock to which literature shouldbe grafted was language study. The lack of substance in literary studieswas also a frequent theme in America. Carpenter, Raker. and Scott in theirearly textbook argued that the slow start for English at the secondarylevel lay "not so much in the lack of desire for instruction as in the generalfeeling that there was no general body of instruction to give." George It.Carpenter. Franklin T. Baker. and Fred N. Scott. The numbing of Englishin the Elementary and the Secondary School (New York: Longmans, Green.and ('o.. 11H13) p. 15. Freeman is cited in The Rise of English Studies.I). .1. Palmer (London; Oxford University Press for the University of Hull,11165). p. 96.

IS. 11w scope of grammar is suggested by the various topics treated ina grammar dining from about 166 B.C. It included attention to accuraterenting. explanations of figures of speech. exposition of subject matter.explanations of rare words, studies of etymology. statements of regulargrammatical forms. and criticism of poetry. Paul Monroe, ed A Cyclopa lia of Eduzoition (New York: Macmillan Co., 19111; from the article on"Philology."

19. The grammatical categories of traditional "school grammars" alsoderive directly from classical models. See Sherwin, Four Problems: IanMichael. English Grammatiral Categories and the Tradition to 1800 (Cam-bridge: The University Press, 1970): and Louis G. Kelly. 25 Centuries ofLanguage Teaching (Rowley,. Mass.: Newbury House. 19691.

20. Quoted in Sterling Andrus Leonard, The Doctrine of Correctness inEnglish Usage 1700- 1800, University of Wisconsin Studies in Languageand Literature no. 25 (1929). p. 107. Leonard's book is the best singlesource on the prescriptive tradition.

21. This was titled The Young Ladys Az:Mimic. reflecting a division .

of grammatical studies into accidence (morphology) and syntax. That it

EA RIS T RA DITIONS 17

was for "young ladies" reflects the tact that English studies found anearlier home in schools for girls than they did elsewhere, a point to whichwe will return.

22. This figure includes editions derived directly from Murray. DumasMal/inv. ed., I Ect hinary Ameth:an Biography (New York: CharlesSi:Hiner 's Sons. 19:151. ('I iliihnson. Ofd -Tinte Schools.

23. Edna Hays, College Entrance Requirements in English: TheirEffects on the nigh Schools (New York: Teachers College. ColumbiaUniversity, 19361, p. 13.

24. Smith's qualifications for the series were the same as for his workin political science: a solid grounding in philosophy and in the classics atCambridge. and wide reading on his own. Smith's lectures, which Meiklesuggests may have been given under the auspices of the PhilosophicalSociety. were popular enough to be renewed in subsequent years. Theywere never published, but have recently been rediscovered in the form of astudent's lecture notes. The history of the Scottish rhetoricians has beenrecounted by Henry W. Meikle. "The ('hair of Rhetoric and Belles1.0 t res." / "nieersity of Edinburgh Journal 13 IAuttm o 19.151: 89-103, andRom a slightly ditterent perspective in the introduction to Smith's lecturenotes (Adam Smith, Lectures on lthetorie and Belles Lewes. edited withan introduction and notes by John NI, Lothian 1Camilen. N.J.: ThomasNelson & SODS, 19631. Sep also Palmer. Rise of English Studies, 171-78:Michael. English Grammatical Categories. 197: and Parker. ''Where onEnglish Departments Come Front'"

25. Scott and Carpenter were active in this movement, as was BarrettWendell at Harvurd, See F. N, Scott and .1. V. Denny, Paragraph Writing(189 II. and I larrett Wendell, English (' opposition (18911, The "flowers"was .1. Nlennye's designation in his English Grammar 117851. Cf. Leonard.nottritle of Correctness. p. 114.

26. lIugh Blair. Lectures in Rhetoric and Wiles Lewes. ti vols. (Dub-lin. 17831. Quotes are from VOL 1. p, 48.

27, Blair's book was eventually translated into German 11785-891.French 117961. Spanish 117981, Italian 118011 and Russian 118371: it washe most successful of many similar texts helping to spread the rhetori-taus' approach. See Witt. Beginnings of Marking Vermicular: p, 36: andloath:, "Chair of Rhetoric." p, 91.

28. The course often took its title from the particular text used. Latera the century. the rhetorical forms of intensive analysis were joined bythers deriving from philological studies. These will be dealt with in the

chapter.29. For a near-contemporary account, see Anna C. Brackett, -Teaching

'.1 English Literature," The Arudemy 3 (February 18881: 14-18. See alsoNat, Beginnings of Thaching Vernacular, pp. 27, 228.

30. Adams' Litt tiros on Rhetoric and Oratory (1810) were widely praised.Charming was also very popular: he numbered Dana, Emerson, llohnes.And Thoreau among his students. Parker. -Where Do English Departments1 'tome From ?'' See also Witt. Beginnings of 7.'11thhim Vernacular, pp. 35, 48.

31. Grandgent has commented on this in discussing the modern lan-guages at Harvard: "As to English, its advance has been more in thenature of peaceful penetration. Its delay in getting started seems to havebeen due. not to opposition, but to a general failure to see in it anythinginure than a minor element in preparation for the ministry. Charles II.

IS 'l'nA 01"11( IN AND REFORM

Graudgent '"the Modern Languages." in The Development of Harvardt'oitersity Since the IttauguratMn if President Eliot 1869-1929, ed. SamuelEliot Morison Wandridge, Mass.: Ilarvard University Press, 1930).

At the secondary level the situation was no better. As late as 1876,Carpenter. linker. anti Scott claim there "was scarcely to be found in the

nat.(' States, any dwinito, well-organized system of secondary instructionin Uri mot hergongue.- I lays echoes their findings, claiming that Englishwas "non-existent- In fore 1870. Carpenter. Baker, and Scott, '('etching ofFugl'sh. p. 46: and ILtvs, College Entrance Requirements, p, 10.

3:2, Lull, inherited Tendencies, documents both the original goals andthe degenerate practice.

33. Shaw was a Cambridge graduate teaching in Russia: he preparedthe book for his students there. On Shaw's life. see Sir Leslie Stephen andSir Sidney Lees, eds.. lire Dictionary of National Biography (London:Oxford University Press, 1021.22).

31. See Witt. Beginnings of Tearldng Vernacular, pp. 173-75; John E.Stout. Dm Dereloptnint of Ikgh School Curricula in the North Cent nilStates from IMO to 191S. Supplementary Educational Monographs, vol. 3.no. 3 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, June 19211, pp. 3-4, Wittfound two other histories in frequent use in Massachusetts before 1870:William Spaulding's The History of English Literature (1853), and WilliamFrancis Collier's A History of English Literature (18621.

:35. Charles I). Cleveland. A Compendium of English Literature, Citron-()logically rranged. from Sir John Alanderille to William Cowper (Phila-delphia: E. C.& Biddle, 1851. First Edition. 18491.

36. Witt found in surveying thirty-four Massachusetts secondary schoolsthat fourteen began to teach literature between 1850 and 1867, anothertwelve before the end of the 1870s. and eight in the 1880s, "Literature-usually meant one of the histories.

37. Literature remained an optional subject. however; rhetoric andgrammar were required. Cf. either of the reports of an 1888 survey carriedout by the Massachusetts Teachers Association: English in SecondarySchools. Report of a Committee of the Massachusetts Teachers Association(December L 18881: "English in Secondary Schools," The Academy 3(January 1889); 393-609, Like Witt. the Committee found that a largeproportion of those teaching literature were using manuals of "facts aboutauthors."

:1s. As a result of the same speech, he was banned from I larvard, hisalum mato'. 'or thirty years (Monroe, Cyrlopedia1. On his appearances atWilliams. set Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: .4History (New York: Vintage Books, 19621. p. 142, Rudolph provides anextensive discussion of both the curriculum and the extracurriculum of thecolleges during this period.

Cl. Rudolph, American College and Unicersity. p. 143; and Rent:Wellek. "Literary Scholarship," in American Scholarship in the ThentiethLen luny. Merle Curti, awls (Cambridge. Mass,: Harvard (Ink orsity Press.19:13).

11 ht. Beginnings of Teaching Vertu:calor, pp. -5.II. Thus Beers explained that Yale students were expected to have

read a good deal of English literature, even as he was arguing that thisknowledge should not he tested since it would not lie needed "in thetort her pursuit of the prescribed college studies." I teary A. Beers. "En-

EA lily IBA nrrioNs 19

trance Itequirements in English at l'ale." Educational Heckle :1 1Nlay1s112i: 127-13.

42. Franklin's proposals hove been quoted by many later writers. Ilecontinued to he an advocate of the modern subjects, in 1789 attacking the"unaccountable prejudice in favor of ancient customs and beliefs- whichhad led to the continuance of the classical languages "after the circum-stances which formerly made them useful tease to exist." Carpenter.I taker. and Scott, Teaching of English, pp. 36-39-

43. "English course- in this context does not refer to the teaching ofEnglish. but to a course of study thin usually emerged as a nonacademicalternative to the classical course. In spite of its Title, the English coursedid not necessarily include any more attention to '.1riglish studies than didthe parallel classical curriculum. See Stout. High School Curricula, p. 4;and Carpenter. Baker, and Scott. Teaching of En;lish. pp. 45-46.

44. The strength of such interests is clear. though there is no singlediscussion equivalent to Rudolph's histiwy of tha extracurriculum at thecollege level. Sit. for example, in his discussion of the academies notesthat many had flourishing literary and debating societies akin to those inthe colleges. Carpenter, Baker, and Scott. Teaching of English, make asithilar mint (p. 451. Witt. Beginnings of Teaching Vernacular, providessomewhat more detail (pp. 21 ff.). In The Age of the Academies. ed.Theodore Sider (New York: Teachers College, Ceiumbia University. 19641.

15. The belief that. a literary education was particularly appropriate forwomen was widespread and persistent. Palmer, Rise of English Studies, p.36, notes it. and Samuel Thurber was still arguing the point in 1894.Samuel Thurber. "English Literature in Girls' Education," School Review

blune IM)-l): 321-36, See also Carpenter, Raker, and Scott. Teaching ofEnglish, p. 43; and Witt, Beginnings of Tracking Vernacular, p. 37.

46, Report of the Catnaussioner of Education for the Year 1889-90. cols2 tWushington, D.C,: U.S.-Government Printing Office, 18931. This wasthe first attempt to survey the various components of the curriculum. Thetables input ioned hew are printed on pp. 1390.92, 16'21.28. I657.58, 1611-42.and 1666.69. English literature was evidently surveyed M the secondary!whim's but not considered important enough to report. On the Oxfordpuss degree, see Palmer, Rise of English Studies, p. 70.

47. For an illustration of the variety of offerings in 1865, see Appendix II.

Ow Poet] is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder andpreserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. In spite ofdfference of soil aid climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs;

at spit, of things pleat& gone out of mind. and things violently destroyed;the Port binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human

. society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time.William Wordsworth, Preface to

Lyrical Ballads, 18001

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of itshigh destinies, our race, as time goes fin, will find an ever surer and surer stay.

rhem is not a tired which is nod shaken. not an accredited dogma which is

iwt shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does notthreaten lo dissolve. Our religion has materialised itself in the fact, the

:unposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fad isgalling it. But for, poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion,if divine illusion. Poetry attaches ils emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact.

The stronger part of our religion to-day is Hs unconscious poetry.

Matthew Arnold, 18802

One would hesitate to ask to dinner a man who confessed complete ignorance

of The Canterbury Tales.Arlo Bates, Talks on the Study of

Literature, 18973

Vol only is it impossible for a pupil, without the study of Latin, to obtain thediscipline and culture pertaining to an English education, but it is vain for ateacher, without a fair acquaintance with Latin or Greek. and at least onemodern foreign language, to attempt instruction in English.

C. NI. Gayley and C. B. Bradley,Suggestions to Teachers of English inthe Secondary Schools, 18944

Chapter II

The Birth of a Subject

Before it could emerge as a major school study,English, and in particular English literature, had to develop amethodology rigorous enough to win academic respect. It also had toovercome the supposition that imaginative literature posed a realthreat to the moral well-being of its readers. The Romantic erabrought a solution Lo both problems: that of methodology throughthe new techniques of the German philologists; that of moralwell-being through a redefinition of culture and of the artist's role.Together these two movements made it possible for English tobecome a major subject, but they did not insure the success of theventure. This success depended upon institutional changes in theAmerican system of education, changes begun through the influenceof the college entrance requirements, and consolidated by the reportof the Committee of Ten. These institutional changes succeeded inwelding the various studies of English together as a single subjectand provided it with its first, albeit rather tenuous, coherence. By1900 the questions would have shifted from whether to teachgrammar. rhetoric, literary history, spelling, and composition, tohow to teach English.'

The Cultural Value of Literature

The ethical tradition which implied that literature in schoolreading material could be used for moral education proved a double-edged sword for the early teacher of English: if literature had the

21

''HAMM% ANI) it EFOHM

power to do good, it must also have the power to do evil. Well intothe nineteenth century, imaginative literature was as likely to beattacked as a source of corruption as to be defended as a way towardsalvation.

History, biography. and travel 'books had always had a certainmoral cachet, but fiction and drama, with their appeal to imagina-tion rather than truth, were definitely suspect. Horace Mann wastypical of many influential educators when he argued that novelsshould not be taught because their appeal was to emotion rather thanto reason.' When Vale's William Lyons Phelps, as a young in-structor. instituted America's first course on the contemporary novelin 1895. he was forced to drop it after comments in the popular press.Opposition to drama was also strong: in 1828 a Boston teacher wasdismissed for reading to his class from one of Shakespeare's plays,and even at the college level Oberlin refused to allow Shakespeare tohe taught in mixed classes until the 1869s.' Such incidents becamerarer in the second half of the century, but the convictions which ledto them were strongly held: as late as 1893. after Hamlet had been onthe college entrance lists for over a decade, the New England Journalof Education still took time to give editorial support to a class whohad refused to read the play:

\ II tumor t o the modest and sensible youths and maidens of the OaklandIligh School who revolted against studying an unexpurgated edition ofMullet! The indelicacies of Shakespeare in the complete edition arebrutal. They are more than indelicacies, they are indecencies. They areno part of Shakespeare's thought, have no connect ion with the play, andcan be eliminated with as little jar us the oaths of a modern slugger.'

The editor was presumably following the lead of the rhetoricians inattributing these "indelicacies'. to "the grossness of the age" inwhich Shakespeare had written.

71 Romantic Tradition

The poets and critics of the Romantic period provided a newjustification for literature as a reservoir of cultural values and asource of moral strength. Writing against the background of theupheavals caused by the scientific and industrial revolutions, theyturned to the artist to provide, through the superior development ofhis faculty of Imagination, the needed corrective to the intolerablesocioeconomic conditions produced by strict adherence to the"rational- laws of the marketplace.' The artist would have a dif-ferent kind of knowledge to the Romantics usually a "higher"kind which was no less essential than the rationalism to which itwas opposed. The cumulative products of this artistic imagination

THE Brunt OF A SUBJECT 23

came to he identified with a nation's culture. in Lhe process trans-homing "culture" from :1 process into a state, a body of knowledgeand tradition to be consciously valued and consciously studied.II istorical studies such as those discussed in Chapter I received partof their impetus from this aspect of the movement.)

The conception of culture as a product of the arts originates withColeridge and runs throughout Lhe writings of the Romantics.Wordsworth relies on it in his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800): sodoes Shelley in his Defence of Poetry (1821). Through these andsimilar writings, the status of the arts and of the artist was elevateduntil, in the end, a view emerged which argued that all art is inessence moral. "Poetry strengthens the faculty whickis the organ ofthe moral nature of man," Shelley wrote, "in the same manner asexercise strengthens a limb."'"

Culture and Education

The educational implications of the Romantic view of culture wereformulated most fully by Matthew Arnold. In Culture and Anarchy118671, he provided a widely read interpretation of culture as thecumulative vision of mankind, winnowed by Lime and sanctioned bygenius. Such a culture. Arnold argued, could be the source of a newprinciple of authority to replace the eroding bonds of class and ofreligion: it was the only hope of preventing the anarchy which wouldotherwise surely follow. Though better remembered in America as apoet and critic. Arnold was also an inspector of schools: it was fromthis vantage point that he recognized that public education, if it weregiven culture as a primary goal, could emerge as the new unifyingand civilizing agent. Classically trained himself, Arnold argued onbehalf of culture broadly defined, and in no way asserted Lhesuperiority of the vernacular literature; indeed he explicitly arguedthe proven value of the GreekS over all who came later." In theAmerican high school, however, the classical languages would soondecline; the main benefits of his arguments accrued Lo the emergingstudies of English literature.

Americans who emhraced Arnold's interpretation of culturaleducation did so in the hope of stemming the erosion of traditionalsystems of values. In a very real sense, educational opportunitieswere extended because schooling with its attendant "culture" wasseen as a new agent of social control. For the definitions of theculture to be transmitted through its schools. America looked toNett England, in particular to Roston. IL was a reassuring culturethat could be found there during the late nineteenth century, amid-Victorian culture which avoided such problems as civil war andindustrialization by turning to a pastoral, detached literature." As

21 TRADITION AND RF:FORM

Francis Underwood, himself the editor of a series of literatureanthologies, put it in 18791

In t his country all things are so new, and political events have such anintense significance, that we do not look at affairs as posterity will lookat them. But who run doubt that, when the true perspective has beenadjusted. ours will be known as the age of Emerson, Irving, andHawthorne. of lirvant, Longfellow. and 1Vhittier. of Lowell andI 101111e;"

His hope and faith was that literature could gradually surpass andsuppress from memory such "political events" as civil war. Hiscatalog of authors is a catalog of the New England literary elite aswell us of the American contribution to the emerging high schoolliterary canon.

lora«, Scudder

The most widely quoted American spokesman for an Arnoldianview of cultural education was Horace FL Scudder, a member of theCambridge (Massachusetts) school committee, thief editor forIloughton Mifflin, and, later, editor of the Atlantic Monthly." Hetied his arguments for the teaching c: literature to America'scommon-school traditions, where the place of literature "is inspiritualizing life, letting light into the mind, inspiring and feedingthe higher forces of human nature." Like Arnold, whom he some-times quoted directly, Scudder cast his concern in the context ofcontemporary social upheaval, of "hands which are nervously pull-ing at the stones of our political edifice, . . . hands that are knottedwith hopeless toil." From this vantage point, he offered a com-prehensive criticism of the teaching of literature at all levels of thecommon school. Ills argument hinged on the effectiveness of the"classics" in engendering "spiritual grace," on the winnowingeffects of time as the arbiter of literary merit, and on the value forAmericans of their own unique literary heritage. Scudder wasremarkably balanced in his views: he wanted such works as LittleRed Riding Flood in the nursery school, complained that schoolreaders bad misused literature to the point t hat in them "Pegasus is

harnessed to a tip-cart." and recognized that the values which hehoped to foster were ultimately larger than the Americanism he alsoespoused," His views, with their essential optimism and grandmission for the teacher of English, carried much weight in thedebates of the 1880s and 1890s. The teacher who accepted themand in the end most didcould for the first time claim the fullsupport of the ethical tradition for all of his teaching of literature.

THE IIIIrrn OF A SUBJECT 25

Philological Studies

The cultural value of literature provided a new and popularmOtivation for the inclusion of studies of literature in the curriculum,but it did not provide them with a methodology. This was to comefrom the historical and textual studies of language propounded bythe German philologists and their American successors, What thesescholars offered was a scientific study of language, a methodologyequal in rigor and academic respect to any of the classical studies."

Continuing the pattern of transposition from the classical to themodern curriculum, philology has its roots in studies of classicalcivilizations, transposed by the German Romantics to the study ofGerman and later of English. The word itself dates at least to thewritings of Plato: it was revived in 1717 by Frederich Wolf at theUniversity of Glittingen. Defining his task broadly as providing thebiography of a nation, Wolf included as legitimate philological studyattention to the grammar, criticism, geography, political history,customs, mythology, literature, art, and ideas of a people, but likeearlier philologists, he was interested in the culture of Greece andRome. his theoretical statement, however, implied no such limita-tions, and was eventually extended to other cultures by his fol-lowers.

The justification of modern language study through philologyinvolved a process of slowly shifting focuses of attention. TheGermanic languages were originally studied not for their importancein German culture, but because scholars hoped to find in that cultureremnants of an earlier Indo-European culture and language. Grad-ually, as a body of serious studies emerged, German, Anglo-Saxon,and Celtic began to be studied for their own sake; later still, studiesof the Romance languages began to be approached with the samemethodology. Folklore was an especially important ground forjustifying modern studies, for it occupied an ambiguous historicalposition. It was studied originally for its presumed roots in anancient oral culture, yet the tales studied were also very obviously apart of the contemporary culture in which they were collected. Asphilology became more confident in its modern studies, it movedcloser and closer to contemporary literaturefirst the Anglo-Saxonpoets, then Chaucer and medieval England, later Spenser andShakespeare, and finally, by the end of the nineteenth century, thewhole modern field.

(liven the considerable disrepute into which philology has nowfaded, it is worth remembering the high ideals with which it began.The compilations and bibliographies, the variorum editions andcollections of folklore, the lengthy textual notes and arguments overseemingly minor detail had as their original impetus the Romantic

26 TRA RENON A'N I) REFORM

ideal of the study of a national spirit. In the hands of a fewmenJacob Grimm is the most brilliant examplesuch studiescame close to realizing their lofty goals, but in the hands of mostthey quickly degenerated into the mechanical and pedantic textualcriticism that has earned philology its present low esteem. In fact,philology asked more than most men could manage, requiring asystematic, analytic scholarship on the one hand and a creative,synthetic mind on the otherfor one was asked both to discover andto recreate the cultural, history of a nation. The more limiteddefinition-of philology as a study of language was more or less forcedupon the serious student, and it is this more limited definition thathas given philology it, negative image.

Philology in the Uttiversity

however much it might degenerate, philology offered the fledg-ling subject of English the justification it needed in the colleges ofthe second half of the nineteenth century, giving it the impetus toheroine a major component of the emerging university system.Before philological studies began to dominate, the professor ofEnglish was a curiously ambiguous entity. As we have seen, in manyinstitutions he was simply a clergyman whose oratorical skills gavehim license to lecture on language and rhetoric. In others, Englishprofessors were trained originally in law, in logic, or in modernhistory. Ail were expected to tutor in other subjects, ranging frompolitical science and economics to biology and mathematics. NeitherEnglish ,ior the other modern languages produced much in the wayof indigenous American scholarship during the first half of thenineteenth century. in spite of Emerson's famous "AmericanSchokr" address at Ilarvard in 1837. There were no producingscholars in the modern languages, no periodicals, and no universitypresses. Between 1850 and 1900, however, this changed completely,with philological scholarship transforming the study of modernlanguages at the same time that Germanic ideals of research weretransforming graduate education in general.'"

Francis James Child

The rise of philological studies in the United States is reflected inthe career of Francis James Child, who presided over the expansionof the curriculum at Harvard to include the study of Englishliterature. After graduating in the Harvard class of 1846, Childstayed on to tutor in math, history, and economics. Three years laterhe became one of a growing number of Americans studying inGermany, returning to Harvard in 1851 to succeed Channing asBoylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, During the ensuingdecades he emerged as one of America's leading scholars, his

THE BOUM OF A SuniErr 27

definitive edition of Spenser's poetry 118551 and his English andScottish Ballads (1857 -58) firmly establishing his reputation.'" Stillit was as a professor of rhetoric and oratory that he offered hislectures on language and literature, including three elective courses:History of the English Language; Anglo-Saxon; and Chaucer,Shakespeare. Bacon. Milton. and Dryden.'" For twenty-five years.his responsibilities for the rhetoric course prevented him frombroadening the offerings further. Finally in 1876, after a successfulseries of guest lectures brought him an offer of a position at thenewly-established Johns Hopkins University. Harvard releasedChild from the rhetoric course and made him its first professor ofEnglish. In the same year Robert Grant, one of Child's students.earned the first American Ph.D. in English literature. (It is imdivinity of the general state of graduate education that after leavingHarvard, Grant took a Columbia law degree and went on to alucrative Boston law practice. Though he later wrote novels. plays.verse. essays. and travel books, his graduate work was clearly notvocational.)''

The Spread of Philology

Johns Hopkins' contribution to English studies was not limited toforcing Harvard's hand. The ideals of specialization, of productivescholarship. and of scientific study of the modern languages werepursued there along philological lines, even without Child's in-111.10112(1:' Graduate work in English consisted of rigorous textualand linguistic study; mastery of the early languagesOld French,Old High Gorman, Anglo-Saxon. and Middle English was artessein ial part of the training. In its insistence on rigorous graduatepreparation for studies of the modern languages. Johns Hopkinsestablished the first model for the training of teachers of English:up to that point, there had been no standards of preparation at all.

With the sanction of philology, the teaching of literature spreadquickly through the American college and university system.Francis Andrew March became professor of the English languageand comparative philology at Lafayette College in 1857, only sixyears after Child took up the Boylston Professorship at Harvard!'By 1875 Moses Coit Tyler was teaching a course in Americanliterature at the University of Nlichigan."' And by 1879, just threeyears after Child was released from the Harvard rhetoric course,elective offerings there had increased from three to seven, and otherfaculty members were offering literature courses of their own!Though in 1883 when the Modern Language Association was organ-ized, representatives of twenty leading colleges could tally onlythirtynine teachers of English among their several institutions, by1900, major universities in all sections of the country were offering

2S TRADITION AND REFORM

graduate degrees in English literatureBerkeley and Stanford in theWest: Nfieldgan. Chicago, Wisconsin, and Vanderbilt in the Mid-west: Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, and many others in the East.At the undergraduate level, literature had become an almost uni-versal offering and had assumed its still-continuing place as thelargest component of English instruction:2h

In examining the role of philology in the English studies of thelate nineteenth century, it is important to remember the complextraditions upon which it was superimposed. Much that was notphilological went on in the early departments of English, stemmingfrom the earlier traditions of rhetorical analysis, from the longtradition of popular, nonacademic criticism, and from oratory (itselfa child of rhetoric), which placed more emphasis on sensitive readingand "interpretation." The interactions among such studies arecomplex and have not been documented well enough to pursue veryfar. It is quite clear, however, that the prestige of philology served tojustify English studies without necessarily limiting them, especiallyat the undergraduate levels, A number of influential teacherschiefamong them William Lyons Phelps at Yale, Bliss Perry at Williams,and Hiram Corson at Cornellquite openly resisted philology. Theyoffered instead the goal of "appreciation," but they lacked anadequate methodology to offer in place of the new-found rigor ofphilology. Their writings and teachings provided instead the aca-demic mots for a dissenting tradition which would contribute inthe years after 1990 to the rejection by the high schools of thecollegiate model."

High School Programs

When systematic, regular instruction in literature emerged in thehigh schools, it came under the same guises that brought it into thecolleges, William James Rolfe. a .prolific writer whose philologicalscholarship earned him considerable praise, is credited with intro-ducing the first regular high school instruction in literature.'" Rolfebegan teaching in Day's Academy. in Wrentham. Massachusetts, in1848, during the next ten years moving on to the Dorchester andlater the Lawrence high schools. His teaching of English during thisperiod came to Child's attention and led to an honorary A.M. fromHarvard in 1859 (before his philological studies or school texts hadbeen written). After a brief interlude in Salem, Rolfe becameprincipal of Cambridge High School, where he remained until he leftteaching for a life as an author and editor, in 1868. By 1907, threeyears before his death, he had written or edited some 144 volumes,ranging from Latin and science texts to two forty-volume schooleditions of Shakespeare 11871-84, 1903-06). The breadth and diver-sity of his interests parallels that of the early college teachers ofEnglish.

Tits Barra OF A H: 1 '29

M'hen Rolfe arrived at Cambridge High School in 1862. literaturewas already a wellestahlished if somewhat peripheral port a thecurriculum: it had first been taught there in 1848. under thy guidanceof his predecessor as principal, Elbridge Smith. Rolfe ar.zred thestudy and legitimized it with his philological scholarship.; alsoplaced it firmly within the classical tradition of instruction. Formaldiscipline was the basis of the pedagogy adopted, with considrablestress on rot learn:lig of rules and memorization of isolatee facts

rim eland's rtunpenrlion, was a popular text at the sclmAl. Anexamination in Milton given in 1866 during Rolfes t'nure atCambridge Iligh is indicative of the general tenor of his ceur4es;

I. Give a sketch of Milton's life to 1635.c a brad outline of "I;Allegro."

3. n examples of obsolete or obsolescent words ham the otler. usst to lied .

4. Gil. examples of words used by- Milton in a different settlethan t hey are today. Illustrate.trite a passage tram "11 l'enserost.-

6. Indicate which words in the passage are from the A nglo.Sa xwhich from the Latin. How do you tel

7. Explain all allusions in the passage.What do the follow ing illustrate?

, 11 lyre inllow.ed a set or examples of rhetorical figures.;9. Write .1 passage tri.111 Lycidas.-

IlL Explain t he peculiarities in t he passage from '1.ycidas.--"

Ilistory and philology explain all ten,When instruction based on this classical model was joined with

the Romantic conception of culture during the last quarter of thenineteenth century. the teaching of literature for the first tithe metall requirements that could be put upon a subject for :Andy:usefulness, discipline, moral value, interest, even patriotism. Manyvariations would he played upon these themes, and many v: riterswould still argue pro and con; but this new-found intellectual rigorand cultural strength of English literature prepared the way for itseventual acceptance as a legitimate, even a major. course If study inthe schools.

Institutionalization

The College Entrance Requirements

School programs have on inertia which can create a surpthinglylarge gap between educational thought, as expressed at confoomeesand in the professional literature, and educational practice as it

ao TRAIWIMN AND REFOIBI

actually transpires in the schools. Such a gap was undoubtedlypresent in English instruction in American high schools during thelate nineteenth century. Because one function of the high school waspreparatory, and because then as now the success of its preparatorycourses was more important to a school's prestige than its finishingcourses, radical change was forced upon the schools in a remarkablyshort time. In 1800 formal instruction in literature was unknown; by1865 it had made its way into the curriculum as a handmaiden toother studies; by 1900 literature was almost universally offered as animportant study in its own right. College entrance requirements werethe moving force.

College admission presented rather a different problem for pre-paratory schools during the nineteenth century than it does forschools today. Instead of facing secondary school graduation re-quirements, candidates for admission were assessed on the basis ofentrance examinations set by each college. The topics for theseexaminations were announced in advance and had a way of dictatingthe preparatory school curriculum for the year. As the requirementschanged, the curriculum changed with them:"

Typically enough, literature gained its foothold in the require-ments through the nonliterary uses i.o which readings could be put.We have already noted the early and quite widespread requirementsin English grammar; Harvard added a requirement in "readingEnglish aloud" in its catalog for 1865. This was expanded andclarified in 1869-70, but the real milestone was the Harvard require-ment for 1873.71; literature was to be studied, not for itself or evenfor philology, but as a subject for composition.

English Composition. Each candidate will be required to write a shortEnglish composition, correct in spelling, punctuation, grammar, andexpression. the subject to be taken from such works of standardauthors as shall be announced from time to time. The subject for 1874will be taken from one of the following works: Shakespeare's Tempest,Julius Caesar. and Merchant of Venice; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake-field: Scott's Ivanhoe, and Lay of the Last Minstrel."

This requirement institutionalized the study of standard authors andset in motion a process a. hich eventually forced English to con-solidate its position within the schools.

Uniform Requirements

The Harvard model was quickly followed by other colleges anduniversities; it offered an easy way to recognize literary studieswithoLt raising difficult questions about standards and methods: thesubject tested would be composition, not literature. There was,however, no agreed canon of texts on which to hase the examina-tions, and the lists changed yearly. Each college set its own

BIRTH OF A. Se easyr 31

examinations, quickly confronting the high schools with a flood oftitles in which they were to prepare their students.

That the schools soon raised an outcry is hardly surprising, nor isthe movement for uniformity which followed. By 1879 the firstattempt to set requirements at a regional level began with theorganization of the Conference of New England Colleges at TrinityCollege' this was followed by a succession of similar organizations inboth the northern and southern states." Finally, in 1893, after anappeal from Wilson Farcand, principal of Newark (New Jersey)Academy, the newly formed Association of Colleges and PreparatorySchools of the Middle States and Maryland proposed a joint con-terence with other associations concerned about the entrance require-ments in English." As a direct result, the National Conference onUniform Entrance Requirements in English met for the first time inMay 1894, with representatives from the Association of Colleges andPreparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland, the NewEngland Commission of Colleges on Entrance Examinations, andthe New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools.In later years they were joined by other powerful groups, includingthe North Central Association and the College Entrance Examin-ation Board. 14The dictums of this National Conference succeededthose of Harvard in shaping the teaching of literature."'

The group began by approving a list already promulgated by theNew England Commission of Colleges on Entrance Examinations, inorder to avoid disrupting work already underway in the secondaryschools. They split the list into two parts, however, one for "wide"and the other for "deep" study. This was a practice that had alreadydeveloped informally in high schools faced with a proliferation oftitles and with requirements for close, analytic study which oftenseemed antithetical to more humanistic goals:" The use of two listsoffered a compromise between the two conflicting points of view, theshorter list belonging firmly to the advocates of disciplined study,the longer list to the proponents of appreciation.

The final separation of the requirements in literature from those incomposition was due to the influence of Yale University. Until 1894the Yale faculty resisted the new requirements altogether, arguingthat entrance examinations were designed to assess a candidate'sreadiness for the studies of the first yearand the first year at Yaleincluded no English." Until the 1891-92 academic year, there wereno required English studies at all; at that point a prescribedhalf-course was added as part of the second year. During the 1892-93academic year this was expanded again when William Lyons Phelps,newly appointed as an instructor, offered a survey of Englishliterature to freshmenthe first time the first year students had hadeven an elective offering available.

The emergence of literature was part of the larger struggle overelective courses; when Yale finally did take a stand, the proponents

32 TRADITION AND REFORM

of modern studies had won a clear victory. Rather than a subject forcomposition. literature would be studied in its own right; examina-tion texts were to be selected as well for their probable attractive-ness to t he preparatory stutleut as for their instrinsic importance."The list for 1894 was chosen from "writers of the present century"and included Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Ivanhoe, "TheLady of the Lake," The Alhambra, "Essay on Clive," the fourth('auto of Chibic Harold. "Essay on Byron." The House of the SevenGables. English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century. and ThePrincess. (Though some of those are now part of the high schoolcanon, it is interesting to note that they entered the curriculum ascontemporary literature.) Yale soon found that its decision to set itsown lists was raising another outcry: during the following year itaccepted the uniform lists in spite of their emphasis on traditionaltexts. Other schools quickly picked up the new, more liberal justifi-cation that Yale had provided for literary study, however, droppingthe old emphasis on composition.'"

Tha Committee of Ten

The difficulties caused by a proliferation of entrance requirementswere not limited to English, prompting the National Council ofEducation of the National Education Association to call in 1892 forthe appointment of a Committee of Ten to arrange a series ofsubject-area conferences to consider the whole problem of secondaryschool studies. Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard and long anadvocate of the modern studies, was named as chairman.'"

The committee was unique in its composition and effects. Fullyhalf of its members were not even members of the NEA, though allwere active in the field of education. They ranged from Eliot,president of Harvard, to William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissionerof Education, and James B. Angell, president of the University ofMichigan. If this group were to suggest change, it would have a goodchance of implementation. The competence and experience of thecommittee covered the full range of American education at the time:half of its members had experience in the lower school, half were fromthe colleges; most were from the eastern states, but they alsonumbered James H. Baker of the University of Colorado andRichard II. Jesse of the University of Missouri among their mem-bers. If the representation of the professional educators, the teachersof teaching, was slight, it was simply because in 1892 these were notyet of much importance.

The committee worked through a series of commissions, each withten members, meeting separately and submitting their reports to themain committee. The final report was a collection of these documentswith a lengthy preliminary, drafted mostly by Eliot, which at-

THE BIRTH OF A SVIIJECt 33

tempted to create a consensus out of the often conflicting recom-mendations of the individual conferences.

The first important decision came in November 1892, when it wasderided to call conferences in just nine fields, one of which wasEnglish,' Ten members were appointed in each of the nine fields,together with alternates. Each conference was to meet separatelyand elect its own chairman and secretary. The Conference on Englishmet at Vassar College, selecting Samuel Thurber, master at Girls'ligh School, Boston, as chairman and George Lyman Kittredge,

Child's successor at I I arvard. as secretary.' ' Its report represeuted asummary and a reconciliation of the contemporary points of viewabout the teaching of English. It began with a statement of thepurpoSe of such studies:

The main objects of the teaching of English in schools seem to be two:to enable the pupil to understand the expressed thoughts of others

and to give expression to thoughts of his own: and 121 to cultivate ataste for reading, to give the pupil same acquaintance with goodliterature, and to furnish him with the means of extending thatacquaintance.'

This simple two-part statement presented the necessary unificationof the many disparate studies which go beneath the rubric English.Communication and appreciation weie the focal points, and ifEnglish in later years was to lose some of its vigor because of thediversity of activities which it would be forced to assimilate, in the1890s that same breadth allowed the various minor studies to bebrought together into one far more vigorous whole.

This unification of the many parts of English was one of the mostingmt ,ant effects of the Report of the Committee of Ten. The othernuijor effect was to accord the new subject a status at least asimportant as that of the classical subjects. The Conference onEnglish recommended that a total of five periods a week for fouryears be devoted to the various aspects of English studies, and thecommittee as a whole went so far as to accept four a week for the fouryears in its general commendations. In the suggested programs ofstudy. however. English is contracted a bit further. Out of the fouryears of study described for four alternate programs, Englishreceives a full five periods a week in only the third year of the"English" course, and is cut to three and even two at various pointsin all other programs. Nevertheless, English is the only suhjectrecommended for definite inclusion in the program of study for everystudent during each of the four high school years."

The actual description of the English course by the VassarConference is more of a summing up than a statement ofconsequencein the future development of the suhject. The themes which were ofimportance in the emergence of the subject are touched upon, as well

THADITION AND ItKEORM

as a number of issues irrelevant to the basic problem of how and whythe teaching of English literature attained a prominent place in theAmerican schov l curriculum,

The discussic n began by asserting that "at the beginning of theseventh school-year the reading book may be discarded, and thepupil should her ceforth read literature." Literature, however, was toinclude "prose and narrative poetry in about equal parts" dramawas still conspicuous in its absence. Histories such as Cleveland'sCompendium were out of favor. but philological and rhetoricalstudies were defended as "necessary if ( he pupil is to be brought intoanything but the vaguest understand.ng of what he reads!'" Themain report pointed out the recurrent though not explicitly statedtheme of the Conference on English: the study of English couldbecome "the equal of any other studies in disciplinary or developing

The Literary ('anon

As schools and colleges increased their attend( r to Englishliterature, in particular to the study of the complete texts required inthe college lists, publishers began to bring out annotated schooleditions of popular works. These go back at least to 1867, whenWilliam Rolfe launched his career as editor and author with hisAmerican version of Craik's edition of Julius Caesar. His emphasis,not unexpectedly, was philological; it set the pattern that wouldprevail till 1900. The book contained an Introduction, The History ofthe Play. The Sources of the Plot. Critical Comments on the Play (26pages). the play itself (102 pages), Notes (82 pages!), and an Index ofWords and Phrases Explained:""

By the mid-1880s, annotated classics were in widespread use,alongside the school readers and histories such as Cleveland's andShaw's. The college entrance requirements, with their lists ofspecifically prescribed texts, gave great impetus to the developmentof these text:.: many different publishers issued their own seriesbefore 1900. generally with some reference to one or another of thecollege entrance lists presumahly a major selling point. Distin-guished teachers and scholars were solicited to edit these editions,providing them with copious and sometimes irrelevant notes andstudy guides." Given the suddenness with which English literaturedeveloped as a major school subject and the lack of teachers trainedto teach it, some such apparatus may have been a necessity at thetimer" eventually it was to provoke a harsh reaction.

The rise of uniform requirements as well as the appearance ofmany different series of annotated texts raises the interestingquestion of how the high school literary canon was determined. Someinfluences are relatively clear. chief among them the prestige of

TUE BIRTH OF A SUBJECT 35

Milton and the Augustans from the early rhetoric and grammartexts, in which they had been used as material for analysis. A strongtradition of Shakespearean critiOsm had also been built up, thoughthis seems to owe more to the recognition of Shakespeare's meritthan to the ease with which he could he analyzed. At the same Lime,the literature of the English Romantics found a place in the earlylists; such literature first appeared as contemporary selections in theschool readers and then worked its way into the high school.

The classical analogy which had influenced the selection of worksfor analysis by the rhetoricians also continued to operate; it isevident even in the term "classics" which early came to he used todescribe the body of English standard authors. As the curriculumgrew, the analogy became if anything stronger: Julius Caesar wastaught during the same year as Caesar's Commentaries; the Latin orGreek epic was followed by Longfellow orParadise Lost; British andAmerican orators were paired with Cicero and Demosthenes. Theclassical tradition had both a prestige and a methodology which theearly teacher of English hoped to emulate; whether conscious of it. ornot, he was quite successful in doing so."

Another question which the emerging list of texts raised' waswhether the high school or the college was leading the way in shapingthe requirements. Here there is no simple answer: neither the-colleges nor the high schools reflected any sort. of consensus aboutthe specific works to be read, Neither, of course, have schools since,though there has always been a good measure of agreement on whichhooks are and are not appropriate literature for the high school.Rather than the schools of the 1880s or the colleges of the 1890s. thesource of the "classics" in the school curriculum seems to be thetradition of belles Intros, which has never required scholastic at-tention to survive!" These are Franklin's "best" and Harvard's"standard" texts, representing the kind of unspoken consensus towhich Cleveland paid tribute as he explained the basis of his ownselections:

I have constantly endeavored to bear in mind a truth, which even thoseengaged in education may sometimes forget, that what is well knownto us, must be new to every successive generation; and, therefore, thatall books of selections designed for them should contain a portion ofsuch pieces us all of any pretentions to taste have united to admire.

Pton's " nvoca lion le Light," Pope's "Messiah." Goldsmith's "Vil-Ing. Pastor,- and Gray's "ElegN'" are illustrations of my meaning."

The traditions on which the concept of Great Books is hosed, andwhich have made it. so popular, run very deep. There have been fewsurprises in the various lists of texts encountered so far, and thereare few in the lists which follow. The first, includes all titles whichwere taught in more than 25 percent of the high schools of the North

3h Tit A041306 AND REFORM

Central region between 1886 and 1900: the second, titles used in from10 to 25 percent of the same schools. Both are arranged in order ofdecreasing frequency.

1

1. The Merchant of Venice2. ,/:dins Caesara. First Butcher Hill OrationI. The Sketch Book. Evangeline, Tlw Vision of Sir Latinful5. Snowbound6 Macbeth7, 17w Latly,of the LitheS. Hamlet9. The Deserted Village

111. Gray's Elegy. Thunutopsis. .4s You Like it

11

I. The ntartship of Miles Stotolish2. 11 Penseroso. Paradise Lost3. L Allegro. Lyeitlas4. Iron /toe, Sir Boger de Owerfry Papers from the Spectator.

David Copperfield, Silas Monier5. In Memoriam. Behavior, Enoch .4nlen. Munition, Toles of the'

IVhite Mils. The Lays of Ancient Rome. A Midsummer Night'sDream, The Vicar of Wakefield, The Iliad

6. Fleury VIII, Among the :fills. The Cotter's Saturday Night.The Chambered Nautilus. Cams. Bryant's Favorite Poems, ThePrincess, Saul, king Lear

Another two hundrei titles appeared at least once in the schoolssurveyed, as indicative perhaps as anything else that the springsbeing tapped in the formation of the literary canon are wide indeed."

English at the First Plateau

With the Report of the Committee of Ten in 1894 and the for-mation of the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Require-ments in English during the same year, the place of English studieswithin the secondary school curriculum was firmly established. Inthe years that followed, the question would no longer be whether buthow the subject should he taught. During the next half century therewould be many changeschanges in materials, changes in philos-ophy, changes in methods, changes even in students. But none ofthese changes would be as rapid or as dramatic as that whichbrought the teaching of literature into the curriculum in the firstplace.

THE BIRTH 01: A SUBJECT 37

We can get some sense of that change that had occurred if weconsider offerings in English in the North Central area. Between1860 and 1900, the proportion of schools offering courses in "gram-mar" dropped from 60 to '36 percent; "analysis fell from 55 to 3percent: "rhetoric" from 90 to 63 percent. At the same time, of-lerings in "English literature" rose from 30 percent in 1860 to 70percent by 1890. "American literature" from zero to 20 percent, and"literature" from 5 to 20 percent. After that period, the separatecomponents were gradually assimilated into English I, English II,English III, and English IV. These first appeared in the high schoolsbetween 1886 and 1890 and formed the hasis for the consolidation ofEnglish studies offered by the Committee of Ten; after their report,they became universal."

John E. Stout found considerable school-to-school variation inofferings in English in the North Central area before 1900, but sug-gests that these are due more to the size and goals of the school than toregional differences. From the beginning, English was offered morefrequently in the large cities and in the nonacademic curriculum ofthe schools studied. Peter D. Witt echoes these findings on the basisof his research on the early teaching of literature in Massachusetts,but both of these studies focus on relatively homogeneous geo-graphic areas. Edna Hays, studying the influence of entrancerequirements on schools nationally, found some broad differencesrooted in geographic distance from the eastern colleges, with theirrigid examination system of entrance requirements and generallymore traditional program of studies. Though she concluded that allareas of the country were eventually influenced by the entrancerequirements. this influence was earliest in eastern secondaryschools. and weakest in schools in the Far West.

The annual report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education for theyear 1900-1901 makes it clear that there were also quite substantialdifferences between the various geographic regions of the UnitedStates. differences that cannot be explained on the hasis of the size ofthe school or community. During that year, the proportion ofsecondary school pupils enrolled in literature courses ranged from 22percent in Idaho and 32 percent in New York to 96 percent inWashington, D.C., 84 percent in California, and 73 percent inMassachusetts. In general, states in the North Central area had alower percentage of their students in literature courses, and thewestern states a higher. Private school pupils were less likely thanpublic school students to study literature (38 to 45 percent); girlsoutnumbered boys in such studies by three to two. Even at thisrelatively late date, however, more students were studying Latinthan were studying English." Since rhetoric did not make it into thelist of subjects reported until 1894-95, and literature only in 1897-98,the U.S. Commissioner's reports provide a convenient turn-of-the-century benchmark but little evidence of historical trends during theearly history of the subject.

is "'aunties aNa It Froitst

The relative importance of the National Conference and theCommittee of Ten in the struggle to win recognition for Englishstudies was deb..ed at the time and is no more certain today. Abalanced view must give some credit to bothto the Ten forunifying the subject and raising its prestige, to the NationalConference for adding the compulsion that insured its prosperity.Neither alone would have led to the teaching of English as we know ittoday.

The teaching of literature at the turn of the century was still avery new and uncertain enterprise, and most of the issues whichtorment the teacher of English at the present could be heardclamoring in the near distance. Several points were granted by mostteachers. however, and various approaches to the subject wereconfined within these basic premises. One was that the value ofeducation. of all education, lay in mental discipline; thus anyproposal for the study of English literature had disciplinary value aspart of its justification.' Another was that the unique value ofliterary studies was their guarantee of a continuing cultural tradi-tion, an extra-historical perspective encompassing and preservingthe values of Western civilization. Third, there was the convictionthat all of the varied studies of language, literature, and compositionwhich had previously had to fend for separate places within thecurriculum were really only different aspects of the same centralstudy. And finally there was the belief that this study was the onesubject within the school curriculum to which all students needed asteady exposure.

THE 13IRTII OF A SUBJECT 39

CI IAPTER 11 NOTES

1. Quoted by Raymond NVilliams. Culture and Society 1780 - 195(111,mulom ('Matto and Windus. 1958). p. 41.

2. A. Dwight Culler. ed.. The Poetry and Criticism of Matthew Arnold(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961), p. 306.

3. Arlo Bates. Talks on the Study of Literature (Boston: HoughtonMifflin Co., 1897). p. 125.

4. C. M. Gayley and C. 13. Bradley, Suggestions to Teachers of Englishin the Secondary School (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, 1894). InSome Trends in the Teaching of Literature Since 1900, John R. Searles(Dissertation. University of Wisconsin, 1942), p. 22.

5. This chapter will discuss the main lines of argument that won aplace for English. These arguments did not go unchallenged, but thecounterproposals did not become important till after 1900: they will betouched on only briefly here.

6. Mann did approve of rhetoric, in spite of its use of literaryexamples. It offered a "scientific" rigor and discipline. When the Mas-sachusetts Board of Education announced a plan in 1840 to provide leisurereading materials for children and adults through the district schoollibraries, its lists included no fiction and no poetry. Peter D. Witt, TheBeginnings of the Teaching of the Vernacular Literature in the SecondarySchools of Massachusetts (Dissertation, Ilarvard University. 1968; Lira.versity Microfilms No. 69.11j97), pp. 10-21; 42.

7. See William Lyons Phtlps, Autobiography with Letters (London:Oxford University Press. 19A). p. 301; Witt, Beginnings of TeachingVernacular, p. 33: William Riley Parker, "Where Do English DepartmentsCome From?" College English 28:5 (February 1967): 339-51.

8. A. E. Winship, "Unexpurgated Shakespeare," New England Jour-nal of Education 37:15 (18113): 4. As quoted by Witt, Beginnings ofTeaching Vernacular, p,.340.

9. Adam Smith reenters the story here. His The Wealth of Nations(1776) was instrumental in creating an awareness of industry as aninstitution with its own rules and rationality. Raymond Williams providesdetailed discussion of the interaction between the pressures of the indus-trial revolution and conceptions of "culture." "art," and the "artist" in hisCulture and Society.

ID. Quoted by I). 1. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies (London:Oxford University Preis for the University of Hull. 19(15), p. 41.

11. Williams. Cul ure and Society. places Arnold in the tradition begin-ning with Coleridge, of Culture and Anarchy he writes: "Its impact wasimmediate, and it has remained more influential than any other singlework in this tradition" (p. 115). Arnold was appointed to the Inspectoratein 1851; he became Chief Inspector of Schools in 1884 and retired in 1886.two years below his death. From 1857 to 1867 he was also Professor of[Classivalf Poetry at Oxford. See W. F. Connell, The Educational Thoughtand Influence of Matthew Arnold (London: Routledge and Kogan Paul,1950). On the superiority of the Greeks, see The Poetry and Criticisn ofMatthew Artio'd, pp. 411. 434.

12. Witt, Beginnings of Teaching Vernacular, presents a concise sum-mary of the mtitudes of the literary elite, both with respect to propersubjects for literary works and with respect to the uke of the schools as

TI1A111 HOS ono Itl.FORM

instruments ut social control 1pp. 9311..4 Witt in turn draws on Nlichael B.Katz. Thr Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in

Xincicenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 19981.

13. Francis I1. Underwood, English Literature. and ltq Place in Papa.tar Education (Boston: 14'e and Shepard, 1879). P. 4.

14. The At/antic Month/y. Minuted in 1857. was the chief forum for thisschiml of thought. It carried the word to teachers and administratorsacross the nation; the soft tones it championed did much to hasten publicacceptance ot literature in the schools. See Witt, Beginnings of TeachingArrnatular. p. "k1; and I tarry 11. Krouse. "I listory and Evaluation of theCritical Trends. Exclusive of Fiction, in the Atl«ntie Monthly. 1857 to1808- (Dissertation. University of Wisconsin. 1972: University MicrofilmsNo. 72-22.1011.

15, Horace E. Scudder, Literature in Schools, An Address and 7"(coEssays, Riverside Literature Series (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and ('a..18881. p. :11.

Ih. Ilw history of philological studies has been recounted by KempMalone in his presidential address to the Nlodern Humanities ResearchAssoeinthm. "The Rise of Modern Philology: Annual Bulletin of the

lhonanities Research Association 30 (November 19581: 19.31, andearlier in Paul NIonroe's Cyclopedia of Education (New York: The Marini'lam Co.. 19111. See also Samuel "bother. "Suggestions of English Studyfor Secondary Teachers of English." The Academy (January 18911: 2 ff,Thurber states that "Philology is simply science applied to language," andargues that teachers should be prepared in Gennan. "the indispensabletool of scientific research."

17. Wellek has discussed this contrast between the goals and thepractice of the early philologists. Rene Wellek, "Literary Scholarship." inAnterhath Scholarship in the Twentieth Century. ed. Merle Curti Warn.[wally. Mass.: Harvard liniversity Press, 19531,

18. Wellek, "Literary Scholarship,- pp. III 112.19. Wellek. "Literary Scholarship." credits Child with being the only

''producing scholar" in the modern languages in America at that time. Seealso Don Cameron Allen. The Ph.D. in English and American Literature(New York: I lolt. Rinehart and Winston. 1914M.

20. The content of the courses varied slightly, from year to year. Thelist here is CI randgent 's. Charles 11. Irandgent , Ile Modern Languages,"in lin /hwelopment of Mom& University Since the inauguration ofPresident Eliot 1569-1929, ed, Samuel Eliot Morison (Cambridge, Mass.:I larvard University Press, 19301.

21. Allen. Ph.D. in English and American Literature, p. 7. Grant'sthesis "summarized the various theories about Shakespeare's sonnets."

:12. A.S. Cook was Johns Ilopicins' first instructor % a English. lie had aRutgers A.B. and had also studied in German, On developments atJohns I lopkins. see Allen, Ph.D. in English and American Literature. andParker, "Where Do English Departments Come From?"

23. %larch was an Amherst graduate whose interest in language studieswas apparently stirred by a series of lectures given by Noah Webster. Ilealso taught French. titanium Latin. Greek, law, political economy, politi-cal science. philosophy. and botany. Dumas Malone. ed.. Ilietantary ofAmerican Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 19351.

Tut: Norco or A Solturr, :11

21. Separate courses in American literature remained the exceptionuntil 19n0. Usually American literature was considered part of the Englishtradition and taught together with it. Evelyn Rezek Bibb, Anthologies ofAmerican Literature, 17N7-196:1 (Dissertation, Coltimbia University, 1965;Unit ersity Microfilms No. 661728),

25. A. S. 11111. A. S. Briggs. and Barrett Wendell were among the earlyinstructors in English at Harvard, George Lyman Kittredge began as agraduate student in 1881, eventually succeeding Child in the English pro-tess(trship. Kittredge's studies shifted more towards literature, but he wasa disciple of Child and continued the philological work as well. See Grand-gent, "Nlodern Languages." and Allen, Ph.D. in English and AmericanLiteratare.

26. See Parker, -Where Do English Departments Come From? p. 341.and Allen, Ph.11 in Engli.sh and American Literature. p. II. When Ida A.Jewett surveyed offerings in state teachers colleges in 1900, she foundliterature to be the mem common offering in English. English in Sulk,Teachers Colleges: A l'atalogue Study, Contributions to Education, no.256 (New York: Thachers College, Columbia University, 19271.

27. %Vent*. "Literary Scholarship,- p. 117, has commented causticallyon the blend that sometimes developed: "'I'hey taught graduate studentsbibliography and sources. 'Shakespeare on the graduate lever (that is, thedistinct ions of quartos and folios, sources, stage conditions). and meanwhilethey read poetry to undergraduates in a trembling or unctions voice, Sen-timentalism and antiquarianism are nut incompatible. even philosophical-ly,- But see also Witt. Beginnings of Teaching Vernacular, p. 288; Searle,Trends in Teaching Literature. p. 21: and Allen, Ma in English and.411Wrican Literature.

28. Malone, DimMoury of American Biography.29, Witt, Beginnings of Teaching Vernacular, p. 169.:10. This pattern was somewhat attenuated in the West and Midwest,

which after 1871 began to move towards a system of accreditation. Themnflict this caused reached a head after 1900. (See Chapter III.)

31. Ilareard University, Twenty Years of School and C(91ege EttgliSh;Cambridge. NI ass.: Ilarvard University. 18919, p. 55. These quotationshave been frequently reprinted. For further background, see Alfred fl.(irommon. "A History of the Preparation of Teachers of English," Englishdatrond 57:4 1 April 19681: 484-524. The requirement for 1869-70 is of somefurther interest as an example of the interaction of school and collegeinterests, It listed Julius Caesar as one required text, presumably theedition edited by Child's protege. James Rolfe.

32. On the uniformity movement. see James (locker Mason, TheXational Onincil of Mashers of English-1911-1926 (Dissertation, GeorgePeabody College for Teachers, 1962): and Edna Days, College EntameeRequirements in English: Their Effects on the high Schools (NewTeachers College, Columbia University, 1936). Important meetings havebeen minuted by the New England Association of Colleges and Prepaiwry Schools, Addresses and Proceedings (1886, p. 41: ;888, pp. 53-55t:and the New England Commission of Colleges, Thirteenth Annual Report11899. pp, 9-10).

33, Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the MiddleStates and Maryland. Proceedings (1893, p. 1081. See also Hays, CollegeEntrance Requirements, pp. 24 ff.

42 TitaorrioN AND REFODM

34. The formation of the College Entrance Examination Board wasitself part of the [novena ht towards uniformity. In 1899 the Association ofColleges and Preparatcry Schools of the Middle States and MarylandMond Eno conditions v.cre still chaotic; Nicholas 'Murray Butler then tookup a long.standing suggestion of Harvard's Fiat for a joint collegeadmissions board that would frame questions as as set texts. The('El-Al resulted, holding its first examination in June 1901. flays, CollegeEntnincii Requirements. p. 33.

3:1 The history of the conference has been summarized several times.The official report I,. Albert S. Cook's .4 Brief Summitry of the Proceedingsof the Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements hi English, 1818 .189!)Inao,rada. See also Francis II. Stoddard's "Conference on Uniform En-trance Requirements in English." Educational Review (1905): :375.83; andEdna Hays. broader perspective, College Entrance Requirements, On thesuccess of the :.fists. see James Fleming Hosic, Reorganization of English inSccondsry Schools. Bulletin 1917, no. 2, U.S. Bureau of Education (Wash-ington, DA'.: Government Printing Office, 1917), 12:

:M. Sec .1. G. Wright. "First Year English in the high School," SchoolReview I (January 18931: 15.23; (lassie Packard Dubois, "home Readingfor the Secondary Schools," School Review 3 (November 18951: 485.95; andJohn 161. Stout. The Development of High School ('u rrienla in the NorthCentral States from 1880 to 1918. Supplementary Educational Monographs.vol. 3, no. a (June (921), p. 140.

:37. Literature was taught as an elective Mitering in the upper years.livers, who defended the absence of an entrance requirement, himself taughtn Shakespeare course. Yale was alone among the New England colleges innot having any entrance requirements in English. See Her ry A. Beers,"Entrance Requirements in English at Yale." Edam thrual Review 3 May18921; 427.43: George Wilson Pierson. Yale College: An EducationalHistory. 1871-1921 '(New Haven: Yalu University Press, 19521, PP- 85-80:and Allen. Ph.D. in English and .4 mcrickn Literature.

38. Carpenter. Baker. and Scott point out, however, that the require.mont was misinterpreted by many schools, so that "it was not for severalyears that a study of the content of certain English masterpieces became anessential part of the preparatory schistl curriculum in English.- George It.Carpenter, Franklin 'F. Baker, and Fred N. Scott, The Teaching of Englishat the Elementary and the Seconelary School (Now York: longmans, Green.and Co., 19631, p. 48. See also Stout. High School Curricula. p. 134, andflays. College Entram.e Requirements, p. 31.

39. The most thorough discussion of the background and influence of theCommittee of 'ten is Sizer. Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century.lhr Eliol's views. see Edward A, Krug. Charles IV. Eliot and PopularEducation (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 19(31),p. 7; and Oro:ninon. "History of Preparation of Teachers of English."

10. The full list was "I. Latin; 2. Graok; 3, English: 4. Other ModernLanguages: a. Nlathemalks: 6. Physics. Astronomy, and Chemistry; 7.Natural History (Biology, including Botany. Zoology, and Physiology); 8.History. Civil Government, and Political Economy; 9. Geography (Playsical Geography, Geology, and Meteorology)." Report of the Comi.nittee ofTen on Secondary School Stole"' nith the Reports of the ConferencesArranged bY the Committee (Nev. Yuri?: American Book Company for theNational Education Association. 18941, p.

THE BIRTH OF A SUHJEC. 13

The tit her numbers of the English Ctinferenett were Edward A AlainIl nn ors it' of Missouri). F. A. Barbour (Michigan State Normal Sythooll.Frank NI. Blackburn (University of Chicago), Cornelius B. Bradt v (Uni-ittrstty ut ('alito:nia at Berkeley.). Francis It. Gummere(llaverford I 'ege),Edward !Inks, . (University of Iowa).. Charles I.. 1.1)0511/n24o Ohio.I I igh School!. and 1X. 11. Maxwell (Superintendent of Schools. iirm:klyn).

12, Retort of thy Onnalittev, p.43. (bid.. pp. -91-47.II. Ibid., pp. 89-91.45. lbid., p. '21.16. Joseph Nlersand. Teaching of Literature in American high

Schools: IS08-1900.- in Perspectives on English, ed. Robert C. Pooley,(New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, lac., 1980). pp. 279-80,

IT. Stout High School Currirtla, p. 134: and Nlersand, "Teachiny Liter-ature: 180:t-1918)." pp. 290-92. Here America seems to have followod thetrit ish pattern. Palmer finds over two hundred school edit ions in circulation

in England by 1887, exclusive of Shakespeare. Rise of English Studies, p. 50.48. Carpenter. Baker, and Scott, for example, argued in 1903 that "cer-

tainly half" of high school teachers of English had had no college oruniversity training in their subject, and were "incompetent- to teach it.Teuelting of English, p. :3:3.

19. I 1111.1 indebted to Izal talirant for pointing out these parallels afterreading an earl version of this chapter,

50. See. for example, Carpenter. Baker, and Scott's definition of litera-ture: . . Ihat select Ludy of prose and poetry which the world of culti-vated men aml women. untroubled by educational theories, is willing to callliterature" {Teaching of Nnglish, pp. 155-591. Whether this tradition is theproper source of school texts is another issue.

51. Charles I). Cleveland. A ("ompendium of English Literature, Caron-ohwirally Arranged, from Sir John Muinfertile to William Con-per (Philadel-phia: E. C. & .1. (fiddle, 1851: First Edition, 1849).

32. Stool, High School Curricula, pp. 137-40.33. These figures are from Stool's study and are summarized in more

detail in Appendix II.5.1. lb-port of the (bmanissioner of Education for the Year 1900-1901

(Washington, Of,: Government Printing Office, 1902). pp. 1925, 1941,19151 and Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the trailed Stales:',Anil& nines to 1957 (Washington, D.('.: Government Printing Office,960). In 1900, 50M percent of public day school students in any of the four

high school years were enrolled in Latin courses: 38.5 percent were enrolledin English (Historical Statistics, p. 210).

55. Even Carpenter. linker, and Scott. who are often clearly in anArnoldian tradition also claim that "The mind grows by acquiring ideas,by the exercise of . mmory and judgment!' (Teaching of English, p. 1601.It was quite usual for "discipline- and "appreciation' to be expounded bythe same men during this early period: after 1900 they came increasinglyto be Milli as incompatible.

Those of us who are working to bring a fuller life to the industrial membersof the community, who are looking forward to a time when work shall not besenseless drudgery, but shall contain some self-expression of the worker,sontelimes feel the hopelessness of adding evening classes and socialentertainments as a mere frill to a day filled with monotonous and deadeningdrudgery; and we sometimes feel that we have a right to expect more helpfrom the public schools than they now give us.

Jane Addams to the National EducationAssociation. 1897?

. in the absence of any course of study, teachers usually elevate the collegeentrance requirements into the vacant placea place for which thoserequirements were never designed and never adapted. . . Evidently, were itnot for the influence, whether attractive or repulsive, of the collegerequirements, the high school teacher of English would be generally withoutmoorings.

Report of the Standing Committee onCourses of Study, 19072

Agitation for reform in English is no! unique. It is identical in spirit with theeffort to develop a better type of course in history, mathematics, science, andforeign languages and has much in common with the current demands forincreased emphasis upon art, music, physical education, manual training,agriculture, and domestic science. After more than half a century of struggle,the public high school has definitely established itself as a continuation ofcommon - school education, as a finishing school (in the good sense of thattenni rather than as a filling school, and now, recognizing its freedom and itsresponsibility, ii ha set to work in earnest to adjust itself to its main task.

National Joint Committee on English,19173

The i;'hole tendency of the receni movement in teaching English is away fromthe formal. Old divisions of subject-matter are being ignored, the interests ofstudents are being taken more fully into account, and social demands ofvarious sorts are beginning to function in the selection of materials.

John E, Stout in 1921 after a survey ofthe school curriculum since 18604

Chapter III

A School for the People

The Report of the Committee of Ten (1894) andthe establishment of the National Conference on Uniform EntranceRequirements in English marked the end of the battle to winrecognition for English as a subject at all. The years after 1894witnessed a gradual spreading and strengthening of English courses,and a simultaneous development of a professional literature. Articleson the teaching of English began to appear regularly in journalsconcerned with high school education, and the first books designedspecifically for teachers of English were published. One of the firstAmerican texts was written by a former superintendent of theCleveland Schools, now turned professor of the art and science ofpedagogy at the University of Michigan. This was R. A. Hinsdale'sTeaching the Language Arts (1896). It was followed a few years laterby Percival Chubb's The Teaching of English in the Elementary andSecondary School (1.902), and in the following year by Carpenter,Baker, and Scott's book of virtucCly the same title.' The two laterbooks were reprinted well into the 1920s.

These books and articles helped tb create a new professionalconsciousness and self-respect. For the fir.t time the issues raisedand discussed in detail could be methodologickt not generalizationsabout philological or rhetorical approaches, but detailed attempts toapply these generalizations to high school prograk:s. The dialoguewhich was initiated at this time was one within the profession, ratherthan one between advocates of English and those of other studies.Teachers of English came increasingly to feel that they had aprofessional identity, a competence to decide what studies to offer,and a corresponding ability to proceed without the-guidance of thecolleges. After 1900, groups of teachers in widely scattered parts of

45

16 TRAnitioN ANT) REFORM

the country began to organize English clubs and associations toshare ideas more effectively and to speak with a more powerful,collective voice. The New England Association of Teachers ofEnglish, founded in 1901. was the first; it included William LyonsPhelps and Albert S. Cook among its founding members. During thenext ten years, similar groups were founded for English teachers inNew York City, New York State. Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and theNorth Central Association; but there was little contact amongthem."

This growing independence marks the beginning of the secondbattle in which teachers of English found themselvesa hattle totransform the high school, and with it the high school course inEnglish, from a "fitting school" oriented toward college entrance,into a "common school," a school for the people, whose chieffunction would be preparation for life.

The pressures to create such a common school came from manydirections. One was a tremendous growth in high school enrollment.In 1890 there were just over 200,000 pupils in high schools scatteredacross the nation; by 1900 this ha? more than doubled; by 1915 ithad doubled again.' The pressures generated by these rising enroll-ments were enormous, even more so because they were coupled withand partly motivated by massive changes in the philosophical andpsychological underpinnings of educational theory. Faculty psy-chology and mental discipline were to he discredited after the turn ofthe century, and the secondary schools to take on a host of newfunctions which had little to do with the demands of the colleges.

Percival Chubb, principal of the High School Department of theEthical Culture Schools in New York City, outlined with remark-able insight the issues that would dominate the succeedingdecades when he prepared his texthook on the teaching of English."In prescribing literature that is to be read during the High Schoolperiod," Chubb wrote in 1902, "two requirements must be kept inmind." The first was the "characteristics, the needs, and the in-terests of the adolescent mind"; the second. "the vocational needsand social demands" that were increasingly to ba made upon thehigh school curriculum/ Already in Chubb's writings it is evidentthat the emphasis is shifting: it would no longer be the student whomust adjust to the school, proving his competence to follow theprescribed, academic course, but the school that must adjust to thestudent. meeting his personal and social needs. "It is at this point,"Chubb continued, "that there will be a clashfelt nowhere so muchas in the English workbetween the old ideal which emphasizesformal discipline and thoroughness in a few things, and the newwhich emphasizes culture-content and many-sided development."'

The "new ideal" which Chubb was discussing was the first waveof the progressive movement in education, a movement with com-plex social and political roots. Its effects on the schools in generaland the .teaching of Eriglish in particular were to he far reaching."'

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 47

New Goals for Education

Changes in Philosophy

One of the major sources of change was what came to be calledSocial Darwinism; this had its origins in the writings of HerbertSpencer, who argued that the history of a culture could be repre-sented as a process of evolution. Though Spencer was convinced thatsocial evolution took place only over a large time scale and could notbe speeded up, an influential group of his followers came to believethat it could be guided and accelerated in the service of specific socialgoals. Albion Small, head of America's first sociology department atthe University of Chicago, made the point in an address to theNational Education Association (NEA) in 1896. There he placed theschool at the center of social reform, arguing that there was "nomeans for the amelioration or reform of society more radical thanthose of which teachers hold the leverage.""

Small helped to provide a philosophical justification for crusaderswho, like Jane Addams, were coming to recognize the pragmaticvalue of enlisting education in the cause of reform. One year afterSmall's address to the NEA, Addams went before the same body totalk of the problems of "Educating the Immigrant Child." Herconclusions, cast directly in terms of her experience at Hull House inCnicago, indicted the school for isolating itself from life as herimmigrant children knew it. She argued that education must heginwith the experience the child already has, and concluded that "thecity street begins this education for him in a more natural way thandoes the school." Unlike earlier cultures which succeeded in glorify-ing the place of the workingman, Addams complained, America keptthe factory worker "totally detached from that life which meansculture and growth." Through the active and continuing efforts ofAddams and her fellows in other reform movements, the publicelementary and secondary schools were gradually enlisted as agentsof progressive social change. I t was a major step in the separation ofschool and college functions."

Changes in Psychology

At about the same time, the psychological underpinnings ofpedagogical theory were being reformulated in response to theinfluence of G. Stanley Hall and, slightly later, Edward Lee Thorn-dike." Both had studied under William James at. Harvard andshared his interest in empiricism, but they developed this in quitedifferent directions. Hall became the leading American spokesmanfor the child study movement, concentrating in his work on deline-ating the characteristics of the normal stages of growth. He believedthat the life of each individual recapitulates the life of the race, and

48. TRADITIoN AND REFORM

drew from the conclusion that the curriculum should paralleland reflect tilee historical stages. flail had tremendous influence onpedagogy and played an important part in shifting the pedagogicalemphasis toward basing instruction on the characteristics of thestudent..

Thornlike placed more emphasis on the psychological laboratory,and in 1901, in a series of articles coauthored with Robert S.Woodworth, published experimental evidence attacking the theoryof transfer of training. This in turn called into question the use of-mental discipline- as a justification of school studies: if training inone area was not generalizing to others, the major justification of theclassical curriculum would crumble. Educators quickly drew thenecessary implications, using the articles as the signal for the finalabandonment of faculty psychology, already hard-pressed by theshifting concerns of the school."

John Dewey

It remained for John Dewey to provide a unified perspective onthe forces of change that were developing."As a graduate student atJohns Hopkins University. he had been trained primarily in philos-ophy but had been introduced to psychology and pedagogy by G.Stanley Hall. After several moves, Dewey arrived in 1894 aschairman of the department of philosophy, psychology, and peda-gogy at the University of Chicago; two years later he founded alaboratory school in which to test his pedagogical theories. Out ofthis school, and a series of talks with parents, came his The Schooland Society 118991. In this and his later writings. Dewey presented aprovocative and timely analysis of the interrelationships amongeducation. the community, and the nature of the child. giving strongvoice to what came to be known as the progressive movement ineducation.

Among the many points Dewey made, three contributed directlyto the emancipation of the high school from the college program inEnglish. First was the conception of reform through education aspart of an intentionally progressive society; this had no parallel at allin the classical curriculum of the colleges or in the Germanicscholarship which soon replaced it. Second was the rejection of thetraditional hody of literature and history as the sole purveyors ofculture. As Jane Addams had pleaded, these were far from the life ofmost students. Though in one sense this challenged the central rolewhich English was beginning to assume in the high school curricu-lum, it also provided a justification for abandoning the classicalpedagogy which had come to dominate English teaching. Finally.there was Dewey's conviction that democracy demands education inthe problems of living together for all in the community; there couldbe no provision for a cultural elite. To teachers who used Dewey as a

A tictiooL YOH THE PEOPLE 49

major reference point, the arguments of the Committee of Ten andthe dictates of the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Re-quirements in English could only seem antiquated. The progres-sives. too, would eventually claim that preparation for college andpreparation for life should not be differentiated, but in the newIdeology it would he the common-school rather than the college thatoffered the pruper, undifferentiated alternative.

High School against College

The Domination of the Uniform Lists

Even as the arguments of Dewey, Hall, and Addams were offeringnew goals for teachers of English, institutional forces set in motionat the time of the Committee of Ten seemed to be carrying them everfurther in the opposite direction. One important factor was an 1899report from the N EA Committee on College Entrance Requirements;this reaffirmed that there should be no differentiation of the collegepreparatory from the terminal course, and then proceeded to outlinean English program in which the lists of the National Conference onUniform Entrance Requirements in English had a prominent place.Instruction in literature and in composition were integrated around aseries of focuses taken directly from studies of rhetoric: narration,description, and exposition, for example, were each given a semesterof emphasis. This was widely used as a model for high schoolprograms, and eventually became a focus for the criticism of thoseresisting college dominatiun." The method of correlating instructionin literature and composition was especially provocative; in an ironicreversal of earlier emphases, the course led to a long campaign toseparate composition from the teaching of literature, so that compo-sition would receive due attention.'"

Still it was the domination of the Uniform Lists that taused themost anger. Because indNidual colleges and, after 1900, the CollegeEntrance Examination Board, used them as the basis for theirentrance examinations, the schools had little choice but to accept theselections, whether they considered them appropriate or not. In 1905the lists were broadened to include two alternates on the list of fivefor close study, and thirty on the list for more general reading, buteven after this expansion it was a very narrow base on which toconstruct a curriculum. During 1907 the extent to which these listshad nevertheless come to dominate became apparent in a series ofreports published by the School Review. Results of the first studyare typical of all three. Surveying conditions in sixty-seven highschools in the Midwest, it found that the Uniform Lists weredetermining the curriculum and producing an unexpected degree ofuniformity in the English courses offered. In order of decreasing

50 11RA DMON AND REFORM

frequency, and with the year of their first appearance in the listsadded parenthetically, the ten most popular selections included:"

ShakespeareShakespeareEliot

iltonShakespeareBurkeLowellColeridgeScottMacaulay

Julius Caesar (1874)Macbeth (1878)Silas Monier (1881)Minor Poems (1895)The Merchant of Venice (1874)Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies (1897)The Vision of Sir LaunfalThe Rime of the Ancient MarinerIvanhoeEssay on Addison

(1886)(1890)(1874)(1879)

These include three of the six on Harvard's list of 1874. All ten werebeing taught in more than 60 percent of the schoolsJulius Caesarin over 90 percent. The second survey, originating in the Midwestbut surveying conditions nationally, found that all seventy of theschools replying to its questionnaire used the Uniform Lists to shapetheir course)" And the third report, this time coming from moreconservative New England, commented with some astonishmentthat the entrance lists were being elevated into a course of study "aplace for which those requirements were never designed and neveradapted ."11

Dissatisfaction with this situation took a different form in theEast than in the rest of the country. The source of the difference wasthe extent to which the entrance examinations were important incollege entrance. A system of high school accreditation initiated bythe University of Michigan in 1871 had spread to almost twohundred other western and midwestern colleges by 1896. Thedifference this made was outlined by Fred Newton Scott, whose ownprofessional career began at Michigan after this system was wellestablished. Lie described the system of accreditation as an "or-ganic- approach which recognized the natural interdependence of thevarious parts of the educational system, and which respected thejudgment of the teachers involved at each stage. The colleges, ofwhich he considered himself a part, were willing to give advice ifcalled upon. "But we do not prescribe," he insisted, "we do notdictate." The eastern examination system, on the other hand, wasfrom Scott's point of view "feudal": with it, the colleges attemptedto dictate the content of lower school programs ahout which theyknew little.'

Scott's call was to abolish the lists, Teachers in the East, whereentrance examinations remained the rule, sought instead to increasethe freedom of the school within the general framework of theUniform Lists. The difference was fundamental, but it was sub-merged in a general attack on the lists after 1905, culminating in the

A Scuola. FOR THE PEOPLE 51

founding of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in1011."

The Pounding of NCTE

The movement which led to the founding of NCTE began in NewYork City. under the prompting of Clarence Kingsley from theManual Training High School, Brooklyn, and Theodore C. Mitchillof Jamaica High School; the former led the movemeaL for a generalreorganization of secondary education, the second the specific pro-tests against the examinations in English. The situation in Englishwas discussed at length at meetings of the state and local Englishassociations in 1907, 1908, and 1909, culminating in the circulationof "An Open Letter to Teachers of English" by the ExecutiveCommittee'of the New York State Association of English Teachers."This embodied the sense of the resolutions passed by the associationand summarized objections to the current system of examination.

Prominent members of the committee guiding the protest in-cluded Percival Chubb, still of the Ethical Culture Schools in NewYork City, and E. 11. Clark of the East High School, Rochester, aswell as Mitchill. This committee also took its case directly to theNational Education Association aL its 1910 meeting in Boston,asking for a formal protest against the lists. Their request was dealtwith by the English Round Table of the Secondary Section of theNEA, chaired by Edwin Miller, head of English at Detroit CentralHigh School. Miller was a long-standing foe of the entrance require-ments, and under his guidance the Round Table appointed aCommittee on College Entrance Requirements to investigate theNew York Association's request. James Fleming Hosic was selectedby Miller to head the committee, and also to succeed Miller aschairman of the Round Table for the following year." Hosic washead of the English department at Chicago Normal College and anold associate of Miller's. Together they had founded the ChicagoEnglish Club in 1905, and three years later Hosic had been amongthe founders of the Illinois Association of Teachers of English. FredNewton Scott, under whom Miller had studied, was quickly enlistedin the cause.. as was John M. Clapp of Lake Forest College, who hadbeen active with Hosic in the Illinois Association. These men, allfrom the Midwest, controlled events during the period between theNew York protests and the actual rounding of NCTE.

In addition to [logic, the Round Table Committee on CollegeEntrance Requirements included members from New York, Wash-ington. Michigan, Kentucky, and CaliforniaScott and Clapp ad-vised but were not members. Hosic was the only college representa-tive, and even he was from a two-year normal school/h The groupbegan by enlisting the aid of existing associations to survey condi-tions in the teaching of English, paying particular attention to the

52 TRADITION AND ItSFORM

pickets of the entrance requirements. The difficulties encountered incoordinating this work led Hosic to secure a Round Table resolutionasking fur the establishment of ''p national council of teachers ofHiglish";" this was passed at the summer 1911 meeting of the NEAin San Francisco. As flask described it in announcing the organiza-tional meeting for the new association, the intention of the RoundTable resolution "was to create a representative body, which couldreflect and render effective the will of the various local associationsand of individual teachers, and, by securing concert of action,greatly improve the conditions surrounding English work."2" Out ofabout four hundred who received an announcement from Hosic inearly. November. some sixty-five gathered at the Great NorthernHotel in Chicago on December 1 and 2, 1911. Twelve states wererepresented, with high school teachers from the North Central areain the majority. New York sent two representatives, Clark and&litchi 11 from the committee which had launched the protest.

Ilosic had planned the meeting carefully, even to the point ofhaving a draft constitution and names for committees ready inadvance, Fred Newton Scott was chosen as the first president,giving the new organization a spokesman of acknowledged prestigein the academic world. Scott had already been president of theModern Language Association (1907), and later became president ofthe North Central Association (1913) and of the American Associa-tionof Teachers of Journalism (1917). Emma J. Breck, head of theEnglish department at Oakland (California) High School, and Theo-dore N1itchill were elected first and second vice presidents, -respec-tivelythus giving the National Council representatives on bothcoasts. Ilosic was chosen as secretary. Harry Kendall Bassett of theUniversity of Wisconsin as treasurer, Though the officers of theassociation were largely from the colleges, they were men who, likeScott and Hosic, actively supported the development of an indepen-dent high school course.

Three decisions taken during the first meetings were especiallyimportant to the later history of the young association. One was toactively sponsor local organizations, giving each affiliate the right toappoint a member to the Board of Directors which governed theCouncil. By the end of the first year nineteen groups had affiliatedthemselves, extending the Council's reach by some five thousandmembers. The second decision was to sponsor working committees ina variety of areas; seven were appointed during the first year alone.The reports that emanated from the more vigorous of these &gainserved to extend the Council's influence beyond its immediatemembership.'" The third decision was to accept a proposal fromIlosic to found, at his own expense, a new journal devoted to theproblems of the teaching of English. which though privately ownedwould serve as the official organ of NCTE. With the help of NewmanMiller, editor of the University of Chicago Press, the first issue of

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 53

English Journal appeared in January 1912; it has been publishedcontinuously to the present day.

Mitchi Irs selection as second vice president, indirectly acknowl-edged the importance of the New York protests in the genesis of theCouncil; that he was only second vice president symbolized the fateof those protests in the new, largely midwestern group. ThoughMitchill and Clark offered the earlier "Open Letter" for approval onthe first clay of meetings, the Council refused to endorse it because ofits implicit acceptance of an examination system of collegeentrance.'" NCTE chose instead to work through English Journaland its new committees Lo develop an English program that wouldnot depend at all upon the guidance of the Uniform Lists. Thoughteachers from the East remained active in the Council, both individ-ually and through local affiliates, they tended Lo he a conservativeinfluence pressing fnr higher standards and more disciplined study."

The Fate of the Lists

Though unwilling Lo endorse the New York recommendations,NUPE did view the Uniform Lists as an appropriate focus forcriticism. The report of liosic's Round Table committee was printedin the second issue of English Journal and distributed to all membersof the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirementswhich led the Conference to invite Hosic and three other committeemembers to attend their sessions in Fehruary and again in May1912. When new lists were prepared at the May meeting, they wereconsiderably more liberal"doubtless," Basic claimed, much influenced by the committee report."2

NC'rE continued to feel, hnwever, that its most fruitful responseto the lists was to provide schools with a hetter alternative This wasthe motivation behind the appointment of a Committee on L'ypes ofOrganization of II igh-School English. One of its first undertakingswas a questionnaire survey of current practices. Published in 1913,the report of the committee's survey of 307 schools indicated onceagain that the curriculum in literature was "with few exceptions"determined by the Uniform Lists; there were no separate "types" toinvestigate."

This survey did not make much progress towards providing analternative program, though a later report in which the committeewas involved was very influential." In the meantime, through anactive campaign for school libraries and distribution of book lists forhome reading, NCTE attempted Lo help schools broaden theircurricula. The first book list was prepared by a committee under thechairmanship of Herbert, Bates, from Kingsley'S Manual TrainingSchool. Brooklyn. Published in Lime for the third annual meeting in1913. the sixteen-page list sold for a nickel. IL went through eighteenreprintings before being expanded to sixty-four pages in 1923. Both

54 TRADITION AND REFORM

editions were widely distributed; more than one million copies hadbeen sold by the time a third edition was issued in 1931;1'

The Council also expended considerable energy on a crusade toexpand and improve school libraries. Presenting statistics to showthat the cost of English instruction was less than that of any othersubject, the Committee on English Equipment argued in 1913 thatlibraries were the most important resource suffering from lack offunds. Convention resolutions called on schools to employ trained.molest:lonal librarians and to provide libraries within their ownbuildings rather than relying on community facilities. At the sametime. English Journal provided information about library use andorganization, and called attention to especially interesting or suc-cessful experiments.'"

Though neither home reading lists nor the stress on schoollibraries originated with NCTE, the vigorous support which itoffered to both gave teachers one of their first constructive alterna-tives to the narrowly-based literature program of the NationalConference.

Kneed with continuing criticism, the college entrance examina-tion in English continued to change. By 1916, the examiners wereoffering two completely different examinations. of which a candi-date would take only one. The first or "restricted" examinationcontinued to be based on a small list of titles for intensive study;the second or "comprehensive" examination allowed the candidate"to Amy that he has read. understood. and appreciated a suffi-cient amount of English literature" no lists were provided at all."This in theory ended the hegemony of the National Conference:henceforth a school could choose for itself whether to use therestricted lists without jeopardizing its students' chances for collegeentrance. Many schools did continue to use the lists, however, andcertainly the titles which had appeared on them continued to bewidely taught.

The trend after 1916 was toward increased emphasis upon thecomprehensive examination, until the restricted lists were finallyabandoned in 1931; at that point the College Entrance ExaminationHoard became solely responsible for the entrance examination inEnglish. This decision. discussed in more detail in the next chapter,brought to an end the National Conference on Uniform EntranceRequirements in English, and with it the last vestiges of what Scottin 1901 had called the "feudal" system in which the colleges coulddirectly dictate the programs of the high schools,

'Toward New Methods

The revolt against college domination of the high school programhad no clearly worked out principles for restructut ing the program.

A SCHOOL. FOR THE PEOPLE 55

"A school for the people" was a good rallying cry, and as such itserved its purpose well; but it was singularly vague in its imp:ica-Lions for the teaching of English. Many varied and interestingpmposals were made between 1900 and 1917, but as a set a eybelted unity and direction; nevertheless, they gradually led toimplementation of a progressive methodology and thus opened toeway for development of a more systematic and coherent program inlater years.

Almost all changes offered began out of a rejection of the earlier,analytic approach to literary studies, moving instead toward anemphasis on the work as a whole, and of the ideas or valuesembodied in it. Even during the period in which philological studieswere at their strongest, there had been a dissenting tradition whichclaimed that the proper goal for the teaching of literature should be"appreciation." Henry Hudson, a contemporary of William Rolfeand also an editor of Shakespeare, was typical when he argued in1881 that "Far more good will come, even to the mind, by foolishlyenjoying Shakespeare than by learnedly parsing him."'" In theinitial enthusiasm for philology, such protests were simply brushedaside, but eventually the pedantry of the annotated texts, withtheir exhaustive notes and editorial apparatus, generated a reactionof its own. The first response was a new justification for analytictechniques as a means toward fuller understanding of the textthus placing philology in the service of the appreciative tradition.Proponents of this compromise tended to feel that Hudson waswrong in thinking that students could "foolishly enjoy" Shake-speare without first "learnedly parsing" him. Franklin T. Baker, inhis textbook with Scott and Carpenter, carefully pointed out thatto assume that intellectual effort brought to bear on a subject

makes it distasteful is to hold a brief for the stupid and lazy."Percival Chubb, too, acknowledged the need to train students incareful analysis: he suggested that Burke should be studied forthree recitations a week over a two-month period, though not verymuch literature would need to he treated in this way." Thistradition of subordinating philological and rhetorical analysis in thejustification of studies but maintaining its place in the methodologywas quite firmly established by 1900.

'The Types Approach

When the search for alternative methodological procedures beganin earnest, one of the first suggestions was to replace the study oflanguage characteristic of philology with the study of genres ortypes." 'l'ill the end of the eighteenth century. types had been

studied as patterns to which authors conformed, but during theRomantic period this prescriptive tradition had gradually eroded;genres came to be viewed as having a history and a pattern ofevolution Which could be a worthy object of study in itself. Hip-

THAAIT1 AND dtFreKm

polyte Taint' gave this point of view its fullest expression in his/Lynn v Et,/ :Flash Literature (1813), which in turn influenced many

minivan mea of ietters. During the 1870s and 1880s, studies oftvpes received increasing attention in departments of English,mite ring a he undergraduate curriculum by 1886 at. Yale and 1887 at11ar..,ard.'" The approach was then extended to the secondaryschool as port of the attempt to liberalize the curriculum. Allan?Mitt was an especially prominent early advocate; his descriptionof 'An En et-intent in High-Schott? English" 11904), explaining thetypes course at the Horace Mann School, was widely cited for thenext fittoor years. His argument, coming before philology had beenfirmly rejected, stressed the study of types as another way to helpstudents overcome the difficulty of the selections. By studying thet :Moos genres, students would learn to solve the particular readingprolamin; which each posed.'

Though the study of types was offered as an alternative tophiHogical approaches, it carried with it no very clear methodologyof its own. Like literary history, it could and often did becomenothing mere than a method of arranging the order of study ofhooks to be intensively analyzed. Though there was persistentattention to types from the time of Abbott's article on, it remainedas a relativel minor part of the secondary program till tile 1920s.

(invent for the Child

Even as proponents of the types approach were proposingchanges in the organization of course material, the child studymoveimmt was beginning to argue that the teacher shoult: .electmateria's that the child would find both manageable and interest-ing; tin se would replace the classic texts which seemed so difficultto teach. G. Stanley flail addressed such problems as early as 1886in a pamphlet entitled How to Teach Reading, and What to Read inSchool. Ir the program ho outlined, selections were to be organizedand sequenced on the basis of the interests and abilities of thestudent. Psychological rather than literary principles would domi-nate; if necessary, teachers would have to rewrite material "till itreally and closely fitted the minds and hearts of the children. "":flail relied on his recapitulation theory to determine what materialswould and would not be appropriate at a given age. Continuing theargument in his .later volumes, Adolescence 119041, he suggestedthat myth and legend were the "best expression of the adolescentstage of our race.- His specific suggestions, many of which weretaken up by teachers of English as part of the evolving high schoolcanon, included "the literature of the Arthuriad and the Sangrail,the stories of Parsifal, Tristram, Isolde, Galahad, Geraint, Sieg-fried, Brunhilde, Roland, the Cid, Orlando, Tannhauser, Beowulf,1,ohengrin, Robin flood, and Rolando;'"

A sew", von THE pEopLE

This concern with fitting the material to the child led directly tothe first statistical studies of reading interests. Hall published anumber of these in his own journal, Pedagogical Seminary. but aslightly later one in the School Review 11902) was more influentialwith English teachers. As its author, Allan Abbott, explained it.the study originated out of the belief that "It is our business asteachers to study the lines of normal growth, and to lead our pupilsRom one interest to the next higher, putting aside the specialdelights of our own libraries until our pupils also shall have reachedmaturity.." Other teachers who followed Hall's general lead pro-ceeded to produce simplified versions of Shakespeare, and even ofhistory, in order to allow the child "to come face to face with themasters. "'

Rather than the disciplinary value of classical pedagogy, Halland his followers stressed the place of literature in moral develop-ment. "Patriotism, reverence, self-respect, honesty, industry, con-tentment." he wrote, "these I hold to be the great ethical teachingswhich should be primarily sought by these selections. '" In thereaction against philology between 1900 and 1917, such concernsfinally won acceptance as the major justification for the teaching ofliterature in the secondary school program. This opened a numberof new vistas for enterprising teachers. The Bible, though bannedfrom the schools in some states, began to be part of the course ofstudy in others, Sex educationor more euphemistically, socialhygienealso had some early advocates, though the suggestionswere very timid. The Lady of the Lake "rationalizing. dignifying,and purifying the emotions of sex," was the choice of one teacher.A somewhat holder colleague suggested Irene MeLeod's,"Unborn,"a poem which, it was asserted defensively, breathes "an expectancyof motherhood that is scarcely less virginal than maternal..."

For most teachers, an emphasis on the "content- or "values" ofa hook became inextricably intertwined with response to the "wholework"all in opposition to the previous emphasis on analysis andmental discipline. This was initially a pragmatic rather than atheoretiallybased linkage, but it found powerful support in MaxEastman's The Enjoyment of Poetry 11913). This book argued thatpoetry is far too complex to he adequately handled through anal-ysis, but that it has such deep psychological roots that analysis isnot needed, Children in particular could be expected to respondwith enjoyment, if teachers did not kill their natural enthusiasm byhandling literature improperly.'" The hook had considerable influenceon secondary school teachers, helping to convince them that theywere right in moving toward less analytic approaches; it was beingcited in major reports on the teaching of literature as late as the1950sisee I). 168, below).

It was partly in response to such trends that Vranklin T. Baker,speaking as second president of the Council, reminded his audience

5S TRADITION AND REFORM

at the 1914 convention that English literature would acquire what-ever status and popularity it was ever to have only when itsteachers were willing to require disciplined study." His positionhad changed little since 1903, and though he still had manysupporters, the situation in English had changed greatly. Theappreciative and ethical traditions in the study of literature weremerging, at least temporarily, in a rejection of the classical peda-gogy on which his remarks were based.

Contemporary Literature

The concern with the child led almost inevitably to a newemphasis on modern writings. If teachers were really to start"where the student is," they would have to start with the dimenovel, the newspaper, and the magazine. This concern was rein-famed by those who saw the magazine and newspaper as legitimategenres replete with their own conventions and characteristics toanalyze and tabulate. Through most of the enthusiasm, however,there ran a curiously ambiguous undercurrent: the majority of theteachers who championed current works hoped in the end to leadtheir students away from them, toward what the teachers saw asthe real riches of the literature of the past.

Fled Newton Scott set off one wave of this concern with hissecond NCTE presidential address (1913). Involved at the univer-sity level itt the teaching of journalism, he was appalled by the lowstandards of the mass circulation papers. He was also convincedchat the root of the problem lay not in the papers themselves but inthe public which was buying them; if tastes could be raised, thenewspapers would improve in their wake. Demonstrating a flair forpublicity himself, Scott used his address to call for a "NewspaperWeek" to focus teachers' attention on the problem; it was up tothem, he argued, to close "the one gate wide enough to let in all theserried hosts of evil." The speech generated the desired attention,both in the public press and among teachersso much so that itserved as the model for a "Better Speech Week" a few years later."

Magazine literature was frequently coupled with the study ofnewspapers, and it too was approached with a fundamental mis-trust of the high school student's taste. Most teaching began withthe assumption that students would have to be led to an interest inthe "better" magazines. But if tastes could be improved, repliedthe opponents of such studies, why stop there? "If it is possibleas everyone seems to admitto pull the boys and the girls awayfrom Hearst's newspapers and to interest them in the more respect-able magazines, then why, according to the same logic, does it notfollow that it is possible to lift their taste to a still higher plane,where they will naturally enjoy the best literature?" It is a logical

A SCHOOL FOR THE. PEOPLE 59

extension of the basic argument, but the professor presenting it letshis prejudices take over in the closing paragraphs:

Let the [English teacher] popularize his course, it he must, so thatplenty of crumbs fall to the beggars within the gates: bet let him reallyspend himself in piling high the feast for the golden-brained, hungry-sealed boys and girls, who will be able, if he does not stunt theirgrowth, to take their places finally, after toil-worn years, at, the ban-queting table of life, beside the real kings and queens of the -.north."

Most high school teachers of English were more sincere in theirsupport of a common-school curriculum, but most agreed that inthe end the classic texts were most important. They were willing,even eager, to use contemporary materials, but only as a bridgehack to the works with which the curriculum had long dealt.

Vocational Education

In the concern with the needs of the student rather th -in ofsubject matter, vocational education became an important dimen-sion of the school program as it developed after 1900." Manycommunities began to offer special vocational courses. srtnetimesas an additional track within established schools, sometimes in newbuildings devoted exclusively to commercial and industrial educe.tion. These posed a special problem for ''le teacher e! English; 11the value of literature is ethical, and it the classic,' contain iti;fullest expression, then children in vocational schoons would :,eemto have an even greater need for exposure to their literary, andcultural heritage. It was only in the high school that they werelikely to be exposed to it at all.

This was of course the position adopted in the Repor' of theCommittee of Ten, and in 1911 Eliot defenclet it before the NewEngland Association of Teachtas of English "Can anyone ques-tion," he asked, that the college entrance lis!=i "consist exclusivelyof specimens of English literature which it 1: in the highest degreedesirable that boys and girls from fourteer to eighteen . . shouldhe made acquainted with?" It was unfictunate kw the businessEnglish curriculum that Eliot put his arguments in the context ofthe college entrance lists; though in the 'Nfew England Associationhe could expect considerable support, ,n the rest, of the countrysuch arguments were an well receiver,. The vocn'.ional curriculumhad more pressing concerns than 11.e classio., and co, t3 takecomfort in Dewey's atr,mments that ,411 suhjen, not just Englishand history, had cultural value.

The changes that followed in tlie teachirig sit English may havebeen more drastic than anticipate: by those bo originally argued

tit) Tit A attroN AND REFORM

for a special vocational course. The programs that were developedemphasized more businestike skills than literature, even "vocaBanally oriented" literature, seemed to offer: many became basi-ca!ly courses in composition, with units on salesmanship, advertie,in;. and printing added for variety and breadth. When literaturetha enter in, it suffered from a variety of rationalizations thni..attempted to force a place for it within a basically alien :tet of goals

The Rape of the Lock," for exetImple, was enthusiastically offereil,tit the University of Nevada for its "many if,tteresting hints Ps eetthe commerce and industry of the period." Another teacher benvotedof having interested her awictaural students in the study of tr4.4tvby demonstrating to them ho frequently myth-names appeared litcommercial advertisiog." Such enthusiasts notwithstanding. hteraLure yielded before the demands for practical skills. A 1918 rart,yof the teaching of English in schools having at least two burAftlastudents in commercial courses did not even bother to task attitetthe teaching of literaturenot an unexpected result when ;sae"Ideal Course" suggested by an NCTE committee anclud&; thestudy of literature in but two semesters out of eighlth

Teaching Aids

Concern with the interests of students also developed imp aconcern with aids that would help in "creating" or "holding" thatinterest. These took two forms, one concentrating on oral pre:tient-ation, the other on "visualization." The development of oral read-ing as a form of literary study will be discussed in the next section;the concern with visualization has roots in Sir Francis Gehon'sargument in Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development(1883) that the untrained mind thinks largely in terms of pictures.Writers such as Carpenter, Baker, and Scott took from this a beliefthat the chief pleasure that children would get from reading wouldbe the result of "mental pictures of scenes and actions "; tIr4e alsothought that these mental pictures would be easier to rememberand more directly connected with real life than "verbal formotas.""

Almost any kind of accompaniment to literary studies could bejustified with one of these two sets of arguments. The Covimitteeon English Equipment listed many items that Council es:emberswould find useful, among them photographs and slide-pojecting"lanterns." Ingenious teachers came forward with other suggestions, ranging all the way fnim a hatbox model of Beowulf's meadhall to literary maps, plot diagrams, songs, and records. Alwayspractical, the English Journal provided catalogs of photographs,picture postcards, and songs for the teacher to use in assemblinghis own collection.'a Silent films recewed attention, too, especiallyafter film versions of some of the ...lassie texts began to appear.Nobody suggested film as a legitimotie field of studymost consid-

A SCHOOL POOR THE PEOPLE 61

mid it decidedly illegitimatebut it could be used for plot analysisor for work in composition.'"

How extensive such practices were is impossible to ascertain, buta survey puhlished in 1918 provides some clues. Although it dealtwith only the better schools in Ohio, and received a rather poorreturn of only 33 out of 100 questionnaires (the majority of repliescoining from city schools), it does indicate at least a degree ofcongruity between English Journal discussions and conditions inthe schools. Of the 33 schools replying, 16 used wall maps andcharts, 21 used a stereopticon and slides, 25 used pictures inteaching, 19 used a Victrola, 19 had a school library, and 5 used thecity library. A slightly earlier Illinois survey found that 65 percentof the schools had a map of America, 78 percent had a map ofEngland, 20 percent used projection lanterns, and 30 percent used astereopticon.''"

The Role of Drama

The methodological advances which received the greatest atten-tion and fullest development were in the teaching of drama. Twoforces converged in drama during the years hefore World War I,one from an academic stress on oral presentation, the other from aprogressive concern with self-expression; they elevated drama to aposition it has never had since.

The Academic Tradition

The central figure in the academic justification of drama wasHiram Corson of Cornell University. His works, especially TheAims of Literary Study (1895), were cited by virtually every writerconcerned with drama in educationCarpenter, Baker, and Scott;Chubb, and Hall acknowledged their deht to him. Corson's princi-pal concern was to free literary study from the excessive factualismwhich diverted attention from the ethical value of the worksstudied. His cure was oral reading, not as performance or entertain-ment but as a means to a disciplined knowledge of the text. To readwell aloud, Corson argued, was to make the meaning clearer and tocatch the spirit more accurately than would be possible with anyamount of analytic study," Other professors interested in dramagave impetus to Corson's argument, reinforcing the academic as-pect of the movement. Brander Matthews, who was appointedprofessor of literature at Columhia in 1892 and moved to a chair ofdramatic literature in 1900, similarly insisted that a play is "some-thing written to be acted before an audience in a theatre." GeorgePierce Baker, another professor very active in drama, initiated a

62 'I'n. DITIoN AND REFORM

course in play-writing at Radcliffe in 1905 and was able to offer it toI larvard students the next year. His courses helped to generateinterest in serious American drama; Eugene O'Neill was one of theearlier and better-known students. "'

Hall, citing Corson and others, was convinced that drama had amajor role in the development of moral values. Taking up theargument in Adolescence 11904). he joined it with his recapitulationtheory and concluded that the study of language which the anno-tated texts embodied was out of place; it was only late in historyand thus ought to be late in the life of the childthat language washandled by the "eye which reads instead of the ear which hears."Drama, on the other hand, offered "a school of domestic, civic, andpatriotic virtue" ideally suited to ''the social nature of youth." Hallrecalled that in ancient Ore) ce the theater had been "a place ofworship , paid for from the public treasury"; he clearly intendedit to fill much the same function in modern schools."'

The work of these men helped to overcome a long-standingpublic ambivalence about drama. America had a tradition of stageperformance and road shows, but it was heavily commercialized;melodrama, ermiedy, and patriotic works predominated. Thoughextremely popular, the theater was also disreputable. Very littledrama was allowed in the nineteenth-century schools; even whenShakespeare began to appear in the college entrance lists, it wasusually in carefully edited editions. After 1900 this situation beganto improve, partly in response to the support drama was beginningto receive in the universities. Serious theater, sponsored by ama-teur or noncommercial companies, became quite popular, withseveral peaks of activity from 1906 until the beginning of the war."

By 1910 the Drama League of America had been organized tocoordinate the scattered companies that had sprung up and tocampaign actively on behalf of serious theater: it paid specialattention to activities in schools and colleges. When NCTE wasfounded the following year, it quickly appointed a drama committeeunder the chairmanship of Thatcher Guild of the University ofIllinois. Guild reported that 70 percent of the freshmen at hisuniversity had taken part in amateur dramatics in high school. Anational survey reported by the same committee two years laterfound that 86 percent of schools made provision for plays to begiven "regularly" by students; another 20 percent arranged forstudents to attend "plays of worth."" Such efforts were activelysupported by NOTE. which circulated prompt hooks, publishedlists of suitable plays for the high schools, and voted (at the 1918convention) to ask all high school principals to engage at least oneteacher qualified to coach plays."

Oral reading of all sorts became an important mode of literarystudy at this time; teachers of the novel as well as of poetry wereasked to remember "the subtle interpretation of emotions that the

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 63

voice alone can give." Percival Chubb became especially enthusi-astic about such studies, arguing in an address to the 1913 conven-tion that "there must he a great return to the oral and theauditory" to prevent our culture from becoming "increasingly eye-minded." Allan Ahbott also supported drama, placing it within thecontext of the study of types. He outlined a high school course forCouncil members, following Matthews in treating drama as aliterary form meant for the stage. Play production for teachers whoapproached it in this way was much more than spectacle or exhi-bition; it was undertaken very much, as the Drama League ofAmerica put it, in the spirit of "sound literary and artistic effort onthe stage"an alternative rather than a supplement to other formsof study."

The Progressive Tradition

The other, supporting stream of interest in drama came moredirectly out of the progressive movement, representing a blend ofDewey's concerns to democratize the classroom, to foster thegrowth of personality, and to promote social goals of cooperationand group work. "' Self-control, presence, and ease of movementwere among the henefits students could expect, but above all theywould learn to work with one another, in the process developingclass spirit and community unity. Teachers who defended dramafrom this point of view were less likely to see it as a means of lit-erary study than as one of self-expression; the plays were oftenwritten by the teacher or the students themselves. Pageants werethe most extreme expression of this philosophy, providing, as thesecretary of the budding American Pageant Association told Eng-lish Journal readers in 1914, unequalled opportunity to develop"joyous neighborhood spirit:"

The Effects on the Schools

The effects of the dramatic interests of this period on the schoolswere varied. From the emphasis on student activity there arose awhole series of student- and teacher-written plays and masques;these were published regularly by the English Journal until themid-twenties, when they mercifully died out. The first appeared in1912 and its footnote"Written as a regular exercise in the Coursein Children's Literature in the Chicago Teachers College"unwittingly emphasized the degree of spontaneity and literarymerit which most would offer." More lasting in its effects was thelittle theater movement; able to justify itself both as literaryexercise api as democratic effort, the school or class play became anational audition."

(i.i TRADITION AN I) REFORM

Emphasis on cointnunity effort in drama was itself part of alarger concern with "socialization training." This became especiallyprominent after Dewey published his .Dentocracy and Education11916). The underlying premise was simple enough; as a 1918English Journal editorial put it. teachers had discovered that"Training in a little autocracy is poor preparation for citizenship ina democracy..." Students must be given a more active role in thelife of the school, and that life itself needed to have more relation tothe life of the "outside world." Textbook summaries of materialsfor study, the authoritarian stance of the classroom lecture, therecitation of memorized lessonsall came tinder attack in attemptsto transform the school from an intellectual court of justice" intoan epitome of:typical group life." In one widely quoted experi-

ment. "Reading Clubs" replaced literature classes so that studentscould more nearly direct their own reading. Another school broughtthe "social agencies of society" within its walls by staging a publictrial of lianquo for complicity in the murder of Duncan. Stillanother solved "The Social Problems of Our Little Town" by stag-ing a story-night in opposition to the local "picture show"andwinning!" Though the more extreme versions of such activitieseventually died out, one outgrowth, the project method, grewin influence during the postwar era; it will be discussed again inChapter V.

The Reorganization neports

The Cardinal Principles

The forces working to alter the basic assumptions of the highschool program were not limited in their influence to the Englishcourse. The revolt against the college entrance requirements, thenew focus upon the student, the concern that democratic values andinstitutions be reflected within the classroomthese were to trans-form almost all aspects of the curriculum. The National EducationAssociation, working through a series of committees and commis-sions headed by Clarence Kingsley, took up the broad questionsinvolved in the reorganization of subject matter and instructionalprocedures within the high school. The main report was issued' in1918 as the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education.

This report accepted the emphases that have been discussed inconnection with the Leaching of English, providing them with whatwas to become their definitive statement and defense. The mainobjectives of education, as the report presented them, were seven; 1.Health. 2. Command of fundamental processes. 3. Worthy home-membership. 1. Vocation. 5. Citizenship. 6. Worthy use of leisure. 7.

A Seimui. FOR THE PEOPLE 65

Ethical character. These goals are a long way from those of theCommittee of Ten, and'if they had many antecedents, they werebrought together here by a national committee of some influence andprestige, in a concise statement that would be widely quoted andoften referred to

The Reorganization of English

The subject of English was dealt with in detail by a NationalJoint Committee on English, cosponsored by Kingsley's Commis-sion on Reorganization and by Nut's. Kingsley asked Hosic tohead the Joint Committee in 1911, at the same NEA conventionthat directed him to proceed with arrangements for the founding ofNem. Thirty memhers were eventually appointed, representing(with a few change:, and additions) the NEA Round Tahle Commit-tee on College Entrance Requirements and the NCTE Committee onthe High School Course in English. Secondary school memberscontinued to dominateof the thirty, only nine had college appoint-ments at the time, and three of these were in teacherscolleges. Not surprisingly, there was considerable overlap betweenthe committee and those who were active in NCTE during the sameperiod; many of the convention addresses and English Journalarticles during these years could be seen as working drafts ofvarious sections of the final report." The final report, Reorganiza-tion of English in Secondary Schools (1917), was the culmination ofthe revolt of the high school teacher cl English against the domina-tion of his course by the college entrance requirements.

Little in the report was new. Like the earlier statement of theVassar Conference on English organized by the Committee of Ten,its value lay in bringing together in one comprehensive statementpoints of view that its members had heen developing at conferencesand conventions and in the professional journals throughout thepreceding decade. Gathered together in one volume, and united bya common oppnsition to the college entrance lists, these argumentscould serve as a manifesto for reform, a convenient reference pointwhose principles could be endorsed and implemented as a more orless coherent. whole. As such, and bearing the endorsements ofNCTE and NEA, its influence was considerable:I'

Reorganization of English in Secondary Schools began by affirm-ing the independence of the high school and rejecting the principlethat preparation for college was also the best preparation for life.However important the college entrance requirements may h -ebeen in initially securing a place for English in the curriculum, nelongerderm result had heen to achieve a "monotonous and unintel-ligent uniformity" (p7). Picking up an argument the parent com-mission would use in the Cardinal Principles report a year later, thecommittee urged schools to provide "a consHerahle range" of

, 66 TRADITION AND REFORAI

muse content to meet the varying hackgrounds of the students,while at the same time preserving "a reasonable uniformity of aimsand a body of common culture." In particular, "Skill in thinking,high ideals, right habits of conduct, healthy interests, and sensi-tiveness to the beautiful are attainments to be coveted for all"(p26).

The main points discussed in the report. paralleled those that hadprominence in the professional literature. The justifications forliterary studies fell into three categoriescultural, vocational, andsocial and ethical. To achieve these ends, there should be (as Hallhad suggested) "Subordination of excellence of style . , to value of

content and power to arouse interest" (p. 46). Rather than a formaldiscipline, English was to he "social in content and social in methodof acquirement." This would he achieved by structuring the coursearound "expressional and interpretative experiences of the greatestpossible social value to the given class" (p. 27). As has aheadybeen evident in earlier discussions, however, it was the great

books." the classics, which most successfully demonstrated thatthey had this "social value." Or as the subcommittee on literaturefor the upper secondary school grades put it, "Who shall Gay thatboys and girls of to-day will not need their (the classics'] clear noteof inspiration and courage as much if not more than their fathersand mothers of yesterday" (p. 65). The subcommittee on businessEnglish waxed especially eloquent about the virtues of literaturethat ''is in the spirit of the present, that has a commercial tong,that treats of the problems and even of the activities and processesthat they will meet after leaving school." Yet even this subcom-mittee affirmed too the values of "standard literature . . . well

chosen and sanely taught," as "a good antidote for the harmfulpleasures that invite the weary workers in our cities" (p. 971.

The teport was very specific about the works to be studied. Itprovided two lists for each grade level, one of books "for classwork,- the other of books "for individual reading." The distinctionwas that of the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Require-ments in English, but it served here, presumably, to provide"common culture" and "considerahle range." The grade-hy-gradedistribution of literary works was carefully planned to correspondto the committee's conception of pupils' emotional and intellectualstages, For the eighth and ninth grades, they urged "stirringnarrative, full of movement and manly virtue. This is the place forHomer's hero;' Greeks and Macaulay's noble Romans, for theelemental passions of ballad times, for Scott and Stevenson and allothers of their stirring company." The tenth grade, through the useof such plays as The Merchant of Venice and Julius Caesar; woulddeal directly with "serious questions of right and wrong." Theeleventh would be the time "frankly to discuss the relations of menand women to each other," but only in the context of the "high

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 67

ideality" of Idylls of the King and Silas Marner. Finally for thetwelfth grade, the Joint Committee suggested a "literary" course,organized chronologically and including both American and Englishliterature.'"

What the committee members did not do with literature is asimportant as the lists they provided. They did not abandon thetitles used by the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Re-quirements in English; they did not suggest overshadowing themwith modern and "relevant" works. They did not propose that classstudy be devoted to contemporary social commentary. Whilegreatly shifting the goals and much of the presumed activity withinthe classroom, they did not shift the materials that were to he usedin attaining those goals. Of the authors on the college entrance listsbefore 1900the lists formulated before agitation within the profes-sion begun to force changeall but three were part of the JointCommittee's suggestions. Only Johnson, Dryden, and Burke fellcompletely from favor.'" The concerns with social issues and withthe productions of modern writers were generously reflected in theReorganization report, but their place was clearly to he in the listsfor individual reading. For class study, the literary canon continuedvirtually unchanged.

In this emphasis, the Joint Committee was not unusual. GeorgeCounts, surveying fifteen cities "representing progressive tenden-cies" during the spring of 1924, found that English received moreemphasis than any other study. Half the time in the course wasdevoted to literature, the other half to a variety of languageactivities loosely related to composition. The most frequentlytaught titles were Silas Marner, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,"Macbeth. A Tale of Two Cities, Idylls of the King, The House ofthe Seven Gables, Ivanhoe, Julius Caesar, and The Merchant ofVenice. All were in the Reorganization report lists, and all butIdylls of the King had appeared in the entrance lists before 1900.Counts also found that thirty-four of forty-nine specific coursesexamined emphasized intensive study for aL least some of the textsrequired.'"

Continuations

War broke in upon the trends summarized in the Reorganizationreports, accentuating soma and postponing the development ofothers till later years. The Declaration of War in April 1917crystallized definitions of "needs and interests" in terms of nationalaims, and English teachers across the nation responded with enthu-siasm. The Drama League dropped its literary emphasis and pro-vided a play on food conservation. Decatur, Illinois, appalled todiscover that a quarter of its students never read the daily paper ata time of history "in the making," made newspaper study a

6S TRADITION ANV REFORM

required part of the English course. For all, literature became a wayto instill a sense of national heritage and to encourage patriotism."

One of the concerns generated by the war, the teaching ofAmerican literature. was among the 1.-w that achieved a more orless permanent place in the curriculum, though it took some tenmore years before a uniform pattern for these studies emerged.During the postwar period the North Central Association activelysupported the movement to establish such studies; its Commissionon Secondary Schools, for example, distributed a questionnaireafter the war to assure itself that the schools in the region werediligently pursuing "Training for Citizenship." Other NCA commit-tees concerned with English were similarly careful to include achronological survey of American literature in various alternate

- positions within their recommended courses of study in 1922 andagain in 19:30."" NcrE showed a parallel if less intense concern,holding convention sessions on "The Teaching of American Ideals"and editorializing that English should "result in a finer, truer, andlarger Americanism on the part of those who study it."" Whenthese recommendations were taken up by the literary anthologies ofthe late twenties and thirties, American literature was firmly estab-lished in the curriculum.

The real legacy of this period was inspirational rather thanmethodological: teachers who had set out to build morale and fosterpatriotic sentiments, and who had seen their goals reflected in thebehavior of their students, emerged convinced of the power ofliterature to effect such changes. None stopped to wonder whetherboth the teaching and the response might have had a commonorigin in the wartime milieu. Teachers who sought to formulate arole for their teaching in "a new world, safe for a new democracy"were above all else enthusiastic about what they were doing: as oneput the problem, "The first great aim in the literature course is atraining for citizenship by a study of our national ideals embodiedin the writings of American authors,-our race ideals as set forth bythe great writers of Anglo-Saxon origin, our universal ideals as wefind them in any great work of literary art.'"2

How to translate such enthusiasm into a functioning schoolprogram was the problem for the next generation of teachers.

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 69

CHAPTER III NOTES

1. Jane Addams. "Educating the Immigrant Child, Beaver IslandReprint no. He 375; from National Educational Association Addresses andProceedings, 1897 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for the NEA,1897).

2. New England Association Standing Committee on Courses of Study,"The Course of Study in English-The Call for It, the Character of It andthe Construction of It,' School Review 15 (October 19071: 559-75.

3. James Fleming Rosie, comp. Reorganization of English in Secon-dary Schools, Bulletin 1917, no. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of Educa-tion, 1917), p. 11.

4. John Elbert Stout, The Development of High School Curricula inthe North Central States from 1860 to 1918, Supplementary EducationalMonographs, vol. 3, no. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, June19211, p. 235.

5. PAHA, School Review. Education, Teachers College Recant, andThe Academy all devoted considerable attention to the teaching of Englishin schools either before or during this period. For an exter_le Inbliographyof writings from all sources, see George It. Carpenter, Franklin T. Baker,and Fred N. Scott, The Teaching of English in the Elementary and theSecondary School (New York: Longman, Green, and Co., 19031. See alsoB. A. Hinsdale. Teaching the Language Arts: Speech, Reading, Compost-tion (New York: D. Appleton, 1896): and Percival Chubb, The Teaching ofEnglish in the Elementary and Secondary School (New York: MacmillanCo., 1902).

6. On the founding of the New England Association, see Charles LaneHanson, The Early Years of Our Association," The English Leaflet 48,no. 427 (March 1949h 33-47. Hanson had studied with Child at Harvard.On other groups in existence by 1911, see James Hocker Mason, TheNational Council of 'teachers of English-1911-1926 (Dissertation, GeorgePeabody College for Teachers, 19621, pp. 51.52, 67-68. This list is ofgroups which cooperated in founding NCTE and is prOably not complete.

7. At the same time, the percentage of those in English classes wasalso ;rising, from 38.5 in 1900 to 58.4 in 1915. See Appendix V, and Bureauof the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to1957 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 207.

8. Chubb, Teaching English in the Elementary and Secondary School,p. 239.

9. Ibid., I), 241.10. Lawrence A. Cremin in his The Transformation of the School (New

York: Vintage Books, 1961) is the major source for the following discussionof social and intellectual changes in the period before 1917. See alsoEdward A. Krug, The Shaping of the American High School (New York:Harper & Row, 1964).

11. National Education Association, Addresses and Proceedings, 1896,p. 184: cited by Cremin, Transformation of the School, p. 99.

12. Addams, "Educating the Immigrant Child." From NEA, Addressesand Proceedings, 1897.

13. The colleges were moving in quite another direction, towardsspecialization and Germanic scholarship. See Frederick Rudolph, The

71) 'rue% arrioN AND REFORM

American College and University: A History (New York: Vintage Books,19621.

11. On American psychology at this time, see Cremin, Transformationof the School, pp. 100-15; and Edwin G. Boring, A History of Experi-mental Psyrhology (Nett York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. 19291,

15. Thorndilitcs warnings not to generalize too far from his findingswent unheeded. Educators picked them up quickly; they were cited twoyears later by Carpenter, Baker, and Scott, for example (Teaching ofEnglish, p. 761. E. L. Thorndike and IL S. Woodworth, "The Influence atImprovement in One Mental Function upon the Efficiency of Other Func-tions... P.svchidogical /levies,. 8 119011: 217-61, 384-95. 553-01.

16. On Dewey, see especially Cremin, Trans/bona lion of the School,pp 115.26.

17. -Report of the Committee on College-Entrance Requirements,"National Education Association Addresses and Proceedings, 1899 (Chi-cap; University of Chicago Press for the NEA, 18991, PP. 632-814. Thegroup included two members of the National Conference on UniformEntrance Requirements in English: John Tetlow and Wilson Furrand. Thesuggested course was based on a presentation by W. F. Webster, principalof East high School. Minneapolis. See Paul Truman Himmel', A Histor-ical Survey Of Recommendations and Proposals for the Literature Curriculaof A birdcall Serum/an, Schools Sinai 1892 (Dissertation, University ofNebraska Teachers College; University Microfilms No. 66-2081); JosephMerman& "The Teaching of Literature in American Secondary Schools;1865-1900," in Perspectives on English. ed. Robert C. Pooley (New York:APPleton.Contury-Crofts, hoe., 19601; and Harold Rugg. "Three Decadesof Mental Discipline: Curriculum Making Via National Committees," inCurriculum Making Past and Present, Twenty-Sixth Yearbook of theNational Society for the Study of Education, Part One (Bloomington,Public School Publishing Co.. 19261.

18. This campaign was unsuccessful to the extent that separate coursesin literature and composition and separate examinations from the CollegeEntrance Examination Board were not forthcoming; the real objective ofreforming the teaching of composition to make it less literary and morepersonal in emphasis was nonetheless accomplished. For discussions of themerits of separation, see, for example, Edwin L. Miller, "Rebuilding anEnglish Course," NEA Addresses and Proem/lags. 1910 IChicago: The Uni-versity Press for the NEA, 19111, pp. 483 -87: Editorial, "'Comprehensive'and 'Restricted'," English Journal 5:4 11916): 2S1-82; E. h. KemperMcComb. "Separation of the Teaching of Composition from the Teaching ofLiterature: What It Is and How It Works," English Journal 6:2 (February19171: 69.-79: and Husk, Reorganization.

19. George W. Tanner, "Report of the Committee Appointed by theEnglish Conference to Inquire into the Teaching of English in the HighSchools of the Middle West," School Review 15 (January 1907): 37-45,llosie was involved in this survey.

20. Cyrus L. limper. "Existing Conditions in theTeaching of English,"School Review 15 (April 1907): 261-74. Again, Hosic is mentioned.

21. This is quoted more fully at the beginning of this chapter. Thedomination of the lists has been discussed and documented by a number ofauthors. See Edna flays, College Entrance Requirements in English: TheirEninns On the High Sc /tools (New York: Teachers College, Columbia Uni-

A SCHOOL. FOR ylIE PEOPLE 71

versity. 19361. PP. 92-107; Mersund, "Teaching Literature: 1865-1900";HOSit% Reorganization, pp. 11-21; Mason, NCTE 1f111- 1926. pp. 39 ff.;Robert S. Fay, 'The Reorganization Movement in English Teaching, 1910-1917 (Dissertation, Harvard University, 1967; University Microfilms No.08-12.0681, pp. 69-74; John Muth Bernd. Approaches to the Teaching ofLiterature in Secondary School, 1900-1956 (Dissertation, University ofWisconsin. 1957: University Microfilms No. 24,264), pp. 50, 74.

22. Fred Newton Scott, "College-Entrance Requirements in English,"School Review-9 (June 1901): 365-78. Scott became an instructor inEnglish literature at Michigan in 1889; in 1903 he became head of thedepartment of rhetoric. On accreditation, see Theodore R. Sizer, SecondarySchools at the Turn of the century (New Haven: Yale University Press,1964).

23. Mason, NOTE 1911-15)26, and Fay, Reorganization Movement,provide the most detailed discussion of the events leading up to thefounding of NCIE. See also the other discussions referenced in footnote 21above. and the National Council, 1011-36." English Journal 25:10(December 1936): 805-29.

24. The letter was later reprinted in English Journal. (Executive Com-mittee of the New York State Association of English Teachers, "An OpenLetter to 'teachers of English." English Journal 1:3 [March 19121 179-80.)

25. Technically, the appointments would have been made by the presi-dent of the secondary section, but this was Principal Mackenzie of Miller'sDetroit Central High School. The Round Table itself was simply an annualforum in which anyone at the convention could participate. The agendabegan with prepared speeches which were then opened for discussion;several hundred teachers were often present. 'These developments are notmentioned in the minutes of the 1910 meeting but are referred to indirectlyin the volume for the next year. See NEA Addresses and Proceedings,1910 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for the NEA, 1911), "RoundTable Conferences: A. English," pp. 483-93; and NEA Addresses andProceedings, 1911 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press for the NEA,1911), especially Jamie; Fleming Hosic, "The Questions at Issue: Prelimi-nary Report of a Committee on College-Entrance Requirements in English,"pp. 592.98.

26. The other mernhers of the committee were Charles Swain Thomas,head of English at Newton (Massachusetts) High School but u midwesternerby birth and education; Benjamin A. Heydrick, head of English at theHigh School of Commerce in New York City; Henry B. Dewey, statesuperintendent of schools, Washington; Edwin L. Miller. who had justbeen promoted to assistant principal at Central High School. Detroit; Mrs.henry Ilulst, head of English, Grand Rapids High School; Reuben Postlalleck, principal of the Male High School in Louisville; Miss Fannie W.

McLean. head of English at Berkeley (California) High School. (Ileydrickand Thomas had at earlier points in their careers taught in universities, andboth had published textbooks on the teaching of English. 13. A. lieydrick,How to Study Literature (1901): C. S. Thomas. How to Teach the EnglishClassics (1910),

27. "Round Table Conference on English. July 12. 1911." NEA Ad-dresses and Proceedings, 1911. p. 556. The minutes give a slightly differentversion than Music later recalled for English Journal readers. (JamesFleming I losic. "The National Council of Teachers of English," English

72 TRADITION AND REFORM

Journal 10.1 !January 19211: 1-10.1 The resolution was proposed by WalterHunting. superintendent of public instruction in Nevada ("The NationalCouncil, 1911-36,** p. 8091.

28, The model of the N EA sa Council on Education apparently led to thechoice of "Council" instead of the more issue] "Associations' for the neworganization; this is reflected in the emphasis on representativeness in thisinitiation, and in the later decision to govern NCTE through a Board ofDirectors whose members would be appointed individually by the affiliatedorganizations. "Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting:* English Jour-nal 1:1 (January 1912): 30-45.

29. Fay (Reorganization Movement, p, 1191 credits the committeeswith being the Council's greatest source of influence. During the firstdecade alone, there were reports on articulation of high school and elemen-tary school English; revision of grammatical terminology; home reading;English in country schools: plays in school and college; teacher prepara-tion; speech: labor and cost of English teaching; freshman English:economy of time; and reorganizationoften with several reports from thesame or related committees. See "The National Council, 1911-36," pp.816-17.

30. "Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting," p. 37. This wasobviously an emotional issue, still being justified in retrospect in "TheNational Council. 1911-36." W. Wilbur Hatfield later paid tribute toHosic's "astounding" accomplishment in keeping the local associations,with their different outlooks, within the Council. "In Memoriam: JamesFleming Husk." English Journal 48:3 (March 1959): 160.

31. Charles Swain Thomas. as editor of English Leaflet (the journal ofhe New England Association) from 1909-1940 and as an associate professor

at Harvard, came to he the leading spokesman for the New England view,though he began teaching in his home town of Pendleton, Indiana, in 1887.and remained for the most part in the Midwest till 1908. He did not settlepermanently in the East till after a spell as director of English in Cleveland(1918-20). See Council News and Comment, "Charles Swain Thomas."EngliNh Journal 32:7 (September 19431: 389.90; and Marion C. Sheridan.

lore We Are." English Leaflet 52, no. 507 (January 19531: 2-11.32. James Fleming Rosie, "Progress in Articulating School and College

English." NEA Addresses and Proceedings. 1912 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press for the NEA, 19121, p. 762,

33. ''Types of Organization of HighSchool English," Report of theCommittee, English Journal 2:9 (November 1913h 575.95.

34 The committee was one of those forming part of the National JointCommittee responsible for the Reorganization report, discussed later inthis chapter.

35. See "The National Council, 1911.36," pp. 817-18: English Journal18:7 (September 1929): 599; and James Mason, NCTE, 1911-1926, whosummarizes sales at various points in his chronology, e.g., pp. 91, 335,348.

36. "English Equipment," Report of the Committee. English Journal2:3 (March 1913): 178.84; and "Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting:*English Journal 3:1 (January 1914); 54. As examples, see Carrie E. TuckerDracass, "An Experiment in Library Training in the High School." EnglishJournal 1:4 (April 19121: 221 -31; Iva M. Young, "A New England High-School Library." English Journal 1:9 INovemhcr 19151: 571-76; Emma J.

A SCHOOL FOR TIIE PEOPLE 73

13reck. "The Efficient High-School Library.- English Journal 5:1 (January1916): 10-19; and Editorial. "Go Thou and Do Likewise," English Journal6:4 (April 19171: 271.

37. Typical questions, both from 1920. asked: "List books that you likeand dislike, telling why." "Describe the major or minor characters fromany three novels." Ilays, College Entrance Requirements, p. 80.

38. henry Hudson, English in Schools 41881; reissued 1906); quoted byPeter D. Witt, The Beginnings of the Teaching of the Vernacular Literaturein thr Secondary Schools of Alassachu.setts (Dissertation, Harvard Uni-versity, 19681, p. 276.

39. Carpenter. Baker, and Scott, Teaching of English, p. 182. OnChubb as a fusion of the older and newer approaches. see John R. Searles,Some Trends in the Teaching of Literature Since 1900 (Dissertation,University of Wisconsin, 1942), pp. 34 ff.

40. Under E. T. McLaughlin and Barrett Wendell, respectively. Forthe fullest discussion of the types approach and its historical antecedents,see Irvin Ehrenpreis. The "Types Approach" to Literature (New York:King's Crown Press, 1945).

41. Allan Abbott, "An Experiment in High-School English," SchoolReview 12 (September 1904): 550.58. On its influence, see Ehrenpreis,Types Approach, pp. 1-4, 85. The earlier course at Horace Mann had beendescribed by Franklin T. Baker, "The Course in English in the HoraceMann School, Teachers College," Teachers College Record 1 (May 1900):1-36. Abbott went there in 1902. Bernd, Approaches to Teaching Litera-ture, pp. R2 -86, also comments on the link between the types approach andthe liberalization of the course: he quotes Abbott to the effect that "Thefamiliar doctrine of interestin its educational sensewill he seen at thebottom of this plan.'

42. G. Stanley Hall, How to Teach Reading. and What to Read inSchool (Boston: 1). C. Heath and Co., 18861, P. :32; similarly in G. StanleyHall. Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relation to Physiology, Anthro-pology, Sociology, Sex, ('rime, Religion, and Education, vol. 2 (New Yorkand London: D. Appleton and Co., 1914; first edition, 1904), p. 444:"Excrescences must be eliminated, the gold recoined, its culture powerbrought out."

43. flail, Adolescence, vol. 2, pp. 442-44.44. Allan Abbott. "Reading Tastes of High-School Pupils, A Statisti-

cal Study," School Review 10 (October 19021: 585-600. See his earlier"'Entrance English' from the Boy's Point of View." Education 22 (Sep-tember 1901h 78-88. Many "studies" of reading interest followed, thoughvery few were well designed or well reported by today's standards. Asexamples. see Charles NI, McCann, "High-School Students' Rankings ofEnglish Classics," English Journal 1:5 (May 1912): 257-72; and G. W.

"The Reading Interests of High-School Pupils," English Journal8:8 (October 191911 474-87.

45. ('aniline E. Britten, "A Loose-Leaf Textbook in English Litera-ture," English Journal 2:3 (March 1913): 145-50.

46, Hall. What to Read, p. 36.47. W. R. Ilumphreys, "The Literary Study of the Bible in Michigan

High Schools," English fount& 6:4 (April 19171: 209.20; t. W. Gosling,"How the High-School Teacher of English Can Assist in the Exploitationof Pupils' Powers." English Journal 2:8 (October 1913): 51'3-17; and Sarah

74 TRADITION AND REFORM

J. Mc Nary, "Sex Education: The Opportunity of the Teacher of English,"English Journal 8:4 (April 1919); 242-47. See also Teaching Social Hygienethrough Literature (New York; American Social Hygiene Association,1920). which reprints two articles on sex education from the April and July192(1 issues of Social Hygiene 5 (pp263-72: 391-99).

48. Max Eastman, The Enjoyment of Poetry (New York: CharlesScribner's Sons, 1913). For further discussion, see Searles, Trends inTeaching Literature, pp. 48-51.

49. Franklin T. Baker. "I ligh School Reading: Compulsory and Volun-tary," English Journal 4:1 (January 1915): 1-8.

50. Fred Newton Scott, The Undefended Gate." English Journal 3:1(January 1914h 1-14. Scott is the only NCTE president to serve twoterms. The first Council committee on speech was headed by Scott, andlater by Claudia E. Crumpton. It was under Crumpton that the committeeissued a Guide to Better Speech Week (1919). This was apparently highlysuccessful but drew criticism from the organizations of teachers of speech,who -thought the Council was intruding in their areas. A Better SpeechYear (1925) was eventually produced in cooperation with the NationalAssociation of Teachers of Speech but was less successful. See "TheNational Council, 1911-36," pp. 820-21: and Donald P. Veith, An Histori-cal Analysis of the Relations Between "English" and "Speech" since 1910(Dissertation. Teachers College, Columbia University, 1952).

51. James Cloyd Bowman, "The Use of the Magazine in English."English Journal 5:5 (May 1916): 332-40. As examples of other views, seeWilliam Frederick Edgerton. "A Recent Experiment with Magazine Liter-ature.: English Journal 1:5 (May 1912): 278.83; Maurice W. Moe, "Maga-zine l'oetry in the Classroom," English Journal 4:8 (October 19151: 523.25;and Allan Abbott. "A High-School Course in Periodical Literature,"English Journal 2:7 (September 1913): 422.27.

52. Stout, High School Curricula, pp. 207 ff., details the growingeffects of vocational programs on school organization as well as specificsubject-area offerings.

53, Charles W. Eliot, Differentiation of the High-School Course inEnglish," English Leaflet no. 91 (June 1911): 2. In this debate Eliot waspaired with D. 0. S. Lowell of Roxbury Latin School against Charles A.Prosser. Massachusetts deputy commissioner of education, and SamuelThurber, Jr. The debate is s:.mbolic of the fate of English studies, withEliot from the first period and Prosser who in 1945 would launch the "lifeadjustment" movement. For egnoments on the debate. see Rosewell, His-torical Surrey of Recomm, .clations. p. 82; James Warren Olson, TheNature of Literature Anthologies Used in the Teaching of High SchoolEnglish 1917-1957 (Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1969; University Microfilms No. 69.22.454), pp. 26-33: and C. S. Thomas, TheEnglish Course in the Iligh School," English Journal 1:2 (February 1912):84.94.

54. Herbert Wynfred Hill, "The Problem of Harmonizing AestheticInterests with the Commercial and Industrial Trend of Our Times,"English Journal 2:10 (December 1913); 609-12: and Mabel Fleming, TheMyths of Commerce." English Journal 7:4 (April 1918): 270.

55. These courses were being offered in place of rather than in additionto other English work. Leverett S;Lyon, "The Business-English Situationin the Secondary School," English Journal 7:9 (November 1918): 576.86;

A SCHOOL FOR THE PEOPLE 75

and Sherwin Cody. "The Ideal Course in English for Vocational Students.,"!ing lish Journal 3:5 and 6 (May and June 19141:263-81, 371-80.

56. Carpenter, Baker, and Scott, Teaching of English. p. 169. Theypoint out that the use of pictures in teaching can be traced at least tofifteenth century primers, and that they are used in the teaching ofcomposition us well as literature. They include an appendix, "Dealers inPhotographs and Prints."

57. See for example Mary Crawford, "The Laboratory Equipment ofthe Teacher of English,- English Journal 4:5 (March 1915): 145-51: JuliaDavenport Randall, "A Literary Map of London:' English Journal 4:2(February 1915): 125; Jeanette F. Abrams, "A List of Published Airs forSongs in The Golden Treasury." English Journal 4:6 (June 1915): 387-97;Martha E. Clay. "The Hat Box in Literature," English Journal 5:10(December 1916): 680-83; and Cornelia Carhart Ward, "The Use of Picturesin the Teaching of Literature," English Journal 4:8 (October 1915): 526-30.

58. There were early silent films of "The Vision of Sir Launfal" andThe House of . 'etten Gables, for example. The first English Journalarticle devoted jo . to movies was Robert W. Neal, "Making the DevilUseful," English Journal 2:10 (December 1913): 658.60. For a favorableview, see Carolyn M. Gerrish, "The Relation of the Moving Pictures toEnglish Composition," English Journal 4:4 (April 1915): 226-30. And for aharsh attack, see Alfred M. Hitchcock. the Relation of the Picture Playto Literature," English Journal 4:5 (May 1915): 292-98.

59. Cecile 13. McCrosky, "The Administration of English in the High-School Curriculum," English Journal 7:2 (February 1918). 108-17. TheIllinois survey is cited in llosic, Reorganization, pp. 150-52.

60. Corson's concern with ethics is evident even in his first teachingappointmentas professor of moral' science, history, and rhetoric atGirard College in 1865. He moved from there to St. Johns in 1866, and toCornell in 1870. On Corson's leadership and influence, see Searles, Trendsin Teaching Literature, pp. 44-47 'Iv also Hiram Corson, The Aims ofLiterary Study (New York: Moor Company. 1895).

61. Dumas Malone, ed., Bleat,. of American Biography (New York:Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935); Kenneth Macgowan, Footlights Across.4tnerka (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1929); and Arthur HobsonQuinn. A History of the American Drama from the Civil War to thePresent (New York: AppletonCentury.Crofts. 1936).

G. Halt. Adolescence, vol. 2, pp. 416, 442.63. The three most important peaks included 1906.07, when the New

Theater, the Robertson Players. and a revitalized Hull House Theater(originating at Addams's Hull House in 18991 all were organized inChicago; 1911-12. with the organization of Thomas Dickinson's WisconsinPlayers. the 'toy Theater in Boston. and the summer theater at LakeForest. Illinois; and 1915-16, which produced the Provincetown Players.Boston's Washington Square Players, and Chicago's Little Theater. Allgenerated publicity and interest. See Quinn. History of American Drama:and Macgowan. Footlights Across America.

64. Thatcher H. Guild, "Suggestions for the High-School Play," EnglishJournal 2;10 (December 1913): 637.46; "Report of the Committee on Playsin Schools and Colleges." English Journal 4:1 (January 1915): 34-40.

76 TRADITION AND REFORM

85. .1. Milnor Dorey succeeded Guild as chairman of the drama com-mittee. The library was established under his guidance (Mason, NCTE,1911-1926, p. 139). "The Play Producer's Notebook" was an irregular butfrequent feature in English Journal from 1917 on; it was written bymembers of the committee, often anonymously. For the first, see EnglishJournal (1:3 (March 1917): 192-93. Darcy had also provided an earlier list in1915 (pp. 408-071, and a separate publication in cooperation with theDrama League ("The National Council. 1911.36," p. 151. For the conven-tion resolution, see "Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting; Busi-ness," English Journal 7:1 (January 19181; 74.

66. Mary Frothingham Pritchard, "'I'he Value of Story-Telling in theHigh-School Course." English ,Journal 4:3 (March 1915): 191-931 PercivalChubb, "The Blight of Literary Bookishness," English Journal 3:1 (Janu-ary 1914): 15-27: Allan Abbott, "A High-School Course in Drama,"Eag lish Journal 2:2 (February 19131: 93-98; and Mary Grey Peck, "TheEducational Movement for the New American Drama," English Journal1:3 (March 19121; 129-37. Peck was appealing for members.

67. The progressive's interest in dramatics is clear in Dorey's career: helater became executive secretary of the Progressive Education Association(1928 -311.

68. Thomas Wood Stevens was one of the main organizers of this groupin 1913; he edited its Bulletin (1913-211. Interest in pageants declinedrapidly after World War I. Lotta A. Clark, "Pageantry in America.'English Journal 3:3 (March 19141: 146-53.' 69. Mary Ethel Courtenay, "Clytie: A Lyrical Play for Children,"English Journallt3 (March 1912); 138-45. Over a dozen more of those had

appeared in the Journal by 1919.70. A similar movement developed in England at about this same time.

Caldwell Cook's work at the Perse School became known in America afterthe publication of his The Play Way (19171; he was in the progressiverather than the literary tradition. "Play" in his title meant play asopposed to work, rather than "play" as "drama." though his methodsinvolved much of that too. Ile and the American enthusiasts seem to havedeveloped their methods out of similar concerns (there was an Englishsurge of interest in serious non-commerical drama at this time), butwithout direct contact.

71. Editorial, the Democratization of Method," English Journal 7:8

(October 19181: 53. Walter Barnes in his The New Democracy in thel achingof English (Chicago: Hand McNally & Company. 1923) eventuallygave this movement its fullest expression; the hook was a collection oflectures.

72. Editorial. "What Is Socialization "" English Journal 7:2 (February191811 135; W. S. Hinchman, "Reading Clubs Instead of LiteratureClasses," English Journal 6:2 (February 19171: 88 -95: C. C. Certain, ' "TheTrial of (3a ngur)," English: Journal 4:3 (March 1915): 152-59; and AlmaAllison, rho Social Problems of Our Little Town, And How We MetThem." English Journal 5:7 (September 1916): 477-82: Allison was fromMadison, Wisconsin.

73. Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education of theNEA, Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, U.S. Bureau of Educa-tion Bulletin 1918, no. 35 (Washington: Government Printing Office,

19181. pp. 10-11,

A SCHOOL FOE THE PEOPLE 77

74. The Joint Committee had its first meeting in Chicago in November1912, it) conjuntion with the second annual NCTE convention, The mem-bers were Al lac Abbott, Elizabeth G. Barbour, Mary D. Bradford, EmmaJ. Brock. C. C. Certain, Randolph T. Congdon. Mary E. Courtenay,.losept. V. Denny. Charles W. Evans. Mary B. Fontaine, Allison Gaw.Mary c:. Hall, W. Wilbur Hatfield. Benjamin A. Ileydrick, Helen Hill,Alfred NI. Hitchcock, Mrs. Henry Hu Ist, Walter J. Hunting, William D.Lewis, Orton Lowe, E. II. Kemper McComb, May NlcKitrick, Edwin L.Miller. Minnie E. Porter, Edwin T. Reed, Edwin T. Shurter, Elmer W.Smith. Charles Swain Thomas; and Harriett A. Wood.

75. Rugg. "Curriculum Making Via National Committees." pp. 44-45,called the report "the most forward looking report of any national subjectcommittee up to 1920," For documentation of the extent of its influence,see Edna Ilays, College Entrance Requirements:, Fay, ReorganizationAlortnent: and Olson, Nature of Literature Anthologies. All three, thoughthey come at the question from different vantage points. conclude that thepoint of view of the report was widely adopted.

76. llosic, Reorganization. pp. 69-70.77. The comparison here is with Hays' summary lists (see Appendix 1111

and the lists of specific titles included in the reports of the subcommitteeson literature.

78, The cities were Trenton. Atlanta. New Orleans, St. Louis, KansasCity. Pueblo, Los Angeles, Berkeley, Salt Lake City, Lincoln, Joliet,Cleveland. Detroit, Rochester. and Newton. George S. Counts. The SeniorHigh School Curriculum. Supplementary Educational Monographs, no. 29(Chicago: Univer'sity of Chicago Press, 19261.

79. See "News and Notes," English Journal 7:9 (November 19181: 609;j6 6 U. Engleman, "Outside Reading." English Journal 6:1 (January 1917);6.0-27; Clara Vhitehill Hunt. "The Child and the Book it War Times,"English Journal 7:8 (October 19181: 487-96; Allan Abbott, -6The EnglishTeacher and the Vorld-War." English Journal 7:1 (January 1918): 1-6;and Dudley Parsons, "The English Teacher and Patriotism." EnglishJournal 8:2 (February 19191; 154-63.

80, Olson. Nature of Literature Anthologies. pp. 57- 58;.288 -89. See"Thrth Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools: Report ofthe Committee on English," English Journal 11:5 (May 19221! 307-14 adE. L. Miller, "College Entrance Requirements in English: A CommitteeReport.- English Journal 20:8 and 9 (October and November 19311:626.40, 714-29.

SI. W. Wilbur Hatfield, "Summer Meeting of the Council." EnglishJournal 9:6 (June 1920): 353; and Editorial. "What Is English?" EnglishJournal 9:10 I December 19201: 600.

82. llorace Ainsworth Eaton, "English Problems After the War,"English Journal 8:5 1May 19191: 308-12: and G. Eunice Nleers. "SpecificAims in the Literature Course." English Journal 8:8 (October 19191:48S-05.

Whatever exists al all exists in some amount. To know it thoroughly involvesknowing its quantity as well as its quality. Education is concerned withchanges in human beings; a change is a difference between two conditions;each of these conditions is known to us only by the products produced byitthings made, words spoken, arts performed, and the like.. . . To measure aproduct well means so to define its amount that competent persons will knowhow (me it is, with some precision, and that this knowledge may be recordedand ustd. This is the general Credo of those who, in the last decade, havebeen busy trying to extend and improve measurements of educationalproducts.

Edward L. Thorndike, "The Nature, Purposes,and General Methods of Measurements ofEducational Products," 19181

The standards of our (lay demand that our courses of study be derived fromobjectives which include both ideals and activities, that we should lanklyaccept usefulness as our aim rather than comprehensive knowledge, and thatno fictitious emphasis should be placed upon the value of formal discipline.

W. W. Charters, Curilculum Construction,19232

Every teacher of literature should make or adopt a satisfactory analysis of thehigher skills involved in appreciative reading, and should make systematicplans for helping pupils to master these skills. Some people, it is true, are sodeficient in the simple techniques of word recognition and sentence orparagraph interpretation as to be incapable of making progress on the higherlevels. Professor Gates' book, among others, shows how to pick out thesecases, how to discover their difficulties, and what to do for them. Mosthighschool leachers of English can profitably give considerable time tohelping their students learn to read in the real sense.

W. Wilbur Hatfield, "Literature Can BeTaught," 19273

This day of crisis and chaos still finds the schools vociferously disclaimingresponsibility for social leadership. Not until educational materials andpractices are systematically tested with relation to the needs of contemporarylife can their be any escape from the banalities that frequently pass forscientific contributions to education,

John .1, DeBoer, "Changing Objectivesin English," 19321

Chapter IV

Science andthe Teaching of English

When teachers of literature turned to the prob-lems of defining goals and methods in the postwar period, theyfound themselves in a new and not entirely comfortahle position.Always hefore they had had unity imposed essentially fromwithout: first there had been the goal of winning a place within thecurriculum, then that of redefining the subject to be free from collegedomination in "a school for the people." Though they carriedthrough the task of generating a new framework for their teachingwith considerahle enthusiasm, the lack of a single unifying principleled to many false starts and long periods of misdirected energies.

Overview of the Progressive Era

The period between the wars was a time of pedagogical innova-tion on a grand scale, symbolized if not always led by the Progres-sive Education Association. Teachers of literature respondedthroughout this period to many forces that were at heart progres-sive; but they had to respond, too, to the demands of their owndiscipline. As a result the great hulk of teacher.,, and of theirleadership within the National Council, thought of their teaching asprogressive, though not of themselves as Progressives. Yet theyhad the rhetoric, and the enthusiasm, and moved in many of thesame directions.

Though at times during these years the subject of English wouldseem to be expanding in all directions at once, two broad move-

79

80 TRADITION AND REFORM

moots underlay the majority of changes. One was the concern withthe application of science to education, with an ultimate focus onefficiency. The other was the movement toward "experience" as thecentral metaphor of the educational process. In literary studies,that metaphor was realized first as simple vicarious experiencethrough literature, then gradually broadened to literature as "ex-ploration--exploration of self, of society, of the past and presentworld. The movement toward science and that toward explorationwere closely related; they shared roots in the progressive movementas a whole and were often carried forward by the sante men andwomen in the teaching of English. Each k complex, however, andtrill be treated separatelyscience in this chapter. the movementtoward literature as exploration in the next.

English in its final synthesis as "exploration- was hardly cir-cumscribed. und the countless proposals and counterproposals thathad occurred along the way only added to the insecurity of theclassroom teacher. One result was a growing professional-disorien-tation by the thirties, a serious gap between educational theory andeducational practice that forced a retreat, a stepping back from theideal vision of the curriculum at which the profession had finallyarrived. This movement away from broad goals toward a narrowlocus for the curriculum has its beginning in the Eight-Year Studyof the Progressive Education Association, its middle phase inconcern with general education and language, and its end in whathas come to be known as "life adjustment.- These final phases ofprogressivism will be dealt with in Chapter VI.

During the decade following the First World War, educators inall fields became enchanted with the virtue and promise of science,seeing in it the solution to many of the continuing problems of theschools. The areas to which science was to be applied were virtuallylimitless: they included the determination of educational goals, thevalidation of procedures, the lowering of costs, and the justificationof programs to the public. The teacher, the philosopher, the ad-ministratoreach imitated the scientist; and though in fact theirscience was sharply limited by their training and the primitive stateof the disciplines to which they turned for guidance, their con-clusions shapedand continue to shape mucheducational practice.

The Movement in Education

The .Concern with Efficiency

The application of science to educational problems took placeagainst the background of a widespread but loosely formulatedidentification of "scientificwith "efficient.- largely as a result of

SCIENCE Ave tint TKAcittst, OF ENGLISH 81

the adoption of principles of "scientific management." by Americanbusiness. Combat ly, scientific business methods had conic. to seemthe solution to all of the nation's ills; and schools, ever a drain onthe taxpayer's pocketbook, were always a tempting target forreform. After 1910 the critics became especially vocal, charging inthe InIpliltIr press that schools were costing too Plinth and producingtoo little.

The office of the superintendent. the "front office.' of the schoolsystem. bore the brunt of the attack and was responsible for thebrunt of the professional response. Though the exact steps takenvaried horn city to city, the net result was a shift in the nature ofthe superintendency away from that of providing philosophicalguidance toward that of educational management. This was tosome extent a necessary shift; the rising enrollments were creatingschool systems of a size and complexity previously unknown, andbringing with them problems of budget, staff, and organizationthat only managerial skills could handle. Still. the response to thepl'eSSureS for efficiency was too extreme, carrying with it the seedsof damage to the teaching profession as a whole. In many schoolsv stems, "efficient.. education came to be identified too closely with"good" education, and broader perspectives to he submerged in theconcern with budgets and short-term "results."

Irniert Aleusurenzent

Closely allied with the movement for scientific Management wasa new concern with scientific measurement, led largely by E. 14..rhOrnd ike is motives are evident in the quotation at the opening

this chapter: to effect rational change in education. it would firstbr necessary to }MVO accurate measures of the educational "prod-ucts." Ile and his students concentrated on objective paper-and-pencil measures of "achievement" in the major school subjects.Though the first of these tests did not appear till 1908, they weretaken up enthusiastically as the concern with efficiency mounted."

Nleasurement got its real impetus, however, from a related focuson dm "resources'' or "abilities" which the students brought withthem. Intelligence tests had played a part in psychological investi-gations at least since flattops work in the 1870s and 1880s, but itwas the I3inet scales (1905 -08) and Lewis M. Terman's Stanfordre% ision ;1916) that brought the concept of "IQ" into widespreadcurrency, liy the beginning of World War I, the American Psy-chological Association was convinced enough of the value of suchmeasures to offer to prepare a series of group intelligence tests forthe arniy. The offer was accepted, leading eventually to the famousScale Alpha (for recruits who could read English) and Scale 13etador recruits who could foil. The army's success in using these two

82 TRADITION AND REFORM

tests to sort out their recruits provided educators with an ohjectlesson whose import was quickly realiz.ed. Whatever other issuesthe data may have raised, it was clear the tests were successful intheir original purpose of classification. Teachers realized that if thes3:stematic use of tests could predict performance in one or anotherposition within the army, it should also be able to predict perfor-mance in response to one or another mode of instruction in theschools. 13y using the tests to form groups of "similar" students,the school would be able to provide instruction geared more closelyto their particular abilities. And thisas English teachers and theirmore scientific colleagues all recognizedwould he more efficient.?

Rebuilding the Curriculum

Given a concern with scientific management, inventories of abili-ties (the resources), and measures of achievement (the products),there remained the problem of deciding what should be taught (thedemand). This task was begun by the Committee on Economy ofTime in Education. Appointed, fittingly enough, by the Depart-ment of Superintendence of the National Education Association, itpublished four major reports between 1915 and 1919." The reportsfound three ways in which efficiency could be promoted within thecurriculum: by the elimination of nonessentials, by the improve-ment of teaching methods, and by the organization of subjectmatter to correspond more closely to the realities of child develop-ment. The approach to defining the "minimum essentials" of theschool curriculum was rigidly empirical: studies of life in the schooland in society would show what was needed and -appropriate.Though there was some shifting of emphasis away from what istowards what should be in the later volumes of the series, theoverall effect of the committee was certainly to focus educationalphilosophy on the empirical rather than the speculative, and tolocus curriculum on functional skills rather than conceptual orethical goals. Existing school procedures and knowledge that wasobvious. functional, and easily measured both received a new andimportant emphasis, not because committee members felt this wasa proper shift in prioritiesmany explicitly argued otherwisebutbecause these were the aspects of education which the developingscientific methodology was best able to handle.

Franklin Babbitt, professor of educational administration at theUniversity of Chicago and a former student of 0. Stanley Hall,carried the functionalism of the Committee on Economy of Time toits logical, if extreme, conclusion. His primary concern was thespecification of objectives through careful analysis of lifeneeds. Ashe put it in 1924,' the first task "is to discover the activities whichought to make up the lives of men and women: and along with

SCIF:NCF: AND THE TEACIIIEW OF ENG! isti 83

these. the abilities and personal qualities necessary for their properperformance. These are the educational objectives" (p. 9): He hadlittle tolerance for the traditional goals upon which educators hadrelied. pointing out that "culture.' -character building,- or othersuch "vague high-sounding hope and aspirations- (p. 321 wouldnot do. Ills own list of objectivesincluded as an illustration of thekind of statement needed rather than as a complete set wasnothing if not specific. It included 821 consecutive, numberedpoints, and a final category of "occupational activities- which weretoo numerous to he presented in detail. The points he did includeranged from "1. Ability to use language in all ways required forpower and effective participation in the cmnmunity life" (p. 11) toa series that ran:

129. Ability to care for the hair and scalp.CIO. Ability in care for the nails.1:11. Ability to care properly for the feet.-132. Abifty to control sexfunctions in the interests of physi-

cal and social well-being (p. 14).Though Bobbin's specific procedures for curriculum develop -

meal have an inherent tendency to stress goals which can he easilyformulated, rather than those which are most significant, his owndiscussions of general education placed a singular emphasis onexactly the subjects which were least amenable to the "scientific"analysis of life activities he proposed. Of the nine 'lines of training"he thought important for all students to receive, the first three hadlong been special concerns of the teacher of English:

(II English language: reading, oral and written expression.121 Citizenship attitudes. judgments and activities. Such)

Studies.(3) Literature: English and general (p. 99).

And Bobbin stated. too. that of the list of 821 specific objectives ofeducation. "it seems that general reading, including literature, canserve in some measure in the case of most of them' (p. 00).

!hue literature and reading were functional in the general nun-mtinity life nulled some consideration, and Bobbin detailed sevenservices they performed. The points were rather redundant, havingin common an emphasis on the value of experience through litera-ture. Litentture takes the reader out of what would otherwise behis little world-, he "relives the human experience ir of other timesand other men: his thoughts are broadened and elevated; hisresponses tuned to those "who have seen most clearly. and . feltmost deeply": he gains nese interests; he fives: "Idle is action andreading is one mode of action."''' Such a broadening of life throughI he vicarious experience of literature was as close an approximationto a hmetional goal for lit entry studies as anyone would be able toprat kle.

84 TRADITION AND REFORM

Studying the Curriculum in English

The teacher c) English was well protected as pressures forscientific efficiency came to bear upon the schools: of the variousschool subjects, English was one of the cheapest to provide. Itscost per recitation was low, so that other subjects (the haplessclassical languages among them) would bear the brunt of theeconomic assault on the schools." When Bobbitt and others turnedto scientific analysis of curriculum goals, English again came offwell: language in its variety of uses inevitably surfaced high on anylist of "universal needs." Even literary studies, much harder tojustify in terms of concrete life-activities, were protected by thewidespread belief in the importance of literature in character de-velopment and ethics. Finally, English studies as they had beenbrought together by the Committee of Ten were broad enough toallow an exceedingly wide array of functional activities to beprovided within one tins, with the teacher making very fewchanges in classroom procedures for any one of them. The net effectof the many minor adjustments, however, was sometimes of majorimportance.

Minimum Essentials

Attempts to formulate minimum essentials for literature with-ered from the beginning. Ilosic was a member of the NEA Com-mittee on Economy of Time and prepared the English sections oftheir reports. Ile managed a long and detailed analysis of "TheEssentials of Grammar and Composition," but his discussion ofliterature was short and "confessedly inadequate."" Only withrespect to the actual act of reading did the NEA committee havemuch to say about the efficiency of literary studies; here theconcern was with size of books, length of lines, and color of paper."NCH.: had its own Committee on Economy of Time in English,contemporaneous with that of the NEA; its efforts to deal withliterature were no more successful. Of five general points in its finalreport. only one dealt with literature at all. That one was hardlyradical, calling simply for "The teaching of literature suitable to theage and development of pupils, and the elimination of those classicsbeyond their emotional and intellectual reach. The introduction intoour courses of such contemporary material as will give pupils abetter appreciation of present-day ideals."" This offered little chal-lenge to the teacher of literature, and was in line with reformsalready proposed in the Reorganization report (1917).

The real effects of the movement toward essentials came inlanguage studies. After the reports on economy of time in English, anew committee on "essentials" was appointed under Sterling A.Leonard of the University of Wisconsin. Though the committee

SCIENCE AND 'NE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 85

never published a formal report, it had much influence through thewritings and speeches of the individuals involved. Leonard himselfwas led into a study of Current English Usage, puhlished by theCouncil in 1932. This gathered opinion on a variety of constructionsusually condemned in language texts, and found that many werejudged acceptable in actual use. Followed by Albert H. Marckwardtand Fred Walcott's Facts about Current English Usage (1938) andCharles C. Fries' American English Grammar (1941), this aspect ofthe movement toward essentials eventually reshaped the teaching oflanguage and composition in American schools."

The Functional Emphasis

Though the movement for minimum essentials raised few proh-lems for the teacher of literature, pressures from other subjectsseeking to expand their place within the curriculum eventually forcedEnglish to defend itself as a functional study. The social studiesoffered the most direct competition and under the leadership ofCharles II. Judd launched a vigorcius campaign to improve theirstatus. W. Wilbur Hatfield. who had succeeded Hosic as EnglishJournal editor and NCTE secretary-treasurer, outlined the challengein 1922: "Unless it can be made clear, even to the practical mind,that composition and literature achieve results "commensurate withthe time allotment," he wrote. "they will surely be replaced bysubjects more ohviously useful.""

The provision of such proof was the task of the NCTE Committeeon the Place and Function of English in American Life. EssieChamberlain from Oak Park (illinois) High School gave the 1924convention address which led to the appointment of the committee.Her approach to curriculum construction was essentially Babbitt's: acareful analysis of the social demands on English, and the meeting ofthose demands through methodology tested by classroom experi-ments." Under the direction of John NI. Clapp of Lake ForestCollege. the committee t onducted an extensive survey of the uses towhich skills learned in English class were being put by 22,000 peoplein a range of social positions. The statistical tahles of the final report11926) provided a profile for the English curriculum to followbut itwas a profile in which literature had very little place. It was simplynot a part of English instruction about which questions related to"practical- aspects of life could be easily formulated, and conse-quently little data could be collected ahout it with this sort ofapproach. Reading was easier to deal with (one had to read news-papers and magazines, business letters and grocery lists), but stillonly onesixth of the interview form was devoted to reading. Of that,only two of twenty-six specific questions dealt with literary orcultural pursuits.'"

Sli ili.AIDTION AND IIEFORII

The Clapp committee considered its task to be one of "defining thecontent, snipe. aims, etc. of 'Emg lish' work in schools." In their listsof specific recommendations. the first Made clear the conimitment tofunctionalistic

The schools might well devote more attention to a number of thelanguage activities which according to the returns are widely used bypersons of the many callings and social groups reporting. and whichare reported as giving much difficulty. These activities in particularale: Interviewing: word of mouth inquiries: reports to a superior:instructions for subordinates: conferences. Conversation: with easualacquaintances: at social gatherings: over the telephone. Public Speak-ing: informal discussion; preparing addresses. Writing: informal notesand memos Mit one's self: formal notes of invitation. introduction. etc.Reading: legal documents. Listening: to an interview, a conference, ora public meeting tp. Wt.

All of these concerns were taken up by the English program,eventually being fused with language studies deriving from Leonardand his successors as part of a "functional." usage-based programin language and composition.

By its very failure to deal with literature, the Clapp committeehelped to insulate literature from the extreme forms of functionalismthat developed in other areas of the English curriculum. While non-literary activities increasingly followed the outline provided by thecharts of the "Place and Function of English in American Life," theteaching of literature continued, at least through the 1930s, to followa different path. Indeed in furnishing objective proof of the value ofEnglish instruction, the Clapp report played a role much like that ofthe early college entrance requirements: it gave English a solid placein the curriculum by casting the subject in terms acceptable to itsopponents. while in the process virtually ignoring that aspect ofinstruction which has taken up the largest amount of the teacher'stime, and usually of his interest.

The functional emphasis of the Clapp report was characteristic ofthe concerns at the limo it appeared. 01 the other attempts toMine objectives in English. the best known was Charles S. Montle-tnn's analysis of The Soria/ Objectives of School English 92.1).This was au extensive survey of the goals for English study, usinga procedure suggested by Babbitt. In the final list of 1.581 separate-social goals- ranked in order of the frequency with which they hadlawn cited, the highest ranking went to correct spelling, the secondto t he ability to speak in complete sentences. Number eight was thefirst ohiect Ivo not related .to t he mechanics of language use:habit of reading for enjoyment literature of the better sort." Pen-dleton's results illustrate a major difficulty in any attempt to derivea value ordering trim a consensus of judgmentsthe top rankingdid not result because spelling was the first objective of most

SCIENCE AND 'ME TEACHING OF ENGLISH 87

adults, but because it appeared consistently as a minor objective. Aprogram structured around such surveys could easily become pre-occupied with relatively trivial concerns which in themselves werenot highly valued by anyone: few would argue that accurate spell-ing was not useful, but few would want to elevate it to the centralposition it carried in Pendletons results.'"

icilio Study

The emphasis upon funetkmal activities eventually helped tobring studies of motion pictures and radio mum; firmly into theEnglish curriculum. One of the most important influences was aseries of studies sponsored by the Payne Fund between 1929 and1932, just after the introduction of sound had radically altered themotion picture experience. The studies. reported in nine volumes.wore conceived and carried through as a related set of investiga-tions of the effects and importance of motion pictures. focussingespecially on their influence on children. W. W. Charters of OhioState was chairman of the research committee: other members camefrom six other eastern and midwestern universities. Their reports,though not specifically concerned with motion pictures in educa-tion. clearly demonstrated the important role which they played inthe lives of children."' As Edgar Dale, also of Ohio State, put it insummarizing his contribution to the series, "The effect of motionpictures . . is universal and this fact must be faced in a states-manlike manner by exhibitors and producers, by teachers, and byparents..."

NCTE watched with interest as motion pictures became increas-ingly popular. citing reports on the size of the national audience,and later of the Payne Fund volumes, in English Journal.nThroughout the thirties. though there were a few attempts to dealwith the movie as a literary experience comparable to any other, theemphasis was upon raising standards of taste, much as it had beenin earlier discussions of newspaper and magazine studies. TheCouncils efforts were guided mainly by Newark's William Lewin,who owed his own interest in. film studies to his supervisor of.English. Ma>: lerzberg In 1922. Lewin persuaded NCTE to estab-lish a Committee on l'hotoplay Appreciation and then proceeded togic it vigorous leadership. Lists of classic films were developed,standards of appreciation outlined and finally a nationwide eval-uation of the effectiveness of class study in influencing taste carriednut. "l'he hitter was more a demonstration than an experiment, butit showed that methods used in other English studios could beadapted for films. The name assigned to motion picturesthat of"photoplay"-- was characteristic of the way in which the subjectwas approached; presumably it also reassured the teacher first

TRADI't ION AND it 140101

nuturing ""'" unnundhlr ground. IV 1931 the work of the WTI.:photoplay committee was well-enough known that Lewin couldreport that "major producers- were "consulting us as to forthcom-ing. projected. and suggested pictures." offering scripts to thecommittee for examination betbre production decisions weremade;' Most of this collaboration centered on producing motionpictures based on the classic texts of the high school canon, for whichlitiwin's committee then produced study guides.

Studies of other media generated comparatively little enthusi-asm among English teachers during the decades between the wars.\ewspuper and magazine studies continued much as they had beenbefore, though with increased emphasis on their "functionalism-atter their high standing in the Clapp report. Methods changed

hicomming either on improving taste or on the conventions ofjournalism ht hat is the difference between an editorial and n leadarticle, and so on); likdio broadcasting also received some atten-tion. though again without much enthusiasm until just prior toflorid War II. At that point interest rose sharply. but it wastocussed on the effects of propaganda rather than with radio as amedium of interest in its own right. Max I lerzberg. in a report!non the NCTE Kadin Committee, reflected the prevailing attitude

ben he conuminted that "censorship, except of a very discreetsort, is much less valuable than the .estoblishment of a criticalattitude. in which the good will be properly praised and the hadperceived and perhaps- avoided.'

Eva/awl/1,g Mc Selections fur Study

The relatively minor changes resulting from the attempt tospecify minimum cssentiala and htnctional activities Air the teach-ing of literature did not mean that it would not feel the pressure for011601CA'; it simplv meant that efficiency in literary studios wouldMint' to focus on the proper grade placement for the selectionschosen for study. One approach developed out of studies of readingcomprehension and will be discussed in the next section. The othersought to t at inventories of existing attitudes as providing anant horit at i e "consensus."

The first of these studies were mentioned in the previous chap-ter; they derived From the interest in child study and helped tochallenge the appropriateness of the collegiate model of instructionfor the high school course in literature. They were not thought of aspro tiding a basis for organizing the English course, though theydid have some influence on the selections suggested for outsidereading. Under the influence or Robbitt. however. this changed;student interests were elevated into a criterion for the selection andplacement of the works studied. Charles Sumner ('row's doctoralproject I 192 II at Teachers College. Columlna. was one of the first inthis tradition. Crow stated explicitly that he was attempting to

SCIENCE AND THE TEACIIINI: or Estatsu 89

lest and arrange the subject. mutter in a given field. Englishliterature in the high school, in accordance with the pupils' judge-met. of its values given in terms of ends that are generallyrecognized as socially valuable..." Ile asked 1.999 seniors to rateseventyfour classics on five scales measuring whether the bookswere interesting. (2) inspiring. (3) artistic. (4) desirable 1o.e ownor recomniend to others. and (5) easy to read and understand.Crow's conclusion was that only seven of the seventy-fou fre-quently used hooks could be called "very effective- in meeting thewilds summarized in the five scaks: ninny titles were not rated aseffective on fitly of thorn. (Students ranked only books they hadstudied intensively in class.) His findings, though frequently citedby later investigators, were hardly surprising to teachers familiarwith studies of reading interests. What was new, however, was theshill in emphasis away from discovering where children were (sothat their level could he raised), and toward taking the judgment ofthe pupil as a valid criterion for the end point of the process (thelevel at which instntion should be geared).

Other investigators sought their consensus of opinion front othersources-- high school teachers, courses of study. literary critics.and college professors all had their advocates.'"Hte college en-trance lists can be recognized as an underlying influence on many ofthe results that emerged. In a 1930 survey of 4 "representative"courses or study from different parts of the country, for example,all but seven of the 25 most frequent selections were from the listsof the National Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements inEnglish. (All saver exceptions were from the junior high schoolgrades, when) the demands of the colleges seem more distant.) Ofthe Same 21 selections, grade placements for 10 ranged all the wayiron the seventh to the twelfth year; none of the titles hatl'a rangeof less than three years.'" High school teachers remained for themost part umlisturbed by this lack of uniformity. agreeing withJohn Haney of Philadelphia when he asked. "Why should ourinsistent standardizers demand that all sorts and conditions of.leachers should instruct im a prescribed manner all sorts andconditions of pupilsr "

What teachers did suggeist in the name of interests was theadaptation of the classic texts to make them more palatable. Again,this movement began in response to Hall's urgings during theprewar period. After the war it became more frequent, reinforced byan assumption that there were "essential- and "nonessential" partsto literary works, Thus a teacher from a llackensack (New Jersey)high school could urge unblushingly that the "Solution of Rorke"was to "Reduce the speech from seventy-eight to forty-two pages.Burke should have done that himself," And -another front SouthPhiladelphia could make Coipus "somewhat less of a bore and anaffliction': by reducing "they plot to its elementsstripped of itsphilosophy, its ethical note, its poetry. What is Comas but the

I) TR A DI TION A NI) REFORM

baldest and crudest of melodramasr I: Everyone knew that chil-dren enjoyed melodrama. The startling thing in such bowdler-izat ions was the great enthusiasm with which they were carried out;nobody questioned whether the skeleton remaining was really thegroat work of literature that demanded a place in the curriculum inthe first place. Discussions of such radical adaptations were pub-lished throughout the twenties and thirties as practical teachingsuggestions.

Heading Skills

One aspect of the study of literature which lent itself well toscientific study was the analysis of the functional skills involved inreading. As part of the general testing movement, the measurementof reading achievement actually began rather late: Courtis' stan-dardized silent reading test in 1915 was the first to appear. Themany investigations which followed were especially important be-cause they suggested that silent reading was more efficient thanoral reading in both speed and comprehension. this was at variancewith the emphasis which English teachers had been placing on oralreading and oral expression, but they adapted to the new concernsquickly. Judd and Buswells Silent Rending: A- Study of Ifs Var-ious Types (1922) was especially influential, focussing attention onthe variety of different skills which a mature' reader usesthedifference between skimming newspaper headlines. reading a lightpoem, and appreciating a complex novel, for example." Dovetailingneatly with the anniments that Allan Abbott and others had beenadvanring about genre studies, the book also helped to propel thetypes approach into a new prominence.

Finally studies of reading turned their attention toward the levelof comprehension which could be expected from students readingthe currently popular selections. Two studies, one from 'leachersCollege. Columbia. and the other from Clark University, usedsimilar procedures and arrived at similar results. Short "represen-tative" passages were taken from literary works popular in the highschool: comprehension questions were constructed for each passage:and the tests were administered to a sample of students. T. W.I don completed his leachers College study first (1925). Usingselections from The Spy. -The Destruction of Sennacherib," JuliusCaesar. and The .0rigia of Species in order to be able to compareresults from different literary genres. he testbd the comprehensionof ninth graders and concluded: '"I'he average reading comprehen-sion as compared with the total comprehension Possibilities of theselections used is so IniAliore that it is very hazardous to proceedon the assumption that students in the ninth grade can read wellenough to nanprelwnd and appreciate literature merely by read-

SCIENCE: AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 91

ing."-" His results also suggested that there were real differencesin the difficulties generated by the different genres. again provid-evidence in support at' the types approach.

Mary C. Burch. in a slightly later but more extensive study119281, recorded the responses of students in grades 7 to 12 on asimilar test. She also concluded that the existing placement of textswas appropriate for only 25 percent of each grade level. but foundthat the differences within each grade were greater than the dif-ferences between it and the five others studied. Following Crow'slead. she used the voluntary reading preferences of the students todetermine the proper range for school teaching."

Though the results of these and other, less extensive examina-tions of the correspondence between the abilities of students andthe difficulty of conventional materials were hardly encouraging.the result was paradoxic-Ily to give teachers of literature a newconfidence that they if indeed have an objective. quantifiablesubject matter. just like the rest of the teaching world. Thisattitude is apparent. for example. in the quotation from Hat1927 odiiorial at the beginning Of this chapter: there the teaching ofliterature was directly equated with the teaching of "the higherskills- of reading. and both placed within the tradition of scientificstudy.

NCT concern with practical reading skills continued. but ex-cept for occasional and short-lived flirtations, it soon became aseparate concern from the teaching of literature. By. the earlythirties. with attention in reading studies shifting toward physi-ological defects in disabled readers and that in literature toward thepuwiskni of "experience.- the teaching of reading in the highschool had come to mean almost exclusively remedial work,'"

The Focus on the Individual

Ability Groups

Demunds for efficiency and economy. "objective- measures ofachievement and intelligence, and a burgeoning, heterogeneousschool population combined during the twenties to create a newawareness of individual differences. Ability grouping was one of thefirst and most lasting responses. This spread quickly after the war.with an original conception that was perfectly blameless: teachersthought it would be easier to provide individualized instruction iftheir classes were homogeneous.

From the beginning, however. the concern with grouping stu-dents into "inferior- and -superior- classes carried with it thedanger of poor teaching. The earlier development of business Eng-

92 "'KA MT ION Aso If Eroam

lish curricula had at -least begun with the premise that thestudents in them were interested in other work than that in theregular English class: the new division placed the emphasis on theirimibillty to do the same work. Thus a trend quickly developed inwhich the gifted classes were given an enriched curriculum, the"slow" groups a strong close of drill and "minimum essentials,-This downgrading of activities for the low group and the shift ofteacher interest is apparent even in the earliest articles on abilitygrouping in English: by the 1930s, partly in response to studies ofgifted students by Terman and others, it was deeply ingrained."Superior classes clearly became the prerogative of the superiorteacher. As the head of the English department in one New YorkCity high school put it, "Gifted students thrive under the leader-ship of distinguished minds." Slow students, even to a New Jerseyteacher obviously devoted to them, "[call] forth everything that theteacher has to offer in tact, sympathy, and understanding." Thepoint to note is that they do not call forth interest or excitement.

The Ihilton Ilan

leachers of English treated ability groups as a means to greaterefficiency: they alic, thought of them as a compromise with theideal provision of a completely differentiated program for eachstudent. '"I'lw highest social efficiency." wrote Hatfield in 1925. "isevidently to he attained only by giving.each individual with 011 hispeculiarities the training he most needs. So we have abilitygrouping.. which carried through to its extreme becomes individual,instruction."'" The ."Dalton" or "contract" plan represented oneattempt to :any through to that desirable extreme. In essence, theplan involved each student meeting with his teachers and making a"contract- to do certain work within a given period of time, usuallya week. The terms of the contract could he varied to meet the needsof the pupil. but its value was specified in advance so that eachstudent would know whether he was working for an A. a 13, or a C,and would have some measure of choice in the matter. Although theplan was really an offshoot of work done before the war at SanFrancisco State Normal College, it was first systematically put intopractice by Helen Parkhurst in Dalton, Massachusetts. Both Park-hurst and Evelyn Dewey used the name of the latter town inpopularizing the approach, thoeith the precise formulation variedalmost Ingo school to school!'

With its focus on individual effort, the Dalton plan was criticizedby some teachers as violating "the social nature of English instruc-t ion" being particularly detrimental in the teaching of literature."This objection was circumvented by including some contractedgroup work. allowing students to discuss what they had read withone ;mother as well as with the teacher. By the late twenties, the

SCIENCE AND THE TEACHING or ENGLISH 93

Dalton plan was running smoothly enough to produce some rhap-sodic evaluations, like that of a teach& from the South PhiladelphiaI I igh School for Girls:

The recitation has truly. but unobtrusively passed. Group work, super-vised study, socialized study, and projects both individual and coopera-tive have become automatically the means by which the learningprocess is carried on. Learning to do by doing; learning that learning isa slow process; learning that mastery is possible and that nothing elseii-lacceptablethe goals of education have come within the consciousgyn.!) of boo h lcaClumrs and si tuitints.

In t he end, the critics rather than the proponents of the contractmet hod triumphed. The early concern that the

contracts put undue emphasis on individual work at theexpense of group activities had been easy enough to overcome. Bythe early thirties. however, teachers were beginning to recognizethat the goals inherent in the Dalton plan were out of harmony withthe general goals of literature instruction. The interest of a studentworking to fulfill a contract in literature would be an interestengendered by desire to fulfill the contract; it would not be aninterest in the story itself. Teachers began to find that the contractcould even serve to stifle rather than arouse interest; once thecontract was fulfilled, the student would simply stop reading,Finally. the contract had from the beginning placed too muchemphasis upon quantitative rather than qualitative differences inthe work required. The difference between an A and a B usually laysimply in the amount of work done. so that an A-student would doall of the work of t he B-students, and then some. It was not enoughthat he do the same work better. Proper individualization of in-structkm, on the other hand. needed to emphasize qualitativedifferences in students and the work they should be doing. Hatfieldrang the death knell in a 1932 editorial, though he continued toprint defenses of the method for some years following: "Let theteacher, if he will, work out the contract as his idea of what hevi ants the pupils to do. Rut let him find some more soMal andhumane method of dealing with impressional le. plastic humanbeings.''"

IV, Work

The "mastery unit" was another approach to the problem ofinch vidualizing instruction that in the end developed in a ratherdifferent direction. Henry C. Morrison popularized the term in hisbook. 11w Practice of Teaching in the Secondary School 11926). A"unit" to him consisted essentially of all of the activities andmaterials necessary to bring about a given change in pupil behav-ior. to "inculcate the 'understanding,' for example, that the

91 TRADITION AND RKFORM

colon is a signpost pointing to an enumeration.- Each studentmould proceed through a unit at his own speed, moving on to thenext only after he had demonstrated mastery. It was an approachwhich dovetailed neatly with the concern for minimal essentials.but it also suffered from the problems of that approach whenapplied to English: literature was not easily broken down into"units" for mastery. at least not in the sense that Morrison wasusing those terms. Hatfield. though initially pleased with theimplication of purposefulness in all of the activities introduced intothe unit. quickly depled that though "such notions are decidedlycomfortable." the underlying conception of growth was inadequate.People do not grow by the accumulation of the separate, completedunits of skill that / Morrison's analysis implied. The productionmodel from industry could not he so directly applied to teaching."

The Mastery unit. like the Dalton plan,. enjoyed a brief vogueand then dropped front view. "Units," however. became ingrainedin the educational vocabulary. where they remain to this day with ameaning quite different from that which they originally bore.Instead of a discrete set of materials with a limited, specificbehavioral goal toward which the individual student could progressat his own pace. "unit" came to he used to describe virtually anyset of activities centered around one common focus. Talk of mos-wry in Nlorrison's sense had very little meaning with activities ofthis sort.

Leonard V. Koos. associate director of the National Survey ofSecondary Education carried out by the Office of Education, dis-cussed some of the findings of the survey before the 1932 NCTEconvention. Ile pointed out-that 71 percent of the nation's secondory schools were using homogeneous grouping for English classes.It higher percent than fir any other subject in the curriculum. IQwas the most frequent criterion for forming the groups. Ile noted,tom that "unit-assignments" were among the most frequent pre-visions tor individual differences. (hough both the Dalton plan andthe Morrison plan in schools reporting. to use them with unusualsuccess" deviated widely from the plans described by the origi-nators. Must such teaching, though it continued to go under avariety of names, had by 1932 come to represent simply a sequenceof related activities, usually with a definite beginning and definiteend. which could be used with a single student or, more usually, witha class."

tAitietit Testing

In addition to using intelligence and achievement scales to dividestudents into homogeneous groups. teachers of English gave in-creasing attention to the use of "new type" or "objective- exami-nations for diagnosis and evaluation. Though they had difficulty inadapting such tests for the teaching of literature. teachers weresoon won over by arguments about- the reliability, fairness, and

SCIENCE AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH 95

(101101113' (they were easy to correct) of the objective tests.'" Aswith many aspects of the movement for efficiency and scientificmethods. however. it was the "minimum essentials" and "func-tional" reading skills that ultimately received Lhe most attention.

The history of objective testing in English during this periodhot II in literature and in other areas of the curriculumis somewhatunusual in that both liberal and conservative views of teachingcOuld unite, though for different reasons, in support of tests, To theconservatives, testing was a way to keep up standards and insurethe place of discipline and memory work." To the liberals, itprovided the teacher with a way to diagnose pupils' weaknesses andthus to better meet their needs. That Hatfield undertook to edit aseries of "Practice Tests- which were commercially published andadvertised in the English Journal is as clear an indication asanything of his point of view. Equally significant is a series of"diagnostic" tests of reading ability put together by John J.DeBoer, the Journal's assistant editor and resident radical. Hisrationale was explicit: "Teachers of English and instructors respon-sihle for the educational guidance of high-school youth .cannotprovide competent counsel without a fairly comprehensive knowl-edge of the mental and educational characteristics of the pupilsplaced in their charge. ""

The more conservative view of testing was represented by theCollege Entrance Examination Hoard, which in the spring of 1929appointed a Commission on English to undertake a major study ofthe English examination. Charles Swain Thomas of the HarvardGraduate School of Education was named chairman; his relativelyconservative eastern college view dominates the report (thoughII:afield was also a member of the commission). The final report.published in 1931 as Examining the Examination in English. is afascinating portrait of attitudes both toward testing and towardscientific method in general.

The report began by dedicating itself to scientific method. Thecommission members decided that, although they could have madepronouncements "ex cathedra," that would be "wholly unsatisfac-tory." Indeed. they felt they were in a unique position to avoid"subjective conclusions." Not only did they have available forstudy the accumulated data of twenty-eight years of testing by theCEEB, but also a mass of data from other agencies. And mostimportant of all. "There were readily at hand methods of objective

estigation which the recent years have refined and. validated. '''"Most- of the report, however, was hardly scientific. There was an

historical study of the form of the Restricted and Comprehensiveexaminations over the years. and tables of the topics and optionsthat Intl been provided; old examination hooklets were informallyreviewed to ascertain that both kinds of exams had been fairlyscored: one chapter devoted itself to aims of English study; anotherdealt with the conditions of administering and the details of scoring

913 T RA Da ION AND It EFOHM

the essays. The science in the study consisted of questionnairesurveys of students and teachers about various aspects of thetesting program and their English classes, aml of a correlationalstudy of the predictive value of the Scholastic Aptitude Test.(SAT), the Restricted and Comprehensive examinations in English.and school grades. These scientific analyses were all relegated Lc) anappendix and largely ignored: many of the results are not. men-tioned anywhere in the report- Still, they were the commission'sclaim to science and objectivity, and they' were published in full..

Much to the chagrin of the- commission, Lhe results of their,rorrelational analyses consistently indicated that Lhe best predictorof college achievi'ment was the SAT, next. the school record. thenthe Comprehensive, and finally the Restricted examination in En-glish. The problem with this in the commission's view was that theSAT was a mechanical examination which did not "Lest the candi-date's ability to paraphrase or Lo make a prikis, or La interpret thesubtler qualities of a poem read at sight.- Faced with Lhe evidencethat the SAT was a better predictor. of college performance inEnglish, the commission finally rested on iLs humanism:question is not so much a result. reducible Lo statistics as ii is acletorminalion to retain in American education certain factors con-tributing to civilization and culture rather than to Lhe mechanicalefficiency of Lhe American college student."' In the end theirrecommendations suggested abandoning Lhe restricted examina-tion. but asked only minor changes in the cherished comprehensiveessay test..'

While rejecting the objective examination for their own pur-poses. the commission managed also to conclude LhaL Leachers ofEnglish "cannot. afford to ignore Lhe value of these tests in class-room work.- Indeed the report. devotes a whole chapter (writtenprimarily by Thomas) to the educational value of examinations inthe classroom. The purposes of such a testing program (to be a"recurrent- practice throughout the year) were several: ii wouldgive the teacher diagnostic information; ii would help "systema-tize- instruction; and it would serve Lo motivate students by givingthem an impartial record of achievement_ There was an inherentfait h that all students would achieve, and thus be able Lo bask int heir Own reflected glory; the effects of such objective proof of theirown Mobility on students who might. continually fail were hardlyconsidered.

Experimental Method

Studies of reading interests and of comprehension skills wereessentially static: they could say something about present. condi-

SCIENCE AND Tim TEACIIING OF ENGLISH 97

lions but were at best only suggestive about- how to make thingsbetter. Indeed they could even help perpetuate the status quo:Burch, for example, explicitly used her discoveries about what thest talents were reading on their own as a criterion for determiningwhat they shmdd be reading in the school. Experimental studies ofalternative teaching methods, on the other hand, did offer a waytou ant progressive improvement of methodology through the oh-jective determination of the most effective procedures.

The path toward sound experimental study in the teaching ofEnglish was not an easy one, however: indeed, a cynic might Menwonder if the number of false starts from pseudoscientific. impro-perly designed "studies" may not have done more harM than all thegood from bettor projects. Teachers quickly picked up the terminol-ogy of science: every change in curriculum became an "experi-ment": every fluctuation in student behavior hecame "significant":all procedures. were "evaluated." Yet only a few made- even anattempt to use an experimental design, and the best of those hadserious flaws.

The first experimental study of importance in the teaching ofliterature was Nancy Coryell's doctoral project (1927) at TeachersCollege, Columbia," It was set in the context of a growing debateabout the most successful way to approach literary works in class.Two different philosophies had long been evident: on the one .handthere were teachers who lauded the benefits of allowing students toread extensively on their own with only minimal discussion of theworks and no close textual analysis; this approach had becomeespecially preValent among teachers concerned with socializing classprocedures and with insuring student interest. On the other handthere were those who felt appreciation was an earned achievement,the result of careful study and thoughtful analysis; here the empha-sis was on extended study of a few books, with at least several weeksof class discussion devoted to the thstpils of each. Intensive studyhad of course been the approach at the end of the nineteenth century,where the emphasis had been philological and rhetorical: though theform of the analysis had been much -modified over the years, thevalue of some sort of careful class study was not usual:ly questioned.NCI'E had focussed so much attention on extensive for "home" or"independent") reading to bring it into wider use as an adjunct to,not as a replacement for, class study The two appioaches wereconsidered to be complementary, and both had had their place in theReorganization report.'"

As extensive reading became more and more accepted.:how-tArgr,and as the goals of instruction turned toward breadth of i:x4perienc/t.,,voices began to be heard arguing that extensive reading should'replace, not supplement, intensive study. I t was this question thatCoryell addressed in a year-long experimental- comparison of the twoprocedures, As she summarized it, her extensive reading classes

9i TRADITION AND iiIFORM

involved "the rapid reading of a comparatively large amount ofliterature with general comments and discussion in class"; theintensive reading class concentrated on "the detailed, analyticalstudy of the minimum of literature required by the syllabus" 1).The reading for the extensive group was set up to parallel but exceedthe work clone in the other classes: if the or read four of the Idylls ofthe King. the other read eleven, and five thousand more lines ofElizabethan poetryand so on through the syllabus. The experi-ment involved nine eleventh grade classes in one school, includingone extensive reading, one intensive reading, and one control groupat each of three ability levels. Testing included a fairly extensivebattery of standardized tests of reading and comprehension, but themajor focus was on a final examination which Coryell constructed tocover only the hooks studied by the intensive readers. Finding at theend of the year that the two groups had progressed equally, Coryelldrew the conclusion that the extensive readers "probably learnedfive times as much again, which they had no chance to use on theexaminations, ""

Coryell's study is of considerable importance as one of the earliestexamples of relatively careful application of experimental proceduresto the study of the teaching of literature. The results could hardly beignored and prompted considerable debate between proponents ofthe two approaches, a dehate that by the end of the 1930s ended upat about the point where Coryell had begun: a situation of uneasycoexistence,'"

It is indicative of the general level of pedagogical science that thestudy was never questioned on its merits; throughout the debatesthe proponents of intensive study tended to ignore rather thanchallenge her results.' The study certainly could have heen faultedat a number of points: only a few teachers and a few classes wereinvolved, and these were obviously More enthusiastic about the"experimental" extensive reading approach; the measuring instru-ment, though testing only content from the books all had studied,was dearly weighted in its emphasis toward 'the goals which hadgoverned the studies of the extensive readers: and the results afterall simply indicated that there was no difference. not that theextensive readers had done better. Later studies tended to substan-tiate these results, but Coryell's work by itself was not thatconclusive."

Literature was certainly the most difficult area of English instruc-tion to investigate with experimental methods: it was simply toodifficult to measure objectively results that were framed in terms of"appreciation," "attitudes," or lifelong habits. Yet the situation inlanguage and composition seems to have been little hetter: therewere few true experimental studies. and those tended to have seriousfaults. In 1961. an NCTE committee began a review of the entirefield of research in written composition: they found only five studies

SCIENCH AND THE TEACHING OF ENCLISD 99

out of the hundreds reportS that met most of their criteria for soundinvestigation.'" The situation in the teaching of literature wascertainly whrse.h"

Settling Down

The twenties began with a burst of enthusiasm about benefits thatwould derive from the application of science to the problems ofEnglish, but the proffered benefits were slow in coming, and not altto the liking of teachers. Many studies,- firmly under the control ofthose car* ill; them out, did tend to support and reinforce tenden-cies underway in English; Coryell's project falls into this category tothe extent that the measuring instrument was weighted towards the-procedures in her experimental group. Yet it was not too long beforeEnglish teachers began to learn that studies affecting their fieldwould not always be under their control. Perhaps the most effectiveagent in educating teachers to the dangers of poorly conductedresearch was a series of studies of class size, in English as well asother subjects. Comparing pupil achievement on a few easily mea-sured variables, these studies seemed to indicate that small classeshad no distinct advantages over large; in some cases the students inthem did not even do as well. Administrators, always under pressureto cut costs, quickly used these studies as justification for large-scalejumps in the number of pupils per teacher."

Such studies eventually made Melt leaders aware that teachersof English might not make the world's best scientists, and scientistsmight not know how to make the world's best teacher of English.limey Belle Inglis emphasized this point in delivering her presiden-tial address to the 1929 NCTE convention: "Say over to yourselvesthe names of the really great teachers of history or your personalexperience. Did they spend hours humped over correlations? Manyof the antagonisms between the two fields could be saved if each weregiven due place and recognition, and persons fitted by nature anddisposition for the one were not forced into the other. "s' A year laterI latfield, spurred by administrators' reactions to the studies of classsize, was less sure that the current set of "scientists" deserved such"due place and recognition." He granted that scientific investigationis -obviously necessary":

Necessary but more difficult than educational "scientists" haveusually realized. A few loosely- conducted. slightly supervised experimeats with large and small classes seemed to show no great advantagein the small classes. Immediately the majority of administrators and,VI` suppose. of professors of education, leaped to the conclusion thatClasses everywhere, under all 'sorts of teachers, might safett; he nude

100 TRADITION AND REFORM

larger.... we do not realize the complexity of the teaching-learningwilt ion, The number of "variables" to lie controlled in the experi-ment rt tho tamiliar "parallel groups.' type is dangerously large..we are credulous. unduly credulous. Scientific experiment is a newmagic which sounds logical. It has not yet been used enough toproduce contradictory results.''

I lis conclusion that class size could not be studied apart from otherissues of curriculum and instruction represents the balance ofopinion today."

Still the scientific orientation had been deeply ingrained:- theskepticism that developed was really a sign of the increasingsophisticlition of teachers and their leaders about such approaches.They did not reject science. but they did begin to move to control it.A Committee on Research was organized: annual summaries ofresearch in English studies were prepared for the English Journal;and reviews of new studies began to point out the faults andlimitations as well as the conclusions reached."' By the mid-thirtiesscience was clearly no longer viewed as the solution to all the ills ofthe teaching of English, but it was just as clearly seen as one of thetails that would be put to use in the search for solutions to those ills.

SCIENCE ANIt TIM TEACIIING ENGLISII 101

CI IA PTE II IV NOTES

I. Edward L. Thorndike. "The Nature. Purposes. and GeneralMethods of Measurements of Educational Products." in National Societyfor the Study of Education. Seventeenth Yearbook (Bloomington: NSSE.1918). Cited by Lawrence A. Cremin in The Transformation of the SchoolI New York: N'Mtage Books, 19016 p. 185.

2. W. W. Charters, Curriculum Construction New York: MacmillanCo.. 19231, P. 4.

3, W. W. Illatlieldl. "Literature Can Be Taught." English Journal16:8 (October 1927): 648.49. The reference is to Arthur I. flates Thebnprorement of Reading Itiew York: Macmillan Co.. 1927).

4. John .1. DeBoer. "Changing Objectives in English... English :Journal21:5 (Nlay 1932): 403-0.1.

5_ On the efficiency nun ement, see especially Raymond E. Callahan.Education and the Cult of E, ficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press.1962).

6. National Society far the Study of Education. Thirty-Seventh Year-book: Part 11. The Scientific Movement in Education Illloomington: NSSE,1938). p. 57.

7. The army program is summarized by Cremin, Transformation of theSchool. pp. 186-87. On ability grouping in the general context of providingfor individual differences. see Roy 0. llillett in Provisions for IndividualDifferences, Marking. and Promotion. Monograph 13 of the NationalSurvey of Secondary Education. Bureau of Education Bulletin 1932, no. 17I Washington: Government Printing Office, 1933).

8. All tour were distributed as yearbooks of the National Society for theStudy of Education: Minimum Essentials in Elementary-School Subjects,Fourteenth Yearbook. Part I 11915); Second Report of the Coin:Wiley onMinimal Essentials in Elementary- School Subjects. Sixteenth Yearbook.Part I (19171: Third Report of the Committee on Economy of Time inEducation. Seventeenth Yearbook. Part 1 11918): and Fourth Report of theCommittee on Economy of Time in Education, Eighteenth Yearbook. PartII 119191.

9. Franklin Bobbin, How To Make a Curriculum (New York: Hough-ton Mifflin Company. 1924). This book and his earlier The Curriculum11918) were frequently cited by teachers- attempting to formulate a curriculum for literature throughout the twenties and thirties.

10. Ibid.. pp. 76 -79.1 I. English was cheaper than the other languages because, as a required

course. more students took it and class sizes were larger.12. NSSE, Fourteenth Yearbook, I: p. 147.13. NSSE, Eighteenth Yearbook, the section was by W. S. Gray.14. "Report of the Committee on Economy of Time in English, English

Journal 9:1 (January 1920): 32-34.IS. For a chronicle of changing attitudes toward language, see Raven I.

McDavid. Jr.. ed.. An Examination of the Attitudes of the NCTE TotrardLanguage. Res.-arch Report no. 4 (Urbana. NCTE. 1065). This providesvery little interpretation or reference beyond NCTE journals. On Leonard'scotmnitt cc. see "The National Council. 1911-36. English Journal 25:10(December 1936): 805-29.

102 Timorous Aso It Ennio

In 'Challenged,- Editorial. English doarnal 11:9 (November 1922):5s 1.s5. See also "Social Studies as the Core," News-and Notes, Englishdiewnal 9:5 (May 1920): 295;96. During 1922 considerable attention was(let (god to increasing required English from three to four years. Statementsin support were or en obtained from Vice President Marshall. (Max .1.Ilerzberg. "Four Years of English in Secondary Schools.- English Journal11:1 lApril 19221: 236-39.1

IT Essie Chamberlain. "Curriculum Building in English." Englishfuming 11:1 (January 1925): 1-12. "Fourteenth Annual Meeting of theNat lona! council of Teachers of English.- English donna', 14:1 (January1925): -17-7(1. On her earlier interests. see her "The Possibilities of Class-room 415periment. English Journal 10:$ 1 (October 19211: 427-38.

15, John NIantle Clapp. 771e Place of English in Aniericon Life, Reportof an Investigation by a Committee of the National Council of Teachers ofEnglish (Chicago. NCTE. 1926). Summarized us ''Report of Committee(in Place and Function of English in American Life.- English Journal 15:2I February 19261: 119-3;1.

19. Charles S. PendletmL The Social Objectives of School Englishash% illy; IV the author. 19211. Other investigations with goals similar to

those (1I the Clapp report included .1. W. Searson, "Meeting the PublicIkmand.- English: Journal 10:6 (June 19211: 327-31; and a report from theChicago English Club. "Out of School list's of English.- English Journal22:6 (tone 1933): -166-71.

2(1. The summary volume was W. W, Charters,: Alotion Pictures andYouth (New York: Nlacmilltin Company. 1933). Twh of the studies haverecently been reprinted as NB of the Literature of the Cinenut series. EdgarDale, Children 's attendance au Alotion Pictures. and Wendell S. i)ysingerand Christian A. Itticktnick. The Emotional Responses of Children to (ha'Alotion PictureSituation (New York: Arno Press and the New Yorh Times,19701. These originally appeared in 1935 and 1933. respectively.

21, Dalt% Children's Attendance at Motion Pictures, p. 73.22. See "Movie Madness.- English Journal 21:9 (November 19321:

773-74. The early history is reviewed in a 1935 editorial, "Bow MuchAnalysts of IthotoplaysTs English Journal 24:3 (March 1935): 241-42. 'thepioneering work was (lone by Max Ilerzberg and Edgar Dale,

23. Al illiam Lewin. Photo/day Appnk-hrtion in American High Schools(Neu York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 19341. The study was later criticizedon the grounds that the teachers were not competent to conduct filmstudies. judging from the preferences (ley reported. See kV. Illat field]."Teachers' Literary Judgment.- EngimIt .lonrnal 23:9 (November 1034):

75.21. William Lewin. "New Photoplays." English Journal 23:6 (June

19:111: 509. There was also sonic interest in student-made films. See 'lardyH. I:inch, "Film Production in the School A Survey.- English Journal25:3 I.Alay 1 9393: 116571.

25. SIT Nlabel A. liessey, Report of a Committee of the MTE on theUse of the llogozinv in the thigh School English Classroom (Chicago:NCTE, 19351; Eleanor Morison. "The Newspaper of 'Today," EnglishJournal 1(1:3 (March 19271: 192-99: and William W. Wallenberg., "GettingTruth Irma Your Newspaper.- English Journal 2(1:5 May 1937): 363-68.

26. Thi was part/t- because radio was treated as part of the speech.curriculum. The early work of the Radio Commjitee focussed on arrangingbroadcasts of literary works. including a series- of Shakespeare's playsbetween 19:- 6 and 193$. in conjunct km with t he American School of the Air.

Seit:set: Ami Tim Th Aclitm: or Ennitsii 102

See \lax .1. 111_971:erg. "Listen In! English Journal 25:9 (November 19361:775: and 26:10 Illecenther 19371: :427-28. On radio and speech, see F. 11.Lum English 'Teacher and Radio Broadcasts.- English Journal:33:6 (tune 1934): 478.85.

27. Max .1. Herzberg. Radio and the English 'handier (Chicago: Mit.19371. p. 2. See also I. Keith 'Eyler. The listening Habits of Oakland(California) Pupils... English Journal 25:3 (March 19:381: 206:15: and I.Keith Tyler. What ('an We I /o About the Radio? English Journal 27:7iSeptenther 19381: 556-66.

28. Charles Sumner Crow. &filtration of English ljteraturedn the HighSchool. Contributions to Education no. 1.11 (New York.: Teachers College.Columbi'i University, 19241. p

29. Step for example Earl liudelson, Our Courses of Study in laiterrt English .h artful 12:7 (September 19231: 481.87: FranKes MaryI lughes. -What Do IlighSchool Teachers Say About the Classics atPresent Ilsed?- English duurnal 13:5 (May 1924): 331-35: Stuart-Noble, "AUnified Sequenct. in High-S(7_1mM Literature. English Journal 13:5 (May1924)7:150.52: and John NI. Stalkner and Fred Eggan. "American NovelistsRanked: A PsychoIngical Study,- English Journal 18:4 (April 19291:293.307. One survey was used as the basis of a basal reading series: IlerbertBruner. "Determining Basic Reading Materials Through a Study of C hil-drt.it's Interests and Adult Judgments," Teachers College Record 30:4(January 19291: 285-309.

30. Erna B. Conrad and Katherine Hickok. "Placement of LiterarySelections for Junior and Senior High Schools.- English Journal 19:5 (May193111: 377-84,

31. John L. Haney, "Standardization in English.- English donor& 11:4I April 19221: 214-21.

:12. Ilubert A. Wright:, "The Solution of Burke.- English Journal 12:5N I ay 19231 :117.21: and Abner A. NI iller. -Streamlining Cmtins. English

Journal 21:7 (September 19351: 580-82.33. See Nila Banton Smith..4mricun Rending Instruction (New York:

Silver. Burdett and Company. 1934), pp. 155.58: National Society for theStudy of Education. Twentieth Yearbook. II 11921): and ('harks II. Juddand (My T. Buswell, Silent Heading: A Study of Its l'arions Types,Supplementary Educational Monographs (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress. 19221.

:1-1. Theo. W. II. Irian. Comprehension Difficulties of A'inth GradeStudents in the Study of Literature, Contributions to Education no. 189(New York: Teachers ('allege. Columbia University, 19254 pp. 71.72. Heannmarized his results in -16: coniany in the 'reaching of High-SchoolLiterature.- English Journal 16:2 (February 19271: 114-19.

33. Mary Crowell Burch. -Determination of a Content in the Course inLiterature of a Suitable Difficulty for Junior and Senior High SchoolSttalents.- Genetic Psychology Alonograph.4 4 I NM4. 2 and 3): 1928.

36. One major burst of interest came in the late 1930s, after theconclusion of a federal study of silent reading in New York City. This wasreported by Stella S. Center and Gladys 1.. Persons in Teaching /highSchool Pupils to Read (Chicago, Ill.: MTh!. 19371.

:37. Seetouise Anderson. ''English for the Inferior Section of the Ninth(frade... English Journal 12:9 (November 19231: 61116: Cora Lehr. "En.(;fish with a'IIigh 1Q. Class.- English JIninul 14:10 (December 19251:742.53: Mabel C. Dermans. "Experiments with Gifted Children." English

Journal 20:7 (September 19311: 540-47: Prudence 'I'. Limphean. "What

1(1 I TRADITION . %NI) REFORM

Cie). eland Is Doing tor Superior Students.- English Journal26:9 (November19:171: 723-28.

!I II den ).arise Cohen. "English for the (lifted," English d attract, 2:31March 19351: 208-II; Ruth Axton! Stewart, -Dedicated to the Low IQ."

thattwal 24:3 IN larch 19351: 204-07. Stewart was admittedly talkingitlaan an extreme case: her class had an average IQ of 76. The same,ittittales were evident in teachers of students in the 90 to IOU range.however. See Lou L. Lidirant. "Differentiated Teaching of Literature."English Journal 20:7 (September 19311: 548-56.

:M. The Social Conception." English Journal 14:5 (May 192511 414-15.)n the early work, see Cremin. TransThrmation of the Schord. p. 296.

Ii was popularized in Evelyn Dewey, The-Milton Laboratory Plan New)(Irk: IC. I'. Dutton. 19221. and in Ilelen Parkhurst's Education on theMilton Plan 119224 Dewey's description was based on observations inDalton and in two British schools that had adopted the approach.

11. Marion C. Sheridan, An Evaluation of the Dalton Plan." English.1 ournal (September 1926: 507-13.

42. 01W e Ely I lart -The Dalton Plan vs. Individualized Instruction,"English Journal I&:2 (February 19291: 168-70.

13. Clyde Db.:song and Mary Champe Ilissong, "English under theI bilk in English iota-nal 19:1(1 ( Wcenther 19301: 822-24. Con-t met.... Editorial, English Journal 21:11) 11 hwember 19321: 842-43,

44. "What Should a 'Unit'. in English Be?" English Journal 22:101December 19331: 844-45. Morrison himself addressed the 1930 N(11:convention ("The Cleveland Meeting," English Journal 20:1 'January1931 I: 564 For an earlier and more favorable reaction, see "Units' inLearning.' English Journal 16:10 IDecember 19271: 816-17.

n. Leonard V. Koos. "The National Survey of Secondary Education.English Journal 22:4 (April 19331::303 -13. The full report of this aspect of.the sun ey is in 1611E41., Provisions for Different-es.

Mi. See .1. 'Pressler, "The New Type of Examination." EnglishJournal 9: I 0 (December 19241: 709-15.

47. Thus Mabel S. Satterfield and Salibelle Royster argued that pupilswadi! gain "mental discipline" and learn "to know the events of .Silas3/arlier" by being given objective tests. "The New-Type Examination inEnglish. English Journal 20:6 (June 19311: 490-95.

48. John .1. Deliver, "A College Qualifications Test in Reading,"English .biurnal 21:s Il)rtuber 1932): f3!9 -41. /le was given editorial supportfor the project in the same issue.

49. Commission on English. Examining the Exam in English,I larvard Studies in English. vol. 17 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univer-sity Press. isrso, p. xii.

50. Ibid.. pp. 153-54.51. This is one of the indications of I fat field's lack of influence on the

report. Ile complained editorially that the commission :should have heededits own findings and abandoned Ony special exam in English. -CollegeEnt ranee xaminat ions," English Journal 20:9 I November 19311: 770-71.

52. See "Report on College Entrance English Exam." News and Notes.English Journal 20:9 INovemher 1931): 774-75.This notes Thomas' chapterwith special approval.

53. Nancy (1111mon.Coryell. An Evaluation of Extenshm and IntensiveThaehing of Literature, Contributions to Education no. 275 (Now York:Teachers College, Columbia University, 19271.

SCIENCE AND Tar TEACIIINO or Exousti 105

:I I. thlt- relief ion of the Joint Committee's attitude was the fact thatExtensive Reading" was dealt with in a chapter of its own. separate from

the chapters on the teaching of literature. On the Reorganization report. see(limiter 111.

55. This was in a report to the 1927 NCTE convention. "The 1927Council.- English Journal 17:1 (January 1928): 57-81.

56. The extremes of the two points of view were illustrated by thedebating positions at one convention. John Gelman. "The Values ofRequired Reading." English Journal 19:8 lOctober 1930): 663-42: and MaryE. lame. "Ittptired !Wading Versus Free Reading," English Journal 1.9:8(October 19301: 649-51. The editor suggested they be read as "a jointcontribution."

57. The Commission on English (Examining tin Examination in Eng-lish, p, 261 was typically dismissive:."Miss Coryell's study reveals certainadvantages of extensive reading, but this does not imply that a realappntiatitm of literature can be secured without very close and detai ledwork upon selected masterpieces."

704. Other studies supporting-free reading are summarized by James R.Squire in "English Literature." in the Encyclopedia of Educational Re-.searrh, 4th ed.. ed. Robert L. Ebel INew York: Macmillan Company, 1969).pp. 461.73.

59. Richard Braddock et al. Research in Written Composition (Urbana,Ill.: N("I'E, 1963). When Purves and Beach carried out a similar survey ofinvestigations in the teaching of literature, they found flaws in virtually allthe studies examined. Alan C. Purves and Richard Beach, Literature andthe Reader no.sramh in Response to Literature. Reading Interests, and theTeachi«g of literature (Urbana. Ill.; Nell:, 19791.

60. It is indicative of the state of affairs in literature that when theNational Society for the Study of Education devoted its Thirty-SeventhYearbook to the scientific movement in education, it included chapters onthe teaching of handwriting. spelling. English usage and readingbutnone on literature.

61. Important early Ipre-1925) studies were conducted by Calvin 0.Davis in the North Central Association and Paul It. Stevenson at theUniversity of Illinois. See Callahan, Munition and the Cult of Efficiency.pp. 232-39,

62. limey Belle Inglis. "Retrospect and Prospect." English Journal19:1 1.1anuary 1939): 11-21.

63. Editorial, "Pedagogical Research." English Journal 19:8 (October19311: 665.66.

61. See William S. Vincent, "Class Size." in Ebel. Encyclopedia ofEdnott intuit Research, pp. 141.46.

65. See Walter Barnes, "English Research and the National Council."English Journal 2:1:1 (January 19340: 9-18: Committee on Research, "TheContributions of Research to Teaching and Curriculum-Making in English,Juituary. I933. through June, 1934." English Journal 23:9 (November19341: 71S-31; and Dudley NI lies. "Class Size in tligh-School English."Book Review. English Journal 21:1 (January 1932): 77-78. The Miles articlewas a review of a study by Dora V. Smith (soon to be NCTE president) inwhich her results were attributed to the "intelligence. vigorous personality,and profound enthusiasm" of Smithand hence could not be generalized,

The aim of leaching literature is the utmost possible broadening andenrichment of young people's experience, and their better appreciation orvaluing of all experience, rather than of books alone.

Sterling Andrus Leonard, EssentialPrinciples of Teaching Reading andLiterature, 19221

In the common ..chools, al least, the social basis of literature trill becomeestablished by the ;mportunilies of a civilization on trial . , . The introduc-tion of democracy into industry; the use of wealth for the welfare of thepeople; the protection of womanhood and childhood against the rapacity ofindividualism gime mad; the final eradication of mob rule and lynch law; theelimination of brutality and injustice in our cowls and penal institutions; thegrowth of a world state in which war will be as extinct as the privateduelchildren are not only to understand these movements, they are to learnto desire them with studied intensity.

John J. De Boer, "The Materials of theEnglish Curriculum," 19322

Our major task in the ordinary school is to leach all our pupils to readordinal), matters with ordinary intelligence and to express ordinal), thoughtswith reasonable clarity, This emphasis upon the practical enforces verydirectly our responsibility as leachers of a tool subject. . . Our Englishcultist should embody experiences... analogous to the expected generalexperiences of life,

Charles Swain Thomas, PresidentialAddress to the NCTE, 19353

The state course of study in English is liberal in tendency. . . . Handicaps lothe practical use of the rouse in schools throughout the stale are chiefly apaucity of book supply, local insistence upon more formal elements ofinstruelion. lack of preparatiim on the part of leachers in point of view and inknowledge of the kind of materials sponsored by lie course, and fear Mot theRegents' examinations or college entrance requirements will differ inemphases from the slate come of study.

Dora V. Smith, after surveyinginstruction in New York State, 1941'1

Chapter V

A Framework for Teaching

During the decades between the First and SecondWorld Wars, teachers of English were searching for a new andcoherent framework around which to structure their teaching. Theconcern with scientific method was one aspect of that search, but, asin the progressive movement in education as a whole, it was neverthe only one. In the teaching of literature in particular, the answerswhich science offered wet slow in coming and unsatisfactory whenthey arrived. The writings and speeches of William Heard Kilpatrickof Teachers College, Columbia, provide the best single example ofthe problems toward which teachers of English soon turned theirattention. Many cited Kilpatrick directly as they sought to rational-ize and defend their own approaches: others less overtly but no lessohviously reflected his emphases and concerns, and sometimes evenhis solutions. As a disciple of Dewey and student of Thorndike.Kilpatrick was himself a blend of the forces that led to the redefini-tion of English instruction: his concerns were scientific, philosoph-ical. psychological, reformist. And if that blend were improbable, sowould be the blend within the teaching of English.

In this chapter, the discussion will focus on the elaboration of ametaphor of experience and later of exploration as the heart of theeducational process. Important contributing topics will include theproject method, the redefinition of the value of literature in terms of"vicarious" and later of "ordered" experience, the emergence ofradical social goals in response to the Depression, and the synthesisof all these elements in a series of "pattern curriculums" offered inthe late 1930s. Other important movements which began during thetwenties or thirtiesin particular the Eight-Year Study of theProgressive Education Association, a new interest in semantics, andthe New Criticismculminated somewhat later and will he discussedin the next chapter,

107

1118 TRADITION AND REFORM

The Project Method

The Method Proposed

The project method was Kilpatrick's methodological solution tothe many demands on the progressive teacher. He outlined it brieflyin Teachers College Record in September 1918, and elaborated it inmore detail in a later book, Foundations of Method (1925). Accept-ing the progressives' rejection of mental discipline and their concernwith moral and ethical development, he also pointed out that themethod of teaching could itself convey important lessons to thestudent, lessons which have nothing to do with overt subject matter.Since in a democratic society "the typical unit of the worthy life" is"the purposeful act," Kilpatrick argued that this should also be the"typical unit of school procedure. "'

Though in many ways this view of education was philosophicallyrather than psychologically derived, Kilpatrick carefully justified itin psychological terms. Here his analysis followed Thorndike instressing that learning results from the Law of Effect: "any move-ment of mind or body that succeeds (or brings satisfaction) has forthat reason a better chance of being used again." The virtue of thepurposeful act as the basis of education is that it insures the workingof the Law of Effect; the fulfillment of "purpose" brings satisfactionand thus forges the necessary bonds between stimulus and re-sponse."

The project method was Kilpatrick's way of institutionalizing thepurposeful act, and he described four kinds that could claim alegitimate place in the curriculum. One was the project to embody anidea in external form, as in writing a letter; the second, the projectwhose goal was simply to enjoy something, as in hearing a story; thethird, to solve a problem, as in deciding why New York City hasoutgrown Philadelphia; the last, the project to attain a skill, as tobring one's handwriting up to grade 14 on the Thorndike scale.' Theproject that quickly came to dominate the literature did not reallycorrespond to any of Kilpatrick's four categories; it might best becalled the project to complete a task, as to make posters for a localshow, to publish a school newspaper, or to build a model of the Globetheater.

Even Babbitt in his functionalism had paid tribute to the value of-experience" in describing the uses of literature and reading; Kil-patrick. by placing the "purposeful act" at the heart of the educa-tional process. made experience and education virtually synony-mous. As he put it, the "psychological order is the order ofexperience, of democracy. and consequently of learning." And it wasexperience which would bridge the sometimes awesome gap betweensubject matter and child, between the world of the sophisticatedadult and that of the naive schoolboy:

A FRAMF.WORK FOR TEACIUNO 109

The subject -mutter of the curriculum is race experience, the pickedwinnings of the race, the best ways mankind has yet devised ofmeeting its problems. . . The child has experience. the race hasexperience. The child's experience is. of course. ehildish: but it ismerely small. the beginning, the germ: the fuller form we see in therace experience.

Thus the project method, and education itself, could ultimately heseen as the broadening of experience, opening up the child's viewuntil it could encompass the full "race experience": "The best way inwhich 1 can now conceive the curriculum itself is as a series ofexperiences in which by guided induction the child makes his ownformulations. Then they are his to use."

Tim Response

English teachers were in general quite receptive to Kilpatrick'sexposition of method. Hosic provided an outline of the "Problem-Project Method" in the November 1918 issue of English Journal(only two months after Kilpatrick's Record article)," and the Journalfollowed up with many examples of the successful use of theapproach during the next several years. W. Wilhur Hatfield, acolleague of flosic's at Chicago Normal School and his successor atNCI'E, also undertook to explain and illustrate the method; heconsidered it most appropriate for the teaching of writing, however,and did not deal with literature at all."

By the end of the 1920s, the project method, the prohlem method,unit instruction, and the Dalton plan had become, in application,virtually indistinguishable. Yet each of the approaches had, in itsoriginal formulation, made a unique contribution to the rapidlyevolving methodology. What the project method did for the teachingof literature was to bring experience within the curriculum. Thoughthe activities would eventually bear little relationship to thoseKilpatrick had envisioned, they would he planned and carried out tobroaden and extend the student's range of experiences in the waythat Kilpatrick had argued.

Toward Experience

Literature and Experience

Teachers' first response to the emphasis on experience was totreat literature as a "vicarious" experience of the events described.As Hosic described it in his doctoral dissertation 119211. in this viewliterature "enlarges and enriches the experience of the reader and

110 TRADMON AND REFORM

extends his knowledge of life."" The roots of this emphasis arecomplex those whom Mimic cited as in essential agreement includedArnold, St. Beuve, Corson, Hudson, Baker. Babbitt, and Charters.The change during the twenties was to shift the focus from the pastcultural experience Arnold had defended toward the present experi-ence of the child himself. Sterling A. Leonard. in a textbookpublished a yeara fter kiosk's study, gave the concern with vicariousexperience its fullest statement. Throughout, he emphasized the lifeembodied in the books studied, rather than their "literary" charac-teristics. As he wrote in his preface, the "fundamental and centralidea" of his discussion was that "children's reading of literatureshould be always an achievement of realized, true, and significantexperience." lie explained further on, however, that he meant "truein the largest sense, of giving a right idea of relations between peoplein actual life, and between thoughts and acts and their consequencesaccording W. natural law and social order." He meant that thevicarious experience offered must be a traditionally moral experiencean assertion soon to cause trouble for the progressive teacher ofEnglish."

What Leonard was doing was fusing the emphasis on values thathad been so important during the reorganization period with theemerging focus on experience. The underlying argument was simpleenough: if literature is moral and also provides a vicarious exper-ience. then the morality of the literature must come from thevicarious experience itself. Teachers fresh from the propagandacampaigns of the war had little doubt that literature's effects werequite direct. Secure in this belief, an NCTE committee on interna-tional relations attacked the "far reaching and pernicious influence"of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade"; they thought that theunquestioning obedience of the soldiers was the wrong kind ofexperience for schoolchildren to have." A similar acceptance of thepower of vicarious experience led to an interest in biographicalstudies. As Martha Shackford of Wellesley College put it in arguingfor teaching the life of Goldsmith: "lie gives balance and sanity; hesaves us from dangerous complacence. His life was touched withpain and loneliness, but he was not dismayed. By living his life overwith him our hearts ought to be softened and purified.'"

Yet by the middle of the decade the ethical approach to literaryexperience was raising as many problems as it had solved. The earlytwentieth century had produced a host of new writers who challengedthe very foundations of literary taste as well as the conventions ofsociety. With the ethical orientation in literary studies, the orientaLion which said in effect that the morally good was the aestheticallybeautiful, there was really only one verdict which could be reachedabout these writers. I tarry T. Baker of toucher College pronouncedit in 1923:

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 11

If we know anything worth knowing about past literature, we can saysomething sensible and often helpful about that much over-praisednovel, Alain Street, or about the blatant productions of the VulgarianSchool of versifiying, headed by Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, and afew nondescript immigrants. and sponsored by strong-minded ladieslike Harriet Monroe and Amy Lowell. . The most noticeable featureof their curious volumes is that they need the services of a delousingstation. If there is one especially prominent "note" in American minorpoetry at presentand all of it is minor poetryit is the note ofcomplacent vulgarity.''

Baker's arguments illustrate the predicament in which the progres-sives in English found themselves. Concern with modern authorswas a basic tenet: so was an emphasis on the system of valuesimplicit in the work. The immediate response was to postponejudgment, studying the new authors without attempting to intro-duce them into the high school curriculum. English Journal, forexample, began to be more systematic in its attempts to informteachers about developments in the general field of literature. PercyBoynton of the University of Chicago was commissioned to provide a

_series of scholarly articles on "American Authors of Today": thefirst appeared in September 1922. Though theJournal had publishedearlier articles by literary critics, the Boynton series was the formalbeginning of a practice which continued unbroken for nearly fortyyears: it eventually brought such distinguished names as LouisUntermeyer, Ezra Pound, Theodore Divisor, Vachel Lindsay, MarkVan Doren. Zona Gale. and J. B. Priestley to the Journal's pages"During the Depression especiatly, when many literary magazineswent bankrupt, these were often original studies of some importrather than simply overviews of current opinion for teachers.

Gradually the need for new techniques of criticism began to beclear. Llewellyn Jones, editor of the literary review of the ChicagoEt-ening Post. provided a lengthy reformulation in a two-part articleon aesthetics in October and November of 1925. Acknowledging hisdebt to Ogden and Richards. and to Ainslie's translation of Croce,'he defined art as "a complete and successful expression of it part oflifeperhaps a very small partexperienced as one experience inwhich all the factors hang together.- It is this coherence whichdistinguishes art, not any "parochial- moralism or didacticism.Jones proposed two standards for judging art. The first was theextent to which the artist was "sincerely giving us experience" andnot "trying to prove a point, put over a thesis or generalization: inshort indulging in propaganda." Notice that what Jones has donehere is to continue the emphasis on experience while purging it of adirect relationship with value.s. His second criterion was whether thework had achieved form: "that is. whether all that is not essential to

112 TRADITION AND REFORM

the experience, all the accidentals that surround it in real life, havebeen purged away, so that the work has unity and affects us as asingle organic whole." Again, this continues the concern withexperience but makes it dependent upon form rather than content.Such an analysis destroyed the basis on which literature had beenjustifying its place in the curriculum, but Jones presented a newfunction which it might serve: ". . . although we repudiate theheresy that art must teach us moral lessons, we must admit thatmajor art does have an educative function: it reconciles us toexistence by presenting existence in an ideal Inot a morally ideal butan intellectually ideal) light: as something that hangs together. thatis not anarchic. "'"

This analysis provided teachers with the ideal solution to theproblem of twentieth century literature. Its emphasis on experiencecontinued the easy link with the methodological and philosophicalproposals of Kilpatrick and Dewey. At the same time, by substi-tuting intellectual order for moral value it justified the approaches ofthe new authors. The process of assimilation was not easy. especiallyfor teachers in whom the previous approaches were thoroughlyingrained. but the direction was at least clear. Increasingly duringthe twenties and throughout the thirties, discussions of literaturewere phrased in terms of the experience which the work under studywould provide.

One should not conclude, however, that "experience" was in anysense to become a developed critical approach: rather it was theunderlying goal toward which the various approaches were oriented.The study of types, for example, was stressed by many of those whowanted to treat literature as experience. Leonard used it to structurea high school course that would group together experiences present-ing similar sorts of difficulties in reading and interpretation." AfterMabel Irene Rich provided teachers with an anthology organized bytypes in 1921. complete with a laudatory introduction by JamesFleming Hosic, the study of types emerged as the first widelyaccepted alternative to the study of single classics from the collegeentrance lists.'" Historical studies received support from teacherswho argued that in order to experience fully a work of literature, itwas necessary to understand fully the social and cultural milieu inwhich it originated.'n Teachers whose concerns were more direcjypedagogical turned to the instructional unit as the major way toinsure that students would achieve a proper "experience." Somesuggested units focussed on a central reading, the experience ofwhich would be enhanced by a plethora of other activities organizedaround it. Others focussed the experience instead on a single concept(e.g. liberty, patriotism), often in the process revealing a continuingconcern with the inculcation of a very particular set of values.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 113

Countercurrents

The movement toward literature as experience remained a move-ment away from the formal study of literature, even after thestructured nature of the experience became central to its justifica-tion. Throughout the period of concern with experience, however,there were strong countercurrents urging other emphases. One suchvoice was raised by Joseph M. Thomas of the University ofMinnesota. seventh president of NOTE. In his address to the 1919convention, he paid full tribute to the criticism that had beendirected toward early forms of literary study: but he went on toargue that the abuses of the past were no cause to abandon the greattradition. Ile had only caustic comments for English teachers who

.6. have given up trying to interest the student in what they think heought to be interested in, and areexperimenting in a vain effort to findwhat he will like. They have not foresworn English, but have definitelyabandoned literature. Instead of the Spectator. they read the LiteraryDigest: the local newspaper has replaced Lincoln and Franklin. Miltonand Tennyson have been given up for something "peppy" in the way ofnew poetry. And I even hear of schools in which the Saturday Evening'Past is studied in English. They have sold their birthright for a mess ofPotash and Perlmutter:'

The major point that Thomas and others who sounded the same callwere making was that while the goals of those seeking to reconstitutethe literature curriculum were laudable, the direction that had beentaken in search of those goals was doomed to fail. Martha Shackford,another unconvinced college professor, made her point in the processof describing the properly educated "freeman" in another article. inher view it was necessary to enforce a discipline and concentrationthat the high school lacked: ". . until a child learns intellectualcourage, the necessity of hard work, the fundamental significance ofattacking and overcoming difficulties, he will never progress fromthe amoeba stage of intelligence."

This was an argument for mental discipline, dressed up in the newvocabulary of "intellectual courage,- "responsibility," and progres-sive social orientation. It is thus especially interesting to note thattribute is paid to the experience approach in its manifestation ascultural history: the discipline Shackford advocated was to comefrom viewing literary works as "products of a very comprehensiblesocial and political condition in each age, interpreted by individualswith imaginative insight, yet deriving much from the tendencies ofthe previous age..."

Another major voice of reaction was that of Harvard's Irving13abbitt, chief proponent of the American humanists. His emphasis

11.1 Tams:1'10N AND REFORM

was much the same as Matthew Arnold's, placing in literaturefunctions previously assumed by religion, family, and social class.Pointing out that "the old education was partly humanistic, partlyreligious; the new education is humanitarian, concerned; that is, lesswith making wise individuals than with improving society as awhole," he asserted that teachers must decide whether "our educa-tion, especially our higher education, is to he qualitative andintensive or quantitative and extensive." Babbitt opted for. theformer alternative, asking teachers to "ignore certain equalitarianfallacies that are now being preached in the name of democracy.'"'This social conservatism, coupled with a lack of interest in modernstudies, prevented Babbitt and the humanists from being widelyaccepted in the schools or the universities; but they kept alive atradition of attention to great books and great ideas that eventuallyreemerged in the writings of Mortimer Adler and others in the 1940s.

Concern with student interest also continued as an element of theexperience approach, though Kilpatrick found it necessary to draw adistinction between "a state of interest" in which children would "bealways and merely" amused, and "active interest" which would beconducive to growth on the part of the child. A similar distinctionprompted Lou L. LaBrant to protest against "the practice, muchmore common than our publications would indicate, of using thecarving of little toy boats and castles, the dressing of quaint dolls,the pasting of advertising pictures, and the manipulation of clay andsoap as the teachiag of English literature." If such devices werereally necessary to insure interest, "The remedy would seem to he inchanging the reading material rather than in turning the literaturecourse into a class in handicraft." Hatfield followed LaBrant's articlewith an editor's note suggesting that there were "two modern pointsof view," and pointed to another article in the same issue supportingsuch activities.' It would be a long time before teachers wouldwillingly give up the "aids" they had developed.

Another part of /the experience philosophy that provoked reac-tions was a concern with "guidance" through literature which someteachers, especially in the juniiiNligh schools, used to replace theirearlier concern with ethics. This was already evident in articles onsex education at the end of the reorganization period, but reached itsheight in the late twenties. It was put into perspective by HowardNlumford Jones in 1929:

I meet Susie and Willie seriously debating with all the earnestness oftheir naive young souls the question of whether a nice girl can afford tostay away from a petting party; and I wonder whether the experiencesof Maggie Tolliver in The Mill on the Floss will guide them in theirsolution: I do not recall that she petted. though she seems to havegotten herself even more seriously involved than do modern girls whopet; and in mind goes hack to the Manual of Courses of Study whichdeclares in all seriousness that the study of the classics will help Susie

A FRAMEWORK. FOR TRACIIINCI I 15

and Willie in the interpretation of problems of thinking and conductthat meet the individual in his daily lite.. .. And with Susie and Williebefore my mind. I am tempted to in u nnnr. in t he language of AI Smith."liologny!'"'

Jones argued instead for starting with the child, not with theliterature, choosing Kipling and Sherlock Holmes, if that wouldinterest them, rather than Milton and Jefferson.

The Social Perspective

As the forces of fascism began to stir in Europe, and the pangs ofDepression began to be felt even in America, literature again found adidactic function. One strong influence was the vigorous school ofMarxist and left-wing writing and criticism- which flourished inter-nationally, and which was led in America by such men as John DosPossos, Michael Gold, and Joshua Kunitz. For many of these men,content, rather than form. again became the only criterion ofexcellence. In the words of V. F. Calverton, editor of ModernQuarterly and a leading spokesman of the left, the goal was to build"a new society which will embody, like Soviet Russia today, a social,instead of an individualistic, ideal.- English Journal, in keepingwith its policy of informing teachers of all aspects of the currentliterary scene, assiduously brought these men to its pagescarefullycounterposed with editorial comment and more conservative pointsof view, but there nonetheless for all to read and ponder.."

Most teachers of English were ready to heed the implicit socialorientation that these writers were offering. In a time when estab-lished institutions did seem to be faltering, and just distant enoughfrom the previous world war for the disillusionment it had generatedto have faded, the original progressive concern with social progresscould reemerge. if anything more radical for its long suppression.One focal point for the social theorists was Teachers College,Columbia. There a group of educators under the leadership of W. H.Kilpatrick eventually forged an unusual measure of intellectualcohesion. The fullest statement of their creed was The EducationalFrontier (1933), a yearbook produced for the National Society ofCollege Teachers of Education by a committee dominated by theTeachers College group. The task of education as it was presentedthere was "to prepare individuals to take part intelligently in themanagement of conditions under which they live, to bring them to anunderstanding of the forces which are moving, to equip them withthe intellectual and practical tools by which they can themselvesenter into direction of these forces."" In such a program the focus ofstudy would be upon current social issues and problems; in manyways it was a return to Dewey's earliest concerns.

TRAM run,: AND It 1-7-0101

The social perspective so evident in The Educational Frontier wasnot limited to the Teachers College group, even though it is usuallyidentified with them. Indeed, the basis was quite broad, reflecting astrong national movement towards socialism in the late twenties andearly thirties. The President's Committee on Social Trends, set upby Herbert Hoover in 1929, placed a similar stress on the need toreconstruct society's value system:

The clarification of human values and their reaffirmation in order togin' expression to them in terms of today's life and opportunities is amajor task of social thinking. The progressive confusion created inmen's minds by t he bewildering sweep of events revealed in our recentsocial trends enact find its wunterpart in the progressive clarification ofmen's thinking t.nd feeling, in the reorientation to the meaning of thenew trends.

To the American Historical Society's Commission on the SocialStudies in the Schools (1034), it was the public schools which shouldease the birth pangs of socialized society. educating its students forthe end of the "age of individualism and laissez-faire... Even theNEA was willing, as it viewed the national situation in 1932, toendorse a commitment to social reconstruction through education,"'

The reconstructionist point of view took as its starting pointDewey's observation that "education is the fundamental method ofsocial progress and reform"; its end point was radicalism. George S.Counts challenged the Progressive Education Association in a 1932address. "Dare Progressive Education Be Progressive?" in which heargued the need for education to emancipate itself from the middleclass, reaching for political power to lead the nation to socialism. Heargued, too, that indoctrination of students would be a necessarypart of the struggle toward the desired goals. The Social Frontier,the major journal of the reconstructionists (with Kilpatrick aschairman and Counts as editor), dealt squarely with the ideologicalissues raised by such approaches. Founded in October 1934 to givemore effective voice to the group, its pages chronicle the increasinglyradical rhetoric that eventually split the movement and helped toplunge progressivism as well as the reconstructionists into disfavor,By February 1936, the journal had turned to the rhetoric of classwarfare as the means to the collectivism which was the major socialgoal. In so doing it lost many of its supporters; this was further thaneven most of the Teachers College group were willing to go."

The social reconstructionists, whether laying out basic tenets inThe Educational Frontier or arguing on the pages of The SocialFrontier. had a strong sense of mission and a fervent belief in thepower of education as an instrument for good. Though the group to alarge extent centered around Kilpatrick, they gave little attention tothe specifics of curriculum and method that would have been neededto directly influence current practice. Their accomplishment was

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 117

instead indirect: they reawakened the social consciousness of theprogressive teacher. the belief in reform and progress that hadoriginally given progressive education its name. Certainly the rhet-toric of the social reconstructionists was accepted by teachers ofEnglish during the early 1930s. Stella Center. of John Adams HighSchool in New York City. assessed ''The Responsibility of Teachersof English in Contemporary American Life" in her presidentialaddress to the 1932 NCTE convention. The responsibilities werebroad:

If tariff walls mount to incredible heights and our political leaderspursue a policy of eighteenth century isolation, it lies especially in theprovince of English instruction, by a program of reading and discus-sim. to develop a feeling of world solidarity and to create better inter-national understanding."

Why this was "especially the province of English instruction- wasnot quite clear; presumably the answer lay at least in part in the longethical tradition which had most recently heen reflected in the workof E. Estelle Downing's NCTE Committee on International Under-standing. This committee was reorganized at the same conventionand the cause of peace was taken up with renewed zeal. The Councilannounced that together with the NEA it was "officially sponsoringthe peace movement in the schools." Journal articles, conventionsessions, anda major first for the Councilofficial resolutionswere enlisted in the crusade on which "the future of the worlddepends.- "

Yet at the same time teachers of English rejected the call forindoctrination. When George S. Counts challenged the schools tobuild a new social order, Hatfield agreed editorially that there wouldindeed be great changes in society during the lives of the students:the proper way to prepare them, however, was hy training them tothinknot by imposing thoughts upon them. And when a few yearslater a language workbook included an advertisement for a telephonecompany, John J. i)eBoer, assistant editor of the English Journaland long a backer of the peace movement, editorialized on thedangers of propaganda in the schools: "This propaganda in behalf ofa private utility is so obvious it would not be alarming were it nottypical of other influences more insidious. Pressure groups of variouskinds constantly besiege the school and frequently invade theclassrooms with viewpoints inimical to public welfare." His answer,like I latlield's to Counts, was to point out that "Not suppression butexposition should be the guiding principle of American education."1"

Ultimately, teachers of English rejected the plea of the socialreconstructionists because they saw other values implicit in theirsubject matter. Thus Oscar J. Campbell warned in his 1934 NCTEpresidential address that "The greatest danger in such a time as oursis that one's mind may be completely captured hy the immediate and

Its THAorrum AND REFORM

pressing. Values which are not obvious are in danger of becomingobscured or lost. Our duties in a rapidly changing world can hest bedischarged if we remain cognizant of the nature of our subject and ofthose deeper regions of personality to which it brings life andenergy." And two years later Dora V. Smith, addressing the samebody in the same capacity, felt it necessary to ask. "Are we willing togive boys and girls a share of the attention we have devoted toEnglish as a subject and to the indisputable claims of the socialorder ?''" It was time, in other words, to return attention to thechildren who had been somewhat out of view since the Depressionhad begun.

Patterns for the Curriculum

An Experience Curriculum

In November 1929, at the instigation of the new president, RuthMary Weeks, the Executive Committee of NCTE appointed aCurriculum Commission to develop a "pattern curriculum" that.would illustrate the best current practice and thus provide a stablereference point in the midst of the rapidly shifting instructionalconcerns. Over one hundred Council leaders served on the commis-sion's fourteen subcommittees, together with representatives fromthe NEA, the American Association of Teachers Colleges, theNational Association of Teachers of Speech, the National Associ-ation of Journalism Advisers, the North Central Association ofColleges and Secondary Schools, and the Southern Association. ofColleges and Secondary Schools.

The undertaking was in many ways more ambitious than any ofthe earlier efforts to define the scope of English instruction, for whatthe commission had in effect to attempt was a new synthesis. Theearlier reports on Englishfrom the Vassar Conference of theCommittee of Ten and from the National Joint Committee onEnglishhad gathered together a consensus of contemporary opin-ion; the new commission had to forge such a consensus where noneexisted, to plan a new and largely untested shape for the teaching ofEnglish.

The task was carried through with enthusiasm and a certainmeasure of success. Responsive to the many different forces that hadbeen reshaping instruction, and aware that there had been fewsystematic attempts to embody the emerging principles into coher-ent practice, the Curriculum Commission made no pretense that theresult was in any sense a national prescription for English instruc-tion: indeed the Commission thought it abundantly clear that any"attempt to create a single curriculum suited to pupils in environ-

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 1.19

menu; so different as are to be found in the United States would befolly."" The final report. An Experience Curriculum in English11935), was rather intended as a pattern that other groups could takeas a starting point in developing a curriculum to fit their own partic-ular circumstances.

The report began with the premise that " Experience is the best ofall schools. . . The idea/ curriculum consists of well-selectedexperiences." The process of selecting those experiences was theprocess Bobbitt had outlined and the Committee on the Place andFunction of English in American Life had illustrated: it was to"survey life, noting what experiences most people have." And it wasone step more: it was necessary to look, in these same surveys of life,for the "desirable possible experiences they miss" (p. 3). In derivingthis no longer strictly empirical display, the commission was break-ing no now ground: their unique contrihution was an attempt toweave the selected experiences into a coherent curriculum stretchingfrom kindergarten to college.

The "radical progressive unit- was taken as the basic elementaround which to structure the curriculum. This was the commis-sion's attempt to revitalize and focus the somewhat nebulous unitthat had emerged from the blend of Morrison units, projects, andcontracts. As they put it, a unit "means an organic whole which is atthe same time both a structural and a Anctional part of a largerorganic whole" (p.. vii, fn. 1 I." Units lasted anywhere from five tofifteen days, and were themselves organized into what the commis-sion termed "experience strands," each of which was a series ofsimilar types of experience "arranged like broad easy stair steps in areasonably steady progression of intellectual difficulty and socialmaturity" (p. viii).

The final report divided the various experience strands intoseveral sets, including Literature Experiences, Reading Experi-ences. Creative Expression Experiences, Speech Experiences, Writ-ing Experiences, Instrumental Grammar Experiences, CorrectiveTeaching, and Electives. These were in general the work of differentsubcommittees working under different chairmen, and were quitevaried in the extent and direction of the changes they embodied.Probably the most progressiveand most widely attackedstandtaken in .4n Experience Curricular: was the abandonment of formalgrammar in favor of functional instruction. The point was madebluntly: "There is no scientific evidence of the value of grammarwhich warrants its appearance as a _prominent or even a distinctfeature of the course of study." The only concession made at all wasthe inclusion of the study of grammar as a formal system among thesuggested electives for high school seniors (pp. 228, 289)."

The curriculum in literature was equally liberal in conception,placing its emphasis upon pupils' experiences, upon informal discus-sion, upon 'broadening horizons and refining perception. Experi-

I TRADITION AND REFORM

races which might be "harmful- were to be carefully excluded,including ''such horror or sex experiences as the immature cannotsustain without shock and warping of their natures,- as well as"sentimentality. glamorous presentation of evil-doing, inconsistentcharacterization, misrepresentation of moral cause and effects, andcontravention of natural laws." With these exceptions, individualexperience would be enlarged in as many directions as possible,allowing no one concern, however ardent its advocates, to circum-scribe the literature curriculum: "the inculcation of knowledge orethical ideals, the posing of social problems. the cultivation of thepower to perceive beauty, or the mere provision of an escape fromtrying actuality am, all of them, too narrow objectives" (pp. 19-20).

Yet when faced with the task of providing a pattern curriculum inliterature, the commission found itself subverted by the very con-ventions it had established for the final report. The chief reforms itwas advocating for literary studies (unlike those in grammar) lay inthe way each work was to be studied; they did not involve thesequence or. Lo any large extent. the works that would be used in thefirst place. The ideal classroom approach was seen as one of widereading and little discussionmuch like the method Coryell hadused with the "experimental" group in her recent and controversialdissertation, Faced with the need Lo provide a sequence and organi-zation (and little else), the report showed no clear preference for anyof the various methods of organizing materials, and no clear concep-tion of how the "experience units" differed from any other approach.Thus the major experience strands were an astonishingly traditionalblend of currently popular approaches:

A. Enjoying ActionB. Exploring the Physical WorldC. Exploring the Social WorldH. Studying Human NatureE. Sharing Lyric EmotionF. Giving Fancy ReinG. Solving Puzzles (e.g., mystery stories,B. Listening to Radio Broadcasts

Enjoying Photop lays

Within these strands there are sample units on animals, heroes, and.humor; on allegory, epic, and myth; on the origin of man, the effectof inventions, and industrial expansion; on rhythm, figurativeexpression, -and characterization; on patriotism and brotherhood;and many, many more.

In spite of the rhetoric, the units do not in any significant waylead toand were not meant to lead to important experiencesthrough literature. What they do attempt is to provide the functionalskills that were considered prerequisite to the actual experience of

A l'aAmEwoatt Foil TEACHING 121

literature. The experiences that are offered, on the kindest judg-ment, are better than the earliest philological approaches; but theyare artificial and lifeless in their own way. Thus the final unit in thestrand Enjoying Action has as the Primary Objective (the "ultimategoal- of such study), '"I'o enjoy adventures which are more interest-ing because their backgrounds are so different from our own environ-ment.- For Enabling Objectives, it offers '-ro visualize clothing,weapons, houses. and other details of the background. To notepeculiarities of speech and social customs, if there are any. To catchsome of the attitudes and ways of thinking which are different fromours" 44). Even the list of Typical Materials is traditional,including. among others novels by Scott, Cooper, Dickens, andStevenson that had been on the college lists at the turn of thecentury. Or again, we can take a unit that sounds more promising,Number 6 in the strand Exploring the Social World. This offers as itsPrimary Objective, "Fo observe the effects of widening tradehorizons on our daily lives-; for Enabling Objectives: "To see hownew frontiers and new customs were the direct result of the desire ofman to increase his trading area; to catch some idea of the need forinvention, investigation, and discovery; to note the organization ofbig business and the resulting efficiency and economy which itimplies- ip. 19). Here the materials are less traditional, includingwintman's Hear America Singing," Andrew Carnegie's OwnStory, and Norris' The Octopus. Yet even in this unit, among thebest in the series, the concept of experience seems completelyunrealized. The student will, if the objectives are successfullypursued, gain a certain measure of knowledge; he will not, however,have been given any inkling of the peculiar virtues of literature inconveying that experience. (One might question whether, giventhese particular objectives, literature really has any peculiar vir-tues.'

Conducting Experiences in English.

Even as the final report was being presented to the November1935 convention, some of the problems were recognized. Dora V.Smith, not herself a member of the Curriculum Commission, notedthat method and content had not heen clearly synthesized in theliterature sections. Two years later, the Council saw fit to organize anew committee under the chairmanship of Angela M. Broening toprovide illustrations of how the materials in the first report could betranslated into action. The focus of the problem was clear in the titlechosen for the second volume, published in 1939 as ConductingExperiences in English.'"

By the time Conducting Experiences was puhlished, An Exper-ience Curriculum had been widely emulated.. Textbooks were already

122 'PHA IHTION AND REFORM

purporting to embody the approach, and courses of study across thecountry had been modified in keeping with its principles.'" In thenew publication teachers were shown how to put the materials towork. In literature, the connection between method and content wastightened by recognizing the centrality of the reader's response: "Iletakes as much of the book as he can, rewriting it, as it were, in theimagery of his own experience." The goal of the teacher in thisprocess would be to foster a "natural, vital discussion of theexperience shared by the author.""

The heart of the book, however, was again the specific illustra-tions of "conducting experiences." These were, as in the earlierreport, a mixture of approaches ranging from the excellent to thebanal. One of the best of the literature units was the first offered: itoutlined a sequence of lessons following a heavy storm, during whicheighth grade students discussed their reactions, read poetry, andeventually wrote their own poems. But most of the literatureactivities, like those in An Experience Curriculum, failed to makedear how experience with was leading to the desired experiencethrough the literature being studied.

A Correlated Curriculum

The Curriculum Commission attempted to formulate a programfor English that could function within schools as they were presentlyorganized. It lauded experiments designed to end "the artificialseparation of one subject from another," but left the full exposi-tion of such a program to a subcommittee which became virtuallyindependent. This committee produced a separate report, A Corre-lated Curriculum, in 1936.

Rather than presenting a curriculum, the committee analyzed aspectrum of programs ranging from partial to total correlation. Thegeneral approach was cautious: faults as well as virtues were notedat each stage of the continuum. Unlike An Experience Curriculum,which was presented as a successful pattern to be emulated, ACorrelated Curriculum was seen as describing an experimentonedeserving widespread testing to answer the questions it raised, butone whose generalizability still needed to be evaluated. The commit-tee was especially careful to preserve the traditional virtues ofEnglish instruction; indeed, among its lists of criteria for evaluatingattempts at correlation was one that asked if the tested values of anysubject would be lost, and another that asked if the degree ofsubjectarea competence brought about by departmentalizationwould be reduced in the new program,"

The movement toward correlation gained its support from themost progressive schools and will be dealt with in more detail in thenext chapter. Among its many roots, one of the most important wasthe growing influence of the Gestalt psychologists. These empha-

A Fit Anti:we:tit FOR TEACHING 123

sized the importance of the total pattern or .gestalt" in psycholog-ical processes, a concern which teachers generalized into a concernwith "world pattern" and "unified experience... To provide this totalperspective, teachers argued, it would be necessary for the curricu-lum itself to be unified through integration or correlation of thetraditionally disparate suhject areas. The NCTE committee gaveanother reason for correlation in its discussion. The exigencies of theDepression economy had forced cuts in school budgets: it was hopedthat "curricular consolidation" through correlation would circum-vent "curricular curtailment" (p. 11).

Initial reactions to the report were not favorable, Franklin Bob-bitt. in a review for English Journal, attacked A Correlated Curricu-lum for a "dislocation in the order of investigation." "We believe,"Robhitt wrote, "that the department of English must take care ofmatters more fundamental than correlation before it can be ready toprepare anything more than a merely descriptive account of relative-ly unevaluated practices, such as the present investigation." It wasthe "basic assumptions of the department, as ably represented bythe committee," that needed "re-examination, reorientation, andcareful reformulation." Perhaps surprised by Bohbitt's reaction, theEnglish Journal solicited a second evaluation, this one from L. T.Hopkins of Teachers College, Columbia. The second review, thoughconsiderably more favorable, found the same problems with thereport that Bobbitt had delineated: the starting point remainedEnglish, and correlation remained a device to aid in the learning ofthat subject. There would he no fundamental change in the educational process. Indeed. Hopkins questioned the basic assumptionthat "synthesizing parts or elements into a complex whole willsatisfy the needs of pupils for wholeness or unity in their exper-ience..." And if that assumption could be soundly questioned, theapproach would have little left to recommend it.

Literature as Exploration: The Final Synthesis

The many different forces which had been shaping the teaching ofliterature were in the end successfully synthesized not by NCTE, butby Louise M. Rosenblatt writing for the Commission on HumanRelations of the Progressive Education Association. In contact withleaders of the Council but drawing more heavily on leading socialscientists, her magnum opus. Literature as Exploration (1938), dealtat length with the proper role of and approach to literary studies."

Like the Council's Curriculum Commission, Rosenblatt recog-nized a distinction between experience through and experience of orwith literatureand like them also she considered the experiencethrough literature to be of central importance. But she did not acceptthe premise, stated explicitly in An Experience Curriculum, that theteacher's attention would focus primarily on the experiences with

121 THADITIoN AND REFORM

literature. since these could be manipulated in a way that the otherscould not. Indeed, Rosenblatt concluded that none of the currentlypopular ways of using literaturewhether to increase socialawareness, broaden the range of information, or develop sensitivityto literary formwere likely to lead to an "intimate personalresponse" (p. 701. Rosenblatt had no illusions that such a responsecould be easily aroused; it would require an approach infinitely morecomplex than any of the approaches teachers were accustomed totaking. The complexity, in her view, stemmed directly from the factthat "There is no such thing as a generic reader or a generic literarywork; . . . there are only unnumberable separate responses toindividual works of art" (pp. 32-33).

Thus it is the response of the student rather than the content ofthe work of literature which becomes the object of the teacher'sattention. It is this response which must be challenged, refined,enlargedby the process of reflection upon the response and uponthe elements in the work which provoked it. In the end it is notimportant that a student be able to distinguish among the variousliterary forms: it is important that he learn to respond maturely toprogressively more complex writings. Literature as Exploration isnot a pattern curriculum in the sense of the Council publications, andin many ways the approach outlined does not lend itself to formula-tion in those terms. What emerges, finally, is the picture of quietdiscussion, "a friendly group, come together to exchange ideas" (p.83). This group, much more than the materials they use, is the heartof the educational process.

The importance of such an exchange of ideas was also dealt withat length by Rosenblatt. Though discussed from a number ofdifferent perspectives, the goals offered were essentially those ofacculturation, the development of socially accepted and sociallyvaluable modes of thought and patterns of reaction. "Any individualborn into a society must somehow . . 'learn not only its language,its gestures, its mechanics," she wrote, "but also the varioussuperstructures of ideas, emotions, modes of behavior. moral values,that that particular society has built up around the basic humanrelationships" (p. 2231. A pluralistic, democratic society such as theUnited States can offer, of course, no one simple pattern, but neitherdoes literature. Indeed one function of literature would be toillustrate the many different ways of life open to any individual.

Rosenblatt was careful to point out-that what she proposed wasnot simply a continuation of "the old notion of 'character buildingthrough literature' "a tradition to which her concerns are obvious-ly related. That older tradition, however, had been prescriptive,providing "a series of models of human behavior to imitate" (p. 294).The new view of the teaching of literature would help the student toexperience many models, good and bad, and to learn to deal criticallyand intellectually with the emotional reactions they would necessar-

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 125

ily arouse. It was truly to be. in the terms of her title, an explorationof the reader's own nature, during which he would gradually"become aware of potentialities for thought and feeling withinhimself, acquire dearer perspective, develop aims and a sense ofdirection." Viewed in this way, literature had a "very real, and evencentral" role in the "social and cultural life of a democracy"; it was toengender the cultural patterns and modes of behavior that wouldcontrol that society's future.'"

The Effect on the Schools

The Course, of Study

For some direct evidence of the -extent to which classroomprocedures were changing in response to these new concerns, we canturn to Dora V. Smith's monograph Instruction in English (1933),.prepared as part of the National Survey of-Secondary Education.'"Smith analyzed 156 courses of study from 127 cities in 35 states, andvisited 70 schools that presented "unique features of content ormethod." I ler findings indicate that while some of the changes ineducational theory were carrying over into the schools, otherscertainly were not.

Methods of instruction at the time of this survey reflected a mix oftraditional and progressive approaches. Smith noted with approval awidespread provision for individual differences, either through pro-viding for separate tracks or by varying the work around somecentral core. The unit method of instruction had also becomewidespread, and seemed to have furthered progressive teaching.Smith claimed that it had been "exceedingly beneficial" in helpingteachers concentrate on the literary work as a whole, leading to"broader discussion. to less emphasis upon meticulous detail, and tothe seeking of wider relationships both in literature and with otherforms of expression" (pp. 59-60). Though lengthy philological analy-sis of texts was no longer common, too much time continued to hedevoted to single works. As much as nine weeks was given over tothe study of a single text in some classes, with a mode of four weeksfor such selections as Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and As You Like It.VIii le noting a general policy of promoting wider individual readingand a definite trend toward so-called "Free-reading" programs in thewestern states, Smith offered little evidence that such programswere in widespread use.

More positively, the time had clearly passed when the yearly listsof college entrance texts could dominate the course. Rather than theuniformity of earlier surveys, Smith found only eight texts common

I 26 TRADITION AND REFORM

to the courses c,{ study of; even one-fifth of the schools. The use ofliterature anthologies, which will be discussed in more detail in thenext section of this chapter, had also become common, forming thebasis of the required course in 50 percent of the junior high schools.At the senior high schonl level they more often served as supple-ments to the study of separately bound classics. This reflected thecontinuing legacy nf the examination syllabus: 50 percent of theschools had found nn other organization for their course, continuingto present "mere lists of classics for study" (pp. 47-49). Of the thirtymost frequently used texts, none were contemporary. Comparing herresults with an earlier survey of cnnditions before 1900, Smith fnundthat nnly the Bunker Hill Oration had vanished from the course:"Otherwise the lapse of 25 to 40 years has made little change in therequirements except to add a few more titles in kind plus thenineteenth century novel" (pp. 50-52). Yet this lack of change shouldnot have been surprising, given the conservatism in this respect ofthe recommendations of the National Joint Committee on English.The only other majnr change was the \ appearance of Americanliterature courses as part nf the eleventh grade program in themajnrity of schools.

The main alternative to the organization by lists of classics wasthe study of types or genres. With its roots in "appreciation" andnew impetus froin studies nf reading, this had heen adopted by 47percent of the high schools and 22 percent of the junior high schools.While Smith noted nptimistically that there was "evidence inelassmom practice that some teachers are able to follow a course ofstudy organized by types without undue stress on form and tech-nique," it was clear from her comments that such stress was a veryreal danger (pp. 47-49).

Finally, Smith found that the real or imagined strictures of thecollege continued to have a pervasive influence upon the literaturecurriculum. Though preparation for college was at the very bottomof the list of objectives presented in the courses of study, in practiceteachers were conditioning their teaching tn the college demands:"No impression remains more vivid after conference with hundredsof teachers throughout the country than the fear under which theylabor because nf the requirements (real or imagined) of the institu-tion higher up" (p. 74). One must wnnder, however, about the extenttn which this "fear" gained impetus frnm the comfnrt nf teaching theold and familiar. The process of change is never easy, and the

- demands upon the teacher during These decades were many andcomplex.

Just a few years later, Dr. Smith again had the opportunity forintensive assessment of the program in English, this time as part ofthe Regents' Inquiry Into the Cost and Character of Public Educa-tion in New York State.° A representative sampling of fifty-one ofthe state's communities was selected for extensive achievement

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 127

testing in the spring of 1936; schools in slightly more than half ofthese communities were then visited during 1937. This investigation,relying less upon courses of study and more upon the results ofactual testing and classroom visitations, was even less encouraging.Although New York had a recent and liheral statewide course ofstudy, some 60 percent of the teachers reported that it was thetextbooks available, not the course of study, that determined whatwent. on in the classroom. And the book supply, though varyingconsiderably from school to school, was in general quite limited;most programs made use of a single literary anthology for eachyear's course. Indeed, the movement toward wide or extensivereading lone of the hopeful "trends" in the earlier study) was one ofthe major casualties of the intervening years of depression. Schoolswith curtailed instructional programs could not afford the invest-ment in new materials that any substantial broadening of theliterature program would have implied.

Smith did find a "wholesome emphasis upon the reading ofliterature selections themselves and not upon facts ahout books,their authors, and the literary periods from which they come." Newinstructional approaches--the project method, socialized class pro-cedures, small group workhad not fared well, however. Intensivereading of a single selection by the whole class was the usualsituation, and the approach hardly progressive: "Question andanswer procedures with the teacher in command, and recitationaround the room of sentences written out at home the night beforerepresent by far the most common activities of the average high /school English class in New York" (pp. 251-53). Indeed, the studyraised serious questions about the individualization of instruction.Attention given to individual differences had become "largely ad-ministrative." with materials and activities tending to differ "inamount rather than kind." "Attention to individual need had verylittle place in the classrooms visited,- Smith complained. "Generalregimentation of pupils was the rule: individualization, the excep-tion.' (pp. 154-57).

The study pinpointed teacher training and teacher load, inaddition to inadequate bark supplies, as the most important obsta-cles to implementation of an effective English program. Though themajority of teachers in New York schools had completed at least a13.A:, the programs they had gone through seemed in many waysinadequate. Most had emphasized "academic English," with little ofthe breadth necessary to implement a progressive program. Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, rather than contemporary literature,speech, library training, or literature for adolescents, were the sortsof college requirements the teachers had had to fulfill.

The extracurricular programs presented another real obstacle insome schools, absorbing so much of the teacher's time that formalclasses were devoted to "deadly and uninteresting routine." With

TRADITION AND I (EFORNI

some understatement, Smith pointed out that such a situation"suggests the need of reconsidering the areas in which it is desirablefor teachers to spend their best energies," especially since the"ideal" fusion of extracurricular and curricular activities was "farfrom realized." Though many schools visited had flourishing pro-grams in drama, journalism, and debate, these were carried on forthe most part in isolation from the English, class, even when run bythe same teacher 1P, 227).

The Literature Anthologies

Smith's studies suggest that by the end of the 1930s, the teachingof literature was to a large extent dominated by the literatureanthology rather than by statements of goals or courses of study.Anthologies produced for the general reading public rather than forthe schools date from the first days of the republic but reached apeak alter improvements in printing methods in the nineteenthcentury. These were often "gift books," elahorately bound andillustrated, and presenting quite extensivesometimes exhaustive

collections of complete works. Almost all forms of organization formodern school anthologies had their forerunners in these earlycommerical bookssome were organized chronologically, others bytypes or themes; still others presented the works of a single nation,region, period, genre. or author.'"

As long as the college entrance lists dominated the teaching ofEnglish, however, there was little room for a school anthology. Thecarefully annotated editions of the set texts reflected the demands onthe English course more adequately, and they were also moreeconomical: with the lists changing regularly, these editions allowedthe school to buy just the newly-appearing selections and to continueto use texts held over from-previous years. About 1920, however,this situation began to change. The progressive emphasis on widerreading made it more important to increase the number of selections,while the gradual adoption of the comprehensive examination of theCollege Board freed the schools from the domination of the UniformLists. Classics continued to be taught, but instead of changing thetitles each year. a school could add an anthology to supplement andbroaden. the course. The leaders of the progressive movement inEnglish supported this emphasis; for example, Walter Barnes,twenty-first president of NCTE, defended the "book of selections"as an economical way of offering many satisfying experiences closetogether. At least thirteen of the twenty-two Council presidentsbetween 1917 and 193b helped to edit the anthologies of one oranother major American publisher; so did Hatfield, never NCTEpresident but secretary-treasurer for most of this period.'" Ininvolving themselves in these projects, they were giving tacitsupport to the use of these hooks in the schools. Finally, the

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 129

restrictions on budgets brought about by the Depression propelledthe anthology from an increasingly important supplement to theseparately-bound classics into the very center of the literatureprogram with whatever classics were to be studied bound withinthe anthology covers. In this way a single purchase could providematerials for the whole course, materials that could he used over andover again with new groups of students.

These collections were at least a moderately progressive forcethroughout the twenties and thirties. They were responsive to thebroader movements for reform and provided teachers, in the absenceof any other widely accepted formulation, with a set of materialsarranged in a coherent order for use with their classes. Publishersbegan by experimenting with a variety of formats for their collec-tions. The L. W. Singer series (1927-31) was at the conservative endof the spectrum, offering essentially the College Board texts conven-iently bound in one volume; Scribner's Literature and Living series(19251 was at the other extreme, giving a prominent place to modernwriters and social values. Most, however, tried to strike a commer-cially more profitable balance between these extremes, so thatteachers with a variety of views. could comfortably use them. Onelloughton Mifflin text went so far as to include selections and studyaids for two completely separate courses, one "general" and progres-sive in orientation, the other "college entrance"- and decidedlyacademic.'"

The most successful collection was the Scott, Foresman Litera-ture and Life series (1922 - 1924). which managed to synthesize thesetaw points of view. It carefully included all the required collegeentrance texts, but "woven into the great Book of Literature itself-was "abundant material for the study of contemporary literature andfor the study of prose reflecting current thoughts and problems."Two devices were used to foster the synthesis. One was the ratherobvious expee::nt of including both "academic" and experience-oriented questions for each selection (without dividing them assuch). The other was to organize the selections in order of increasingdifficulty and sophistication. The net effect was to increase thetraditional emphases in the last two books, the functional or sociallyoriented selections in the first two."

Most of the early anthmv.;ies emphasized the study of types orchronology, but this began to change as teachers became moreconcerned with "experience." One of the corollaries of the experienceapproach had been the need for greater breadth and variety in theselections presented, and as the scope of the anthology increased, theuse of types as a method of organization offered a less and lesscoherent focus. By the mid-thirties, thematic units organized aroundimportant personal or social goals dominated the seventh to tenthgrade anthologies, while formal and historical studies continued tohe the rule for the last two years. It was common, however; to find

130 TRADITION AND 'INFORM

the various approaches nested within one anothera thematic unitin which the materials were all of one type, or a genre study -in whichthe selections were presented chronologically." (Many of theillustrative units in An Experience Curriculum represented exactlysuch a blend.)

In addition to the shift toward thematic units, the anthologiesclearly did respond to pressures for more and more modern litera-ture, even eroding the dominance of the CEEB selections. Of the tenmost frequently anthologized authors in the period from 1917 to1934, for example, all had been represented on the CEEB listsbetween 1917 and 1934; but between 1935 and 1945 the CEEBauthors yielded four of the top ten positions. The newcomersWaltWhitman, Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost. and Emily Dickinsonre-flected the growing interest in American literature and its institu-tionalization as the eleventh grade course. "

More important than the slight changes in emphasis in theselections was the major shift in breadth, The highly conservativeSinger series provides a dramatic illustration of the anthologies'response in this respect: the first edition of the tenth grade volume in1928 had contained only eight selections; the 1935 edition of thesame volume offered seventy-nine. Though few others shifted quiteso rapidly. most series did increase both the number of selections andthe number of authors represented. However these works were beinghandled by the classroom teacher, their mere presence inthe course represented a significant change in the program in litera-ture."

Perspective: The Years between the Wars

The decades that fell between the two world wars were a time ofchange and experiment within the teaching of English. The periodbegan with the liberation of the subject from overt control by thecolleges; but that very liberation, as the leaders of the professioncame to realize, raised prohlems of even greater magnitude than theones it solved. When the teaching of literature had first come into theschools, it had had a coherent if somewhat eircumscrihed func-tion, and it. had had a methodology, albeit a borrowed one, that hadgiven it the aura of a systematic study. Indeed, without thisdemonstrable function and method it is doubtful it could have won aplace as more than an ancillary part of the curriculum.

But the function was artificial and the method was borrowed, andboth were cast off when the teaching of literature hegan to assert itsrole as a high school subject. The search for a new function and a newmethod was begun in the rhetoric and enthusiasm that marked theProgressive Era in education, and if the leaders of NCTE were only

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEAMING 13I

occasionally themselves comfortable in the company of the leaders ofthe progressive movement, preferring in general a more moderateand subjectoriented position, they were buoyed by the optimismand sense of mission that pervaded the movement as a whole."Whether arguing the values of science or elaborating the details oft he experience curriculum, they rarely questioned the intimacy of therelationship between educational theory and educational practice.

Yet it was in the very nature of the task they had set themselvesthat a gap should develop. The teaching of English had become anational enterprise, involving a multitude of teachers, each of whom,if change were to be effective, would have to be not only convincedthat the change was workable. but also taught how to implement it.But the leaders in the teaching of English had no panacea to offer tothe teacher of literature: they were themselves engaged in the oftenpainful process of reformulating goals and methods, and trying toreestablish meaningful limits to the universe of English instruction.As often as not. the limits proposed broadened rather than circum-scribed that universe, moving the boundary ever outward throughsocialization to social understanding and finally to acculturation. AsRobert C. Pooley put it in 1939:

Within twenty years we have had to meet, study. and assimilateseveral new psychologies, at least one new sociology, and a score ofisms. We have had to grapple with such concepts as "the child centeredschool," the activity program. the socialized recitation. the projectmethod. integration, correlation. two and three-track plans, and theunit plan. The progressive movement has waxed fat in the last twodecades. All these movements and schemes have added immeasurablyLO thescienceand art of teaching. But they have also bred doubts, fears,and insecurity where once there was confidence."'

The insecurity expressed itself in many ways. only one of whichwas the reliance upon the argument that "the colleges require it" to

justify continuing with old methods of teaching. Indeed, as theEnglish Journal and the CEEB did their best to point out, thecolleges did not require the kind of preparation that was beingjustified in their name, in gmneral accommodating their requirementsto the changing philosophy of secondary instruction. Still, reactionset in as the thirties waned: Dora V. Smith's 1936 presidentialaddress to the Council was even challenged by an Ohio teacherprotesting against "the forcing of the liheral methods on entire cityschool systems.'

By the end'of the thirties such protests, coupled with the soberingfindings of empirical studies of current practice, hrought a new andmore realistic perspective on the problems of teaching literature.Rosenblatt's study helped too, for it presented the coherent andsystematic explanation of the place and function of literature inAmerican life that had heen lacking: and the expertise and knowl-

132 'worm*: A Mu It Kroam

edge that would be required to carry out her program were all themore evident for the competence with which she had treated theissues. As early as 1936. Dora V. Smith, writing for the NinthYearbook of the Department of Supervisors and Directors of Instruc-tion of the N EA, provided one description of the task that layahead." -The fundamental question," she noted, is "what are thechances of success in the schools of our country today" limited by"narrow prescriptions in the Curricula, with methods conditioned bydesks nailed to the floor, and with an examination system whichtakes cognizance chiefly of facts and skills?"

. . we can begin by determining to approach literature as it ig ap-proached by intelligent, cultured people in everyday life. We can.,ol pleasure in reading first: we can aim constantly at enjoyment

the development of hunger for more. We can test the successof our program by the desire of boys. and girls to continue more readingof the same sort under their own direction. We can associate books withever-widening interests and increased understanding of human natureand experience.... we can at least begin to break with the traditionalprogram of literary chronology and technique ... and relate literature tothe limitless interests of life itself (pp. 165-691.

Even at that, the task that remainedlWas large.

A FRAMEWORK FOR MAIMING 133

CHAPTER V NOTES

I. Sterling Andrus Leonard. Essential Principles of Mocking Thmdingand Literature in the intermediate Grades card the High School ( Ph iladelphia: .1. H. Lippincott Co., 1922). p. 335.

2. John .1. Delloer. "The Materials of the English Curriculum."Editorial. English Journal 21:1 (January 1932); 68-69.

3. Charles Swain Thomas, "Variables and Constants," English .1 ournal25:2 (February 19361; 101-13.

4. Dom V. Smith, Em«duating instruction in Secondary School Eng-lish. A Report of a Division of the New York Regents' Inquiry into theCharacter and Cost of Public Education in New York State (Chicago:NCTE. 19411, p. 120.

5. William I loard Kilpatrick, "The Project Method." Teachers CollegeReran)19 (September 1918): 319-35.

Ii. William Ileard Kilpatrick. Foundations of Method: Informal Talkson That-king (New York: Macmillan Co.. 19251. p. 69. This hook wasdogmatically connectionist in its psychology, a position which Kilpatricklater abandoned. See his introduction to Hilda 'rabies The Dynamics ofEducation (London: Kogan Paul. Trench. Trulmer. 19321 ApparentlyKilpatrick never revised his own book because he rejected the psychology onwhich it was based. See James R. Squire, vd., A New Look at ProgressiveEducation. 1972 Yearbook of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Washington. D.C.: ASCD, 1972), p. 145, fn. 10.

7. Kilpatrick. "The Project Method."8. Kilpatrick, Foundations of Method.pp. 302, 274, 310.9. James Fleming I losic "An Outline of the Problem-Project Met hod.

English Journal 7:9 (November 1918). There is some evidence that Hosicrather than Kilpatrick first presented the method (Squire. .4 New Look atProgressive Education, p. 142. fn. 9). The term had been used in EnglishJournal as early as February 1918, in an editorial which found "muchpromise in the so-called project method." Editorial, "What Is Socializa-tion?" English Journal 7:2 (February 19181: 135.

10. Hatfield saw in it the "fundamental unifying principle of method"that American education had always lacked, and called for articles illustrat-ing its successful application. "Speaking of Platforms," English Journal 9:7(September 19201: 420-21; "Saving the Project." English Journal 9:8(October 1920): 476-77; and "An Exposition of Method." English ,lournal11:6 (June 1922): 370. As examples, see Mariette Hyde. "Projects inLiterature." English Journal 9:7 (September 19201: 01-06; Charles RobertGaston. "Pegasus and Kit.". English Journal 12:2 (February 1923): 83:Ilelen L. Items, "The Project of a Journey," English Journal 13:2 (Febru-ary 19241: 133-36; May' R. Pringle, "Comparison in Method," English.journal 14:4 (April 19251: 303-10.

I I. James Fleming I Jamie, Empirical Studies of School Reading. Con tri.butions to Education no. 114 (New York! Teachers College, ColumbiaUniversity, 19211.

12. Leonard, Essential Principles,. pp. 5, 31.13. E. Estelle Downing, "What English Teachers Can Do to Promote

World-Peace," English Journal 14:3 (March 19251; 183-92. 'rhe committeewas very active, providing Journal readers with lists of materials andexamples of teaching as well as offering programs at the annual convention.

131 TRADITION AND REFORM

Until the early thirties, when a reformist attitude again became popular.they provoked little response from teachers ma an I DO committee itself.

14. Martha Hale Shackford. "Deserted Goldsmith." English imam(' 9:2(February 1921)1: 103.08.

15. Harry '1'. linker. "The Criticism and Teaching of ContemporaryLiterature." English Journal 12:7 (September 1923): 59.63.

16. Editorial. "Our Own Reading." English Journal 11:6 (June 1922):369. Percy II. Boynton. ''American Authors of Today." English Journal11:7 (September 19221: 383-91. The first was about Edwin ArlingtonRobinson. Boynton eventually collected the articles into a book which wasitself well received I"Our Own llorn." English dournal 13:7 IStiptember1921): 5011. Council pride in his and later contributions is reflected in "TheNat ional Council. 1911.36. English Journal 25:10 11 )(Tend ler 19361.

17. Grant 1). I). Ainslie translated many 01Croce's works, including TheEssence of .4 est head. (19211 and Aesthetic as Science of Expression andGeneral Linguistic. Ogden and Richards's The Meaning of _Meaning ap-peared in 1923. Richards. Ogden. and Wood's 'Ii.- Foundations of tlesthetiewas in its second edition by 1925.

18, Llewellyn Jones. "Aesthetics and Contemporary Literature," Eng-lish Journal 14:8 and 9 (October and November 1925): 583-91, 665 -75.

19. Leonard. Essential Principles. pp. 394-95. Wilbur Hatfield also usedit. with his college freshmen. -Instead of the Survey,'' English Journal20:10 (December 19311: 840.

20. Mabel Irene Rich, Study of the Pl'ypes of Literature (New York:Century Co 19211. On the influence of Rich's anthology and its sequel.Classified Types of Literature (New York: Century Co., 1926), see IrvinEhrettpreis, The ''Tvpcs Approach'. to Literature (New York: King's CrownPress. 19451, pp. '89 ff. Similar comments are in John Muth Bernd'sApproaches to the Teaching of Literature in Secondary Schools. 1900-1956(Dissertation, University of Wisconsin. 1957; University Microfilms No.24.260. pp. 140 ff.

21. See Henry Seidel Canby, -The State of American Criticism."English Journal 13:10 )December 1921: 705 -09: Grant Overton. "On.Morality and Decency in Fiction. English Journal 18:1 (January 19291:14-23. Both were concerned with the relationship between literature andculture. (Canby was editor of the Saturday Review of Literature: Overton of('ollier's.) Teachers used the approach most frequently with Shakespeare.E.g.. Winifred! Smith, "Teaching Shakespeare in School," English Journal11:6 (June 19221: 361-64: Emily Fanning Barry. "Avenues to ShtlIttillearit"(stet. English Journal 28:7 (September 1939): 556 64.

22. Joseph M. lhonuts. "The Inhibiting Instincts," English-Journal 9:1(January 19201: 1-21. He should not be confused with Charles SwainThonms, who though very active did not become N.CTE president till 1935.

23. Martha Hale Shackford, "Shall We Change Entrance English?"English Journal 14:2 IFebruary 19251; 98-107.

24. Irving Babbitt. "English and the Discipline of Ideas." EnglishJournal 9:2 (February 1920): 61-70. On the humanist movement in general,see Wellek. "Literary Scholarship." in American 'Scholarship in theTwentieth Century, ed. Merle Curti (Cambridge: !hit-yard University Press.19531. pp. 117-18.

25. Lou L. LaBrant "Masquerading.- English Journal 20:3 (March19311:2.1.1 -46: Gertrude M. Woodcock, "Stagecraft as Motivation in Ivan.

A FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 135

hoe, English Journal 20:3 (March 1931): 246 -19; and Kilpatrick. Founda-tions of Method. pp. 138.40.

26, Howard Mumford Jones, "The Fetish of Classics." EnglishJournal 18:3 (March 1929); 221-39. For the opposing view, see Mabel C.lermans, "Directed Reading in Social Adjustment." English Journal 17:3

(March 1928): 219.28.27. After an article of Robert Morss Lovett and a second by Michael

Gold, Hatfield received so many reader reactions that he had to protest thatpersonally he did not like Hemingway (the subject of Lovett's article) orGold's variety of criticism. but published them "primarily as information.and secondarily as is stimulus to fundamental, catholic thinking." Editorial,"Hemingway and Gold," English Journal 22:3 (March 1933): 340-41;Robert Morss Lovett. "Ernest Hemingway." English Journal 21:8 (October1932): 609.17: Michael Gold, "The Education of John Dos Passos," English.Journal 22:2 (February 1933): 87-97; V. F. Calverton. "Left-Wing Litera-ture in America," English ,Journal 20:10 (December 19311: 789-98.

28. See Lawrence A. Cremin. The Transformation of the School (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1961). pp. 229-30.

29. Cited in The Progressive Educator and the Depression. C. A.Bowers (New York: Random House, 1969), pp. 23.34.

30. English Journal noted the magazine's debut and provided informa-tion on subscriptions. '"I'he Periodicals." English Journal 23:10 (December1934): 857. See Cremin, Transformation of the School. pp. 230.3l; andBowers. Progressive Educator and the Depression, pp. 15, 44. 108.

31, Stella S. Center. "The Responsibilities of Teachers of English inContemporary American Life," English Journal 22:2 (Fehruary 1933):97-108. She received a standing ovation. "The Memphis Council Meeting,"English Journal 22:2 (February 1933): 143-59.

32. Stella S. Center, "President's Message," English Journal 21:3(March 1932): 240-41: John .1. Delloer, "The Technique ofTeaching Peace,"English Journal 22:4 (April l9331: 325-26; "The Boston Convention,"English Journal 26:2 (February 1937): 131.39; and Essie Chamberlain,"International Mindedness Through Books," English Journal 22:5 (May19331: 282.91. The resolution asserted that teachers of English "have theserious responsibility of explaining realistically to their pupils that war isnot a glamorous and romantic experience, but rather an ugly, cruel, costly,and barbarous method of attempting to settle national and internationaldisputes," Council efforts on behalf of the peace movement continued tillthe brink of the war. The International Relations Committee even publishedan anthology of peace-oriented stories and articles by contemporary figuressuch as Hemingway, Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and Van Loon. Ida T. Jacobs,ed.. War and Peace: An Anthology. Bulletin 3 of the InternationalRelations Committee of the NCTE (Chicago:, NCTE, 1937).

33. Editorial, "Dare We?" English Journal 22:1 (January 1933): 67; andJohn J. Definer, "Propaganda in the Schools," English Journal 25A (April1036); 325. Propaganda analysis became an increasing concern toward the

end of the decade.34. Oscar J. Campbell. "English: Its Domestic and Foreign Policies,"

English Journal 24:2 (Fehruary 1935): 100.10; and Dora V. Smith, "Amer-ican Youth and English," English Journal 26:2 (February 1937): 99-113.

:15. W. Wilbur Hatfield, chairman. An Experience Curriculum in En-glish. A Report of the Curriculum Commission of the National Council of

136 Tanvertorg AND liEFORSI

'Teachers of English (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 19351, p. v.36. The "radical-progressive unit" had been discussed earlier. "Units in

Learning," English Journal 16:10 (December 1927): 81.6-17.37. For a discussion of the reaction to these aspects of the report, see

Raven I. NleDavid, J r.. ed., An Examination of the Attitudes of the NCTEtoward Language. Research Report no. (Urbana, Ill.: WIT, 19651.

38. "Comments on the Curriculum Report," English Journal 25:4(April, 19361: 321-21. Angela NI. Broening, chairman, Conducting Exper-iences in English. A publication of the National Council of Teachers ofEnglish (New York: I), Appleton-Century Co., 1939).

39. An appendix to the report listed eighty-three courses of study fromall parts of the country which embodied the experience approach: some,however, had been issued prior to An Experience Curriculum. For otherreactions. see, for example, Annette Mann, "Does the Experience Curricu-lum Idea Work?" English Journal 27:2 (February 19381: 173; and "AnExperience Curriculum in Action," English Journal 27:8 (October 1938):693.

Broening, Conducting Experiences, pp. -6.1. Hatfield, An Experience Curriculum, p. 11.42.. Ruth Mary Weeks, chairman. A Correlated Curriculum (New York:

I). Appleton-Century Co., 19361, pp. 6-9, 285.13. "A Correlated Curriculum Evaluated," Books, English Journal 26:5

(May 19371: 417-20. I lopkins's review was printed first. Bobbitt's second.44. Louise M. Rosenblatt. Literature as Exploration. For the Commis

slim on I luman Relations of the Progressive Education Association (NewYork: I). Appleton-Century Co., 1938).

45. Ibid.. pp. v-vi. This point of view was not limited to the PEA. AJoint Committee of Twenty-Four of the MLA and NCTE endorsed astatentent on the aims of literary study drafted by Louise Rosenblatt,I Toward Mumford Jones, and Oscar James Campbell. It saw literature as away to "self-reliant and well-rounded personalities." Though the committeeasked for the -widest possible distribution," little notice was taken of thestatement. Later statements from the MLA Commission on Trends inEducation, however, did continue to affirm its basic principles. Statementof the Committee of Twenty-Four, "The Aims of Literary Study," MLA53 119381: 1367-71.

46, Dora V. Smith, instruction in English, Office of Education Bulletin1932, no. 17. National Survey of Secondary Education Monograph no. 20(Washington. D.C.: Government Printing Office, 19331.

17. Smith. Evaluating instruction in Secondary School English. Seealso Dora V. Smith, "Implications of the New York Regents' Inquiry for theTeaching of English," English Journal 28:3 (March 1939): 177.

48. The best discussion of the early traditions is in Bibb's dissertation,though her concern is with those devoted to American selections. Amongthe very early texts, she cites Matthew Carey's Select Poem-, ChieflyAmerican (17911, Evelyn Itezek Bibb. Anthologies of Amerl Literature,1787-1964 (Dissertation, Columbia University, 1965: University MicrofilmsNo. 66-17281.

49, The comparison here is with the lists provided by James Olson ofeditors of the anthologies he studied. Other Council presidents during thisperiod also produced teaching materials, but concentrated their efforts inlanguage and compositon rather than literature. James Warren Olson, The

A 'FRAMEWORK FOR TEACHING 137

Nature of Literature Anthologies Used in the leaching High SchoolEnglish 1917-1957 (Dissertation. University of Wisconsin. 1969; UniversityMicrofilms No. 69-22.4541. Walter Barnes. 'The Book of Selections: ItsValue in Teaching Iligh-School Literature." English Journal 8:.4 (April1919): 248:53.

50. Olson, Nature of Literature Anthologies, pp. 87-108.51. Olson, Nature of Literature Anthologies. pp. 91-105: Bernd, in

Approaches to leaching Literature, comments similarly on this series.52. Olson. Nature of Literature Anthologies, pp. 109-15. Rich's 1921

anthology. for example, was chronologically organized within each genre.53. Olson, Nature of Literature Anthologies, pp. 91. 180.54. In Olson's study. for example, the number of authors not un the

CEEB lists doubled, the number of selections rose from 3.132 to 5.865. andthe number of selections appearing in only one anthology almost tripledfrom the first (1917-19341 to the second (1935.1945) period (pp. 174-79).

55. James Fleming !Usk the Council's first secretary and founder ofEnglish Journal. illustrated the moderate position in a retrospective articlepublished in 1932. Ile accused the progressives of "baying lived by faith.not by sight. yet acknowledged that teachers owed them "Such realadvances as education is now making.- "In the lung run," he concluded,"the moderate position is most likely to prove tenableand safe." TheCouncil always had some members who were very much a part of theprogressive movement J. Milnor nervy and John Del3oer, for example,each went on to head the Progressive Education Association after periods ofactive service to NCTEbut as flask put it, the Council was ''anorganization of collective thinking" and always had equally active conserva-tive members balancing the most liberal view. It would he fair to say,however. that Hosic, Hatfield, and the Council as a whole were moreprogressive than they cared to admit. James Fleming nosh:, "The NationalCouncil after Twenty Years," English.lournal21:2 (February 19321: 107-13.

56, Robert C. Pooley, "Varied Patterns of Approach in the Teaching ofLiterature,- English Journal 28:5 (May 1939): 242-53.

57. Myriam Page. "The Other Side," English Journal 26:6 (June 19371:.10.4.1.

58. The importance of Rosenblatt's bookand of its implications wererecognized immediately. Thus Hatfield reviewed it himself as soon as itappeared. beginning with the sentence, "Literature as Exploration fills thethoughtful college or secondary-school teacher of English with shame, fear,and resolution." Malcolm S. MacLear made A similar point in "What'sWrong with Us English Teachers? English Journal 28:8 (October 1939):655-63. (W. Wilbur Hatfield. "A Fresh View of Literature Teaching,"Books. English Journal 27:7 1Septemher 1938): 618-19.)

59. Marquis E. Shattuck, chairman, The Development of a ModernProgram in English, Ninth Yearbook (Washington. D.C.: Department ofSupervisors and Directors of Instruction of the NEA, 1936).

No one present at that fast conference (of the Eight-Year Study! will everfowl the honest confession of one principal when she said, "My leachem andI do not know what to do with this freedom. It challenges and frightens us. Ifear that we have come to love our chains." . . No one of the group couldpossibly foresee all the developments ahead, nor were all of one mind as lowhat should be done.

The Story of the EightYear Study,19421

Neither this book nor any other can say how a page should be readif by thatwe mean that it can give a recipe for discovering what the page trolly says.All could duand that would be muchwould be to help its to understandsome of the difficulties in the way of such discoveries.

I. A. Richards, How to Read a Page,19422

Communication is one of the five or six most crucial services of war. It is onewith which a half-dozen major agencies in Washington are now urgentlyconcerned, for home front and battle front alike, following the rimeimperative concern with military mobilization and war production. It isplainly the one in which our seventy-five thousand teachers of English canmake the special war contribution we have been looking, hoping, walling for.

Lennox Grey, NCTE second vicepresident, 19433

The field of literature past and present is a vast one, almost as large in scopeas occupational, health, and community living areas. The basic-course teacherwould have to become familiar with this strafed& in order to weave thereading (poetry, plays, novels, biographies, essays, etc.) into the current areasof concentration.

English Journal review of Educationfor All American Youth, 19454

One of the joys of teaching is the opporlunity to influence the developmentand growth of the young sludent. There are few experiences that evoke theglow the teacher feels in seeing a young person mature in language power, inhuman Melons, in the personal satisfaclions which may be derived fromincreased good taste in reading and listening, and in the power to use wordswally and in writing so as to achieve adequate ad/us/ment for himself and histeen-age friends.

Commission on the English Curriculum,19565

Chapter VI

Narrowed Goals

The expansion of the English curriculum aroundthe metaphors of experience and exploration was followed by aconscious narrowing of the scope and goals of instruction duringthe ensuing decades. Much of this occurred within the context of amovement toward "general education" that came to prominencesimultaneously in the colleges and secondary schools of the latethirties." In part hecause the Depression left them with little else todo. students who would previously have dropped out early wereremaining through the high school and even into the college years.This created a new band of students for whom neither vocationalnor college-preparatory training would be appropriate; for these"general" students a new kind of education was needed. As theProgressive Education Association's Commission on SecondarySchool Curriculum put it, this would be "general education"

education of post elementary grade intended to foster good living. Itrules out conventional planes of professional preparation and scholar-ship for its own sake when these prove extraneous to the singlepurpose of helping the student achieve a socially adequate and per-sonally satisfying life in a democracy.'

How to educate for this "socially adequate and personally satisfy-ing life in a democracy" was the major problem faced by theprogressives during the 1940s and 1950s. Two major, complemen-tary responses developed. The first involved a narrowing of theinitial progressive concern with the social needs of the student intoa concern with adolescent problems, in particular the problem ofadjusting to the demands of the adult World. This narrowing will bethe subject of the first part of the present chapter.

139

HO TRADITION AND REFORM

The second and complementary response was to focus on lan-guage and communication skills. This also developed as part of thegeneral education movement, but it had deeper roots in academictraditions of language study, in particular in the general semanticsmovement and the work of the New Critics, Both of thesethe oneoriginating in response to the use of propaganda in the First WorldWar, the other in the complexities of twentieth century poetryemphasized the difficulties inherent in skillful use of language,with a concomitant need for close, analytic study if the reader orlistener were not to be misled. The entry of the United States intoWorld War 11 hrought the functional aspects of such languagestudies once again into the foreground. relating all of them to acentral concern with "communication skills." As a War Depart-ment spokesman explained the army view over NBC radio,

13v English. the Army.means skill in reading, writing, speaking, andlistening, and above all, understanding what is read, written, spoken,and heard. Army men and women must be able to communicate clearlyand accurately by any media: they must he able to understand theorders they give us well as the orders they receive.'

Under the pressures of war, such a drastic reduction in the scope ofinsttuction generated little rebuttal. Even the American Associ-ation of Colleges agreed that "educators are not prepared to assertto military authorities that the 'intangible values' of a liberal artseducation would make soldiers better fighters."' Under such pres-sures, spelling lists and vocabulary exercises proliferated, andreading skills became again an important concern of the secondaryschool teacher of literature.

Even as the new and narrower focus of instruction was develop-ing. it generated a reaction among those who favored the tradi-tional educational emphasis on intellectual training and culturalheritage. Critics of the progressives' provided a discordant under-current from 1940 on, laying a foundation for an academic revivalwhich eventually wrested the initiative in educational reform awayfrom the progressives and returned it to college faculties of liberalarts. This academic revival will be discussed in Chapter VII.

Progressivism as the Conventional Wisdom

The Eight-Year Study

During the 1940s and 1950s, the educational policies of progres-sive education were widely accepted by American educators. Themost highly publicized working out of these principles within thecontext of general education was the so-called "life adjustment

NARROWED GOALS 141

movement"; during this time the center of educational innovationshifted from the Progressive Education Association (PEA) itself tothe National Education Association (NEA) and the U.S. Office ofEducation I USOE), Still the origins of the movement can be traceddirectly to the experiences of the thirty schools involved in theEight-Year Study of the PEA. It was in these schools that theeducational experience was gradually redefined in the terminologyof mental hygiene and personality development.

The genesis of the study was the 1930 convention of the PEA.during which it became apparent that the major Impediment towider experimentation with school curriculum was fear that gradu-ating students would not he able to fulfill college entrance require-ments. In response to this concern, the association appointed aCommittee on College Entrance and Secondary Schools, later re-named the Commission on the Relation of School and College. Itwas this commission, under the chairmanship of Wilford M. Aikin,director of the John Burroughs School (Clayton, Missouri), whichproposed that students in a group of leading secondary schools beexempted from the normal entrance requirements, so. that theschools would be free to reformulate their programs. Over threehundred colleges, including many of the nation's most prestigious,accepted the proposal; supporting funds were provided by theGeneral Education Board and the Carnegie Foundation.'"

Thirty schools were eventually invited to participate. Thoughthey included a disproportionate number of private and laboratoryschools; such large city systems as Denver and Los Angeles werealso part of the group. The study began in 1932 and ran till 1940,with the commission from the beginning providing counsel andcomfort buy conscientiously avoiding prescribing specific curricula.Indeed until 1936, when a staff of three curriculum consultants wasappointed, the schools had to rely entirely on their individual andpooled resources in developing new approaches. A series of fivereports issued in 1942 presented the results of a major follow-upstudy of college performance as well as extensive descriptions of theproblems that had arisen and the attempts that had been made tosolve them. Perhaps in part because, as one of the reports describedit, the problems of mastering and using this new freedomstraightway turned out to be so difficult, complex, and engrossingthat the original problem of college entrance requirements wasalmost lost sight of and forgotten," the reports provide a detailedpicture of the evolution of the courses of study in the schools,"

Though the individual schools began and ended their curriculumreform at very different points, there were certain common threadsof considerable interest, The most important for English involvedexperiments with "fused" or "core" or "correlated" coursesthekind toward which NCTE had turned its attention in its 1936volume (discussed in the previous chapter). Almost all of the thirty

112 TRADITION AND REFORM

schools experimented with a combined social studies-Englishcourse, almost. always organized chronologically, and all abandonedthe attempt after a few years of experimentation. The initial fusedcourse at most of the schools attempted to juggle and reordertraditional content in the two subjects, bringing the topics coveredinto line with one another. Social studies tended to dominate, andmany of the values of both subjects as traditionally taught seemed.as the NCTE committee had worriedto be lost. Rather thanreturning to the traditional organization. however, most schoolsreorganized the core sequence around topical focuses. This "core"tended to be somewhat eclectic: at one of the schools it embracedsuch diverse topics as Vocational Guidance, War and Peace, andInternational Literature. This mixture served as a transitionalstage in which the old and new concerns stood side by side; itmoved from there to what became in a great many of the schoolsthe final focus of the core: the life problems of the adoleseent.'2

The transition to adolescent "needs" as the organizing principlewas aided by the work of two derivative PEA commissions: theCommission on Secondary School Curriculum, organized as anoffshoot of the Commission on the Relation of School and College in1932. and the Commission on Human Relations, itself a 1935outgrowth of the Commission on Secondary School Curriculum.The individual reports of the Thirty Schools make clear that thework of these commissions provided the impetus for the jump froma focus on important themes to a focus on themes important toadolescents. One influential document was a summary of "TypicalPoints of Focus of Concerns of Adolescents" prepared by theCommission on Human Relations and reprinted in the final reportsof the study. Six main topics_were outlined: Establishing PersonalRelationships, Establishing Independence, Understanding HumanBehavior, Establishing Self in Society, Normality, and Under-standing the Universe. All but the last (which was usually ignoredas programs evolved) dealt with very specific adolescent problems;typical topics included "Longing for more friends of own age ";"How late to stay out": "Shame over lowly origins"; and "Bully-ing." Altogether there were over 40 topics and 140 subtopics in theoutlineand these were presented only as a typical, not as anexhaustive list.'1

The Commission on Secondary School Curriculum translatedthese concerns into specific programs in a series of publicationsbetween 1938 and 1941. The first. Science in General Education11938), was important in the transition from "fused" to "core"courses. Offering a broader base than English and social studiesalone, the science report generated courses such as "EverydayProblems" as the last stage of the evolution. The sophomore coursein the Altoona (Pennsylvania) schools was typical of the sequencethat evolved: it included Orientation to the New School, Family

NARROWED GOALS 143

Relationships. Consumer Problems, Communication, and Conser-vation, of Human and Natural Resources. By this stage of theirevolution, very few of the core courses in the more experimentalschools showed any concern with the personal and social reformthat had been so important in earlier stages of progressivism."

The reports of the Eight-Year Study were published in themiddle of the war and were largely ignored. That is not to say,however, that the study itself was without impact on teachers ofEnglish. It was simply that that influence came from the separatewritings of the teachers in the various schools, working on commit-tees and writing for journals throughout the period of the study.Most of the concern that had prompted the NCTE report oncorrelation, much of the emerging focus on adolescent needsthesefirst appeared in articles noting authors' affiliations with one oranother of the schools of the Eight-Year Study. (It is an interestingaspect. of the general distrust of the progressives in the Councilleadership that, while other projects were often noted, the partici-pation of these schools in the Eight-Year Study was rarely ac-knowkdged.l''

Life Adjustment

The view of education that was emerging from the ThirtySchools and from the various commissions of the ProgressiveEducation Association became during the 1940s the conventionalwisdom of the professional educatorsof the "educationists" asthey would be called by their critics in the early 1950s. TheEducational Policies Commission of the National Education Associ-ation, created in 1936 to speak with an authoritative voice onimportant educational issues, fell firmly in line with the PEA'sfocus upon the adolescent in a series of reports in the mid-forties:Education for All American Youth 11944), Educational Services forChildren (1945), and Education for All American Children (1948).The first of these became the chief statement of the life adjustmentmovement. th

The commission used the device of sketching the educationalprograms in the mythical communities of American City andFarmville to present their proposals. They foresaw a much closerintegration of school and community than has ever been attained,with national, state, and local programs supplementing one anotherto provide a full panoply of educational and health services. Thecurriculum itself centered on a "common learnings course runningthroughout the secondary school program, and even somewhatbeyond, providing a core of general education that followed thepattern that had emerged from the Eight-Year Study. Rather thana simple fused or correlated course, "common learnings" repre-

111 TRADITION AND REFORM

sented a complete restructuring of subject matter to focus (mostlythrough science and social studies) on topics such as choice ofvocation and problems of family living.

The dominant concern with adolescent problems was finallytaken up by the U.S. Office of Education and given the ill-chosenname by which it has since been known: "life adjustment." TheUSOE became involved in January 1944 when the Vocational.Division began a study entitled "Vocational Education in the YearsAhead." The 150 vocationalists who carried out the study recog-nized a fundamental unity of purpose with the general educationmovement, as it had been working itself out in terms of the lifeexperiences of the adolescent student. Charles Prosser used thefinal conference of the USOE study to offer a resolution that read inpart:

It is the belief of this conference that the vocational school of thecommunity will be better able to prepare 20 percent of the youth ofsecondary school age for entrance upon desirable skilled occupations:and that the high school will continue to prepare another 20 percentfor entrance to college. We do not believe that the remaining 60percent of our youth of secondary school age will receive the lifeadjustment training they need and to which they are entitled asAmerican citizens."

This led to a series of conferences between representatives ofgeneral and of vocational education, to formulate an approach tothe problem of educating the neglected 60 percent. Eventually aCommission on Life Adjustment Education for Youth was estab-lished to carry out a vigorous "action program." Its focus remainedon what the earlier conferences had called "functional experiences inthe areas of practical arts, home and family life, health and physicalfitness. and civic competence." In spite of occasional disclaimers,the emphasis in hoth name and activities was on "adjustment,""conformity," and a stable system of values. The traditional con-cern of progressive education with the continuing improvement ofboth the individual and his society was submerged and ultimatelylost in this formulation.

The Rejection of Correlation

The response of English teachers to the "life adjustment" move-ment was a paradoxical resistance to the outward form and capitu-lation. at least by a broad segment of teachers, to the underlyingemphases. The genuine distrust of the core curriculum so evident inthe report of the NCTE Committee on Correlation in 1936 wasmaintained from the first experiments.with a fused social studies-English course to the final "common learnings" of the EducationalPolicies Commission. Again and again, when the teacher of English

NARROWED GOALS 145

attempted to go that route he found the peculiar virtues of hissubject matter being quietly subvertedand it hardly matteredwhether he defined those virtues as "practical English skills,""liberal education,- or "exploration of self and society." Though anoccasional teacher of English reflected the enthusiasm of the thinties, no one during the decade of the forties managed a convincingdescription of a working program that circumvented the problemsthat the Committee on Correlation had foreseen."

The objections to the core course were succinctly summarized ina 194(1 response to Education for All American Youth (1944)prepared by Mark Neville, second vice president of the Council.Neville was English department chairman at the John BurroughsSchool in Clayton, Missourithe school which had provided theinitial impetus for the Eight-Year Study as well as its director,Wilford Aikin. Neville's review, presented as a sharing of exper-iences with Farmville, outlined the evolution of experiments withfused and core courses at the Burroughs School. The major experi-ments had involved a fused course and a second series called the"Core Course and Broad Fields" in which the broad fields wereEnglish, social studies, science, math, foreign languages, and thefine and practical arts. In the end it was the relatively traditionalbroad fields that came to dominate the curriculum: the core wasgradually rejected by teachers. students. and parents alike. Themost important objections involved some large gaps between thetheory of correlation and its actual working out in practice. Englishskills, the responsibility of all teachers in the core curriculum, werehard to emphasize as they developed during the content work;teachers found that rather than achieving the integrated and'com-prehensive view that was sought, the program became stilted andartifical. Students in the course rejected it as "too broad in scopeand too shallow in depth": they preferred the broad field courses.and eventually the core was reduced to an elective. Looking back onthe whole experience, Neville concluded that the real accomplish-ment of the years of experiment had been to revitalize the individ-ual subject areas. Though there were many cases in which Englishcould be improved through discussion of content from other fields,the goal of developing "pupil personality, thinking processes, groupadjustMents. and concepts of living" could not be reached simplyby correlating."

Other reactions of English teachers to Education for All Ameri-can Youth were equally firm in their rejection of its major curricu-lum implications. They attacked the lack of explicit provision forliterature (as Marion Sheridan noted, depending on one's predispo-sition, literature could either be read into the report or out of thecourse):-the neglect of subject matter (that is, language skills andknowledge of literature); and the reliance on the artificial unity ofsubject matter instead of the real unity of the teacher who has

I TRADITION AND REFORM

successfully integrated his own knowledge. In general such attackson the core were successful: a study at the end of the decade by aUSOE worker quite sympathetic to the movement found thatnationally only 3.5 percent of the course offerings in the junior andsenior high school represented even the least ambitious forms ofcorrelation, and these were concentrated in a few geographic areas.Over 90 percent of the core courses she did find, however, involvedsome blend of English and social studies!"

English as Adjustment

Afeeting Adolescent Needs

Even as they were vigorously resisting the curriculum proposalsof the "life adjustment" movement, teachers of English were em-bracing rather indiscriminately the new focus on meeting the per-sonal and social needs of adolescence. Teachers were already wellconditioned to the implied empiricism, the inventory of activitiesnow redefined as psychological conflicts or needed -competencies."They were ready too for the reestablishment of boundaries for theirsubject; the almost. universal perspective of the previous decade nolonger seemed feasible. Finally, by accepting adolescent needs as thefocus of the curriculum, teachers were continuing their tradition ofconcern that the school serve the child, not the subject-orienteddemands of the college.

"Needs" as they came to he defined by teachers of Englishcovered a wide spectrum that began with problems of family lifeand ended in international relations. The characteristic concern atall points of the spectrum, however, was with the solution ofpractical problems of living. When the focus of instruction wasshifted in this way, English at the personal end of the spectrum ofneeds became guidance. This had antecedents in programs sug-gested at the end of the reorganization period, and again in the late1920s, but those early attempts had failed to win many converts.Teachers had recognized that the early proponents were naive intheir choices of materials, and too limited in their goals for an agein which "experience" and "exploration" were central. By the late1930s. however, the limited, antiprogressive goals of adjustmentwere very much in keeping with the emerging spirit in education,while the materials and methods could claimnot always accurate-ly support from neo-Freudian psychology.

Sarah Roody, department chairman at Nyack High School, NewYork. was a leading advocate of this approach. Describing it in1947. she began by asserting that the "lessons" to be taughtthrough "true- to.Iife" literature were very simple and could he

NARROWED GOALS bri

expressed "chiefly in nontechnical terms"implying. of course,,that there was a more esoteric body of knowledge hehind hersuggestions. The lessons she had in mind were really a catalog ofpsychoanalytic explanations of behavior: students would learn'about the "fundamental motives from which the actions of allhuman beings spring." about the "ways in which many people tryto evade reality." about "life.problemS,' normality. and maturity.And finally, of course, they would learn "how to develop the kind ofpersonality one would like Lo have."" If such a program soundedmore like a course in psychology or guidance than one in English,that was the intent. Article after article proclaimed the special needfor the teacher of English, particularly the teacher of literature. Loprovide guidance through the emotional conflicts of Lhe adolescentyears. As a librarian from Baltimore described it, the job of Lheteacher or librarian was one of suggesting stories "very much as-physicians prescribe sulfa drugs, by familiarizing herself with oldand new productions in Lhe field. by prescribing as best she can,and by keeping a sharp lookout for reactions. ""'

Human Relations

The social end of Lhe spectrum of needs was dealt with under thegeneral rubric of "human relations." The 'common thread in suchstudies was a concern with Lhe smooth functioning of Lhe variousgroups which make up the world; Lhe focus of any given discussionranged anywhere from the .adolescent clique to international rela-tions. This movement, too, had antecedents, all loosely related toLhe early progressive concern with education as an instrument ofsocial reform. This concern had been carried through the yearsbetween Lhe wars in the work of groups such as the NCTE Commit-tee on International Relations and, later, in the arguments of thesocial reconstructionists. Rut it was Hilda Tuba who gave themovement a focus and brought it to its fullest expression duringthe mid - forties. To understand Lhe sorts of activities that emerged,it is useful Lo look first at her Dynamics of Education (1932). whichcan be seen as the revision of Foundations of Method 11925) thatKilpatrick never undertook. Taba based her arguments on LheGestalt psychologists' explorations of the structured nature ofperception and cognition. abandoning Thorndike's behavioral op.mooch. This, as Kilpatrick noted in an introduction to Tuba's hook,allowed Lhe purposeful act to he joined in the service of "anall pervasive structure building." This structure building was cru-cial; it enabled Taba Lo conclude that education should be con-cerned with these grander structures rather than with Lhe sorts ofbehavioral units that Babbitt, among others, had attempted Lodetail. Instead, education would "endeavor to reach, through the

148 TRADITION AND REFORM

specific. and by the immediate qualitative context of the specific.the general, and the fundamental." In a sense, it was "the greatidea" which she stressed, the idea which would provide a superor-dinate structure capable of subsuming ever-wider ranges of concreteexperience. 2'

Racial strife, which produced the Detroit riots in July 1943,

provided the immediate context for the application of Taba's gener-al ideas to a major project in human relations.' The NationalConference of Christians and. Jews, concerned by the increasingevidence of intolerance and the lack of coordination among existinggroups, provided funds to the American Council on Education tosupport a Project on Intergroup Relations, with Taba as director.The project staffwhich for the first months consisted of Tabaalone but later grew to eightwere clearly in the tradition ofKilpatrick and the social reconstructionists, though milder in theirrhetoric and more temperate in their goals. (Taba herself hadworked with Counts as well as Kilpatrick during the thirties.) As'Taba and her staff described it in the summary volume (1952), theirproject offered a model for the development of educational solutionsto social ills." When the project hegan, the lack of methods andmaterials for dealing with problems of human relations madeschools reluctant to undertake such studies even when they wereconvinced of the need. Much of the effort during the two and a halfyears of the main project was therefore directed toward filling thisgap, with cooperating schools deliberately chosen to provide aheterogeneous sample of local and regional problems in intergroupunderstanding. In all, some 250 projects were undertaken in 72

individual schools in 18 school systems. In keeping with Taba'sconcern with conceptual structures, however. prohlems in humanrelations were approached preventively, by attempting to developgeneral attitudes that would. subsume and Prevent more particularprohlems of intergroup relations. Rather than studying minoritygroups, for example, the project staff decided to focus on what theycalled "common areas of living" family, community, Americanculture, and interpersonal relations. Within these familiar areas.more powerful concepts could be generated through studying suchrecurring phenomena as "acceptance and rejection. inclusion andsegregation. prejudice and discrimination" (p. 72). Taba consistent-ly emphasized the importance of process in learning. in particularthat the natural progression in discussion or other learning activi-ties should be from the concrete and specific toward the abstractand general!'

The Project on Intergroup Relations did not develop a specificcurriculum in human relations. Its focus was instead on "actionprojects" organized at a local level, with the project staff helpingschools to devise materials and activities related to their ownparticular social prohlems. To train as many teachers as possible inthe techniques necessary to develop and test their own materials, a

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,series of summer institutes was organized; one was held in 1945.three in 1946, and oqe each in 1947 and 1948. Some 260 people wereinvolved in these summer sessions where, as the project staffsummarized it, they "prepared instructional units, worked outmethods of studying children and communities, drew up plans forstudent guidance and for school activities, and prepared strategiesfor community action" (p. 31. The work of these institutes, of theproject staff, and of the cooperating schools led to a long series ofpublications on human relations and intergroup education; thesepresented teachers throughout the country with practical,- school-based approaches for all age levels and in many different curriculumareas.'(,

Nevertheless there were major difficulties in the approach Tahaand her staff advocated. The fundamental problem was naiveteanational naivete, not Taba's alonewhich saw racial problems inthe limited context of attitudes and dispositions rather than asmanifestations of deeper institutional and economic forces, Theconcern was real enough, but the methods and assumptions werebut a mild prelude to the civil rights movement which began almostas TaInt's project finished its work. Simply to make people aware ofthe problem, to bring it out into the open as an issue to he dealtwith rather than ignored, helped create an atmosphere in which thereal roots could eventually be discovered and attacked. More imme-diately, there.was too much similarity between the project's list of"common areas of living" and the lists of adolescent needs thatwere simultaneously emerging in "life adjustment." While thiscorrespondence certainly made it easier for human relations studiesto be taken. up by the schools, it also made it easier for Taba'sunderlying concern. with social reform to be short-circuited; thebroader concepts she sought were often submerged in the specifics ofpresent needs.

The pressures to preserve a limited and detached perspectivewere real and strong. George H. Henry. a Delaware English teacherturned principal, illustrated both the inherent reformist tendenciesin human relations and the contravening community pressures in a1947 article describing "Our Best English Unit." Students in hisschool, prompted to reveal their real areas of interest and "need,:had turned to the colored question" as a prohlem of considerablemagnitude in their lives. The teacher and Henry had supported thatinterest, allowing the students to begin for the first time to explorethe implications of racial attitudes and policies in their community.They never finished the unit; it was brought to an end by the schoolhoard after a torrent of public resistance." That there were notmore such conflicts was due simply to the reluctance of teachers todeal at all with ethical questions, especially in the atmosphere ofsuppression and censorship that developed as the Cold War beganto capture the national imagination.

150 TRA DITION AND REFORM

Organizing a Curriculum around Immediate Needs

The rejection of the core curriculum left teachers of English withthe question of how to organize a curriculum designed to meet thenew demands. One of the earliest attempts to solve the problemwas that of the Stanford Language Arts Investigation, (1937-40),

carried out under the guidance of the Stanford University educationfaculty with financial support from the General Education Board.II. D. Roberts. 1937 president of NCTE, was senior author of oneof the reports. English for Social Living (7943). As he put it in theoverview, "In the approach and throughout the work emphasis wasgiven to teaching the language arts as a vital part of human living,and to the consequent replacement of routine and traditional teach-ing programs with those designed and tested to meet specificpersonal and social needs."'"

The report suffered from the faults that would plague virtuallyall attempts at curriculum reformulation during this period. Theguiding philosophy of meeting needs was so oriented toward theimmediate school situation that it provided no guidelines for sequence or scope in the curriculum, Rather than an outline of aprogram, English for Social Living was primarily a collection ofactivities undertaken in different schools by different teachers,grouped together under such general areas of concern as "democrat-ization of the classroom," "building of personality," and the needto "study and serve the community." Ultimately this focus ongeneral problems ran the danger of ignoring the particular strengthsof the subject area which it was attempting to revitalize. Englishfor Social Living, like Education for All American Youth, gaveprecious little attention to literature.

Lacking any external principles by which to determine scope andsequence, the accepted practice gradually deteriorated into a "mul-tiple approach" in which the only criterion was that students bekept interested. Though virtually any method might be of use, thematerials themselves were determined on the basis of the particularneeds manifested by the class. These were to he determined by aprocess that represented an unsystematic revival of the child studymovement, usually involving a simple report from the class to theteacher, Dwight Burton, for example, in an early article presentedthe results of asking his students to write about the problems theywere having. Like most of the products of the life adjustmentmovement, his inventory of needs was both specific and lacking inemphasis on the moral and spiritual side of life. He ended up withsix major categories: relations with parents, relations with otheradolescents, problems of personality, school problems, relationswith brothers and sisters, and "miscellaneous." The first of thesewas illustrated in detail, with examples ranging from "1. Father'horns in when friends gather at the house," to "30. Home respon-

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sibility with father dead causes unhappiness." The "second step" incurriculum construction, as Burton presented it, was the selectionof a "basic list" of novels "closely attuned to real adolescentproblems. "`"

Though Burton's article was one of the first by a teacher ofEnglish presenting such an inventory of needs as an explicit basisfor selecting the themes to be studied in the literature program, itwas by no means a lone example. During the next ten years Englishteachers would be offered many similar inventories, from otherteachers as well as from such professionals as the chief of children'sservice at the University of Michigan Neuropsychiatric Institute!"Implicit in these surveys was a new stress on the use of themesinstead of chronology or genres to organize the course of study.Thematic organization did not originate during "life adjustment";it had been a minor part of the experience approach throughout theprevious twenty years. Under the pressure of meeting adolescentneeds, however, themes shifted from a convenient organizationaldevice leading to units providing similar experiences (about boats,soy. or animals or regional literature) and became instead the focusof instruction: students needed to learn about family problems, thegeneration gap, or hrotherhood. Thematic organization in practicediffered little from earlier approaches, but it became the favoritemethod of organization in "life adjustment" classes and produced afew methodological variants of its own. Bertha Hand lin, head ofEnglish at the laboratory school at the University of Minnesota,wrote in 1943 of themes as a way to allow members of a class toread different books and yet all be ahle to contribute to the sameclass discussions. Dwight Burton's suggestions, based on his teach.ing at the same school, were similarly focussed on selecting bookswhose themes were clearly related to important issues in the lives ofteenage students. Although organization by chronology and bytypes dominated the high school course in the late 1930s, by the1950s organization by themes or topics (which in practice becameindistinguishahle) had relegated hoth to a less important role."

Selecting Materials

In a curriculum based on immediate needs, the teacher served asa resource center, providing the book to meet the need of thet moment. One way to accomplish this was to redefine the values ofthe traditional works in the jargon of "life adjustment." just asearlier they had heen redefined in terms of experience. As usual,there was no end to the flexibility of any given work: Macbeth was tobe taught as an example of what happens when we are "willing to getour desires at all costs ": the object lesson provided would helpstudents "begin to achieve self-control and self-direction." Up from

152 TRA orrioN AND REFORM

Slavery was presented as a good way "to understand how peoplewith handicaps feel and Rolstimulate us to face our own handicapshe they large or small." "The Ransom of Red Chief" was pairedwith Torn Sawyer in a unit to help students "understand them-selves and the younger members of their family better." "Love"became "a natural subject for discussion" after a class had read."The Courtship of Miles Standish," Silas Marner offered a "store-house of information necessary for understanding friends, family,and one's self. "'

Teachers more fully committed to general education and "lifeadjustment" provided bibliographies organized around the majorfocuses of adolescent needs: The Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction11910) was the earliest and most comprehensive. Produced for theCommittee on the Function of English in General Education of thePEA Commission on Secondary School Curriculum by Elbert Len-row, head of the English Department at the Fieldston School,. NewYork City, the book was a topically.arranged bibliography with alengthy introduction setting forth the author's view of literature inthe secondary school. Lenrow's emphasis was very close to Rosen-blatt's, and he abbreviated his own discussion somewhat by refer-ring the reader to Literature as Rxploration (1938). He was, how-ever, more concerned with classroom procedureswith the questionof which books to use with whom, and to what end. Accepting thegeneral principle that literature was a means by which the studentcould explore both himself and his society, Lenrow noted that "thenovel is par excellence the medium for the artist who would portraywith amplituile both the macrocosm and microcosm of modern life."He accordingly limited the selections in his bibliography to prosefiction, quite a common approach throughout the period of "lifeadjustment. "''

Lenrow assumed that students would "identify" with literarycharacters, manipulating their identifications "in such a way as toderive unconscious satisfactions, either of deprivations and inhibit-ions, or of goals. aspirations, ideals, and the like." It was onlythrough such identifications that adolescents could "carry on thoseattendant and subsequent processesexploration of self and form-ulation of attitudes and goals and outlook on life," To facilitateidentification. Lenrow suggested books corresponding to the stu-dent's own situation. Contemporary works were more likely to showsuch a correspondence, but classic texts were alloWed some place iftaught by a skillful teacher." His concern with presenting realisticlife situations led Lenrow to confront "the troublesome question ofhow much frankness in hooks is appropriate for. adolescents." Herehe presented three major arguments against censorship. First, ifthe reader is really unsophisticated, he will not react to the implica-tions of the "realistic elements," Sucond, if he does understand, itis butter that his questions be answered "through serious literary

NARROWED GOA IS 153

works rather than through devious and possibly distorted sources."-Finally, adults usually underestimate the amount of knowledgeadolescents already possess: "Those whim sentimental people areanxious to 'shield' could often turn about and give instruction."Lenrow was well aware, however, that many teachers.and schoolswould reject his argument that adolescents should have free ornearly free access to mature books. Even one of the librarians whoworked with advance copies of the bihliography had been ohliged tonote that many of the titles listed were prohibited in her lihrarybecause of "Frankness or 'ohscenity' " (pp. 47-48).

The bibliography itself was an effective working out of theprinciples laid out in the introduction. Some fifteen hundred novelswere included, with annotations designed to give a student orteacher a quick idea of whether a book would he interesting orappropriate. Only 17 percent of the titles had been puhlished before1900: a third were classic texts "which have stood or are standingthe test of time," There was a great range in number of titles listedunder the categories; some such as "Birth Control" had none:others like "Family Life" had fifty to sixty. Adhering to his beliefthat the books included should be appropriate and worthwhile, evenif not classic, Lenrow made no attempt to "fill in" under-repre-sented categories: indeed, the entire list of books was chosen heforethe topical arrangement was begun.

The resulting bibliography was a valuable reference work for-teachers who accepted its general principles. Like no other sourcet hat grew out of "life adjustment.," it offered an extensive list ofmaterials organized according to specific topics of instruction. All itlacked was sequence, but that was deliberate since sequence was tocome from the problems of each student at a given point in time. Inspite of its thoroughness the book was not widely used by highschool teachers, largely because its annotations and. classificationswere frank and direct, dealing with questions that were usuallyedited out of school editions. The seemingly safe topic, "Adoles-cence." for example, included Gide's The Counterfeiters (annotatedas an examination of "the young Olivier and his delicate loverEdouard ") as well as arkington's innocuous Seventeen (p. 1191.More dangerous topics such as "Psychology of Sex" were not less

"Of considerably more influence was a later bibliography, Reading

Ladders for Human Relations (1947).' This was a product of acommittee of school librarians working under the general directionof Margaret Heaton, one of Taba's staff members. In retrospect,and in comparison with The Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction (1940),the original editions of this pamphlet seem slender and unimpres-sive: but it represented a coherent application of Taba's generalprinciples, as the introduction pointed out, Three points about thebook are important. First, the hooks chosen for inclusion, though

154 TRADITION AND REFORM

few in number, were standard school texts; hence they were accept-able and accessible to a majority of teachers. Second, the topicsunder which they were organized were related to the general topicsthat the Intergroup Relations Project had chosen to emphasize, sothat though not particularly impressive on their own they could beseen in the perspective of that larger framework; typical lists werebased around Patterns of Family Life, Differences between Genera-tions, and RurahUrban Contrasts. Third, and probably most important, the selections were organized in "ladders" of ascendingdifficulty. Though strongly reminiscent of the "broad easy stairsteps" of An Experience Curriculum (1935), these ladders werederived directly from Taba's theoretical concerns. She had arguedearlier (1932) that education should be a continuing process ofreconstruction of experience' a principle that found expression in astress on the importance of a cumulative program achieving itspurpose through reconstructing experience at ever more advancedlevels, rather than through a concentrated but short-term effort.The reading ladders. though they involved relatively fetv selectionsand even fewer levels of maturity, did imply that a curriculumcould be constructed out of familiar materials that would be rele-vant to the 'new demands and still be coherent and sequential. Itwas this implication of sequence that virtually all other attempts toplace personal or social needs at the center of the curriculum hadlacked, and which teachers of English took from Reading Ladders.The success of this pamphlet, which-has continued to be revisedand expanded to the present day, i, perhaps the best testimony tothe wisdom of Taba's approach to curriculum reform.

Studies of reading interest, with their roots in the child studymovement, also continued to be used to select teaching materials.This approach was more tolerated than motivated by life adjust-ment theory, but it culminated in George Norvell's definitive sur-vey, published in 1950 as The Reading Interests of Young People.'"As supervisor of English for New York State,- Norvell systematical-ly collected students' responses-to works studied in class. Over atwelve-year period he gathered data on L700 selections taught toover 50.000 students by 625 teachers. Each book was rated on athree-point interest scale; 1.590,000 such reports were gathered.tabulated, and used to calculate "interest saves."

The tabulated data, in addition to providing an authoritativereference about the interest level of individual titles, allowed anumber of generalizations about taste in literature. There was verylittle shift in interest levels between grades eight and eleven, onlytwo percentage points for most selections. One of the most impor-tantbut neglecteddiscoveries was that there were few differ-ences between the reading interests of superior, average, and weakpupils. Content, rather than reading difficulty, seemed to be themajor determinant of interest: neither age nor IQ made a marked

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difference, though sex was an important factor. Norvell describedthe content factors he found:

The special factors which arouse boys' interest in reading materials, asrevealed by the current study, are: adventure (outdoor adventure, war,scouting), outdoor games, school life, mystery (including activities ofdetectives), obvious humor, animals, patriotism, and male rather thanfemale characters. Unfavorable factors for boys are: love, other senti-ments, home and family life, didacticism, religion, the reflective orphilosophical, extended description, "nature" (flowers, trees. birds,bees), form or technique as a dom;nant factor, female characters (p. 61.

A sirrwar list was provided for girls, together with the suggestionthat the points of overlap be used to restructure the program ofcommon reading around topics that would be of interest to both.Norvell hitnself used the results to compile a series of anthologiesfor I). C. Heath.

Literature for the Adolescent

It was almost inevitable that the focus on narrowly definedadolescent needs would soon prompt and cultivate an extensivebody of literature dealing thematically with the specific problemstoward which teachers were turning their attention. The first ser-ious professional attention to "adolescent" or "transitional" litera-ture stemmed from Dora V. Smith's concern that the literarypreparation of teachers gave too little attention to the literaryinterests of high school students.'" By 1930 she F :d organized oneof the nation's first courses in literature for adolescents as part ofthe teacher training program at the University of Minnesota. Herprogram generated only moderate interest, however, till adolescentneeds began to emerge as a focal point of the curriculum during the.1940s. Though Smith's original emphasis had been on good bookssuitable for children, the forties saw the development of a newliterary, genre with its own authors and highly specialized audienceof "adolescents" as defined by the "life adjustment" educators.Dwight Burton was one of Smith's students and became a leader inthe movement to legitimize these works as part of the program inliterature. Beginning to write ahout them in the late forties, hecontinued his interest after moving to Florida State University andassuming the editorship of English Journal in 1953. Under hisguidance, the Journal devoted considerable attention to such works.Bibliographies were offered on "Books to Promote Insights IntoFamily-Life Problems"; the lead article of literary criticism wasreplaced once or twice a year with an article dealing specifically withadolescent literature; reviews of new titles were included as a regularfeature of the "Books" section."

I56 'TRADITION AND. REFORM

The results of this attention were decidedly mixed. On the onehand a number of good books did begin to receive serious attentionfrom teachers, especially in the junior high schools. The Yearling(1938), The Diary of Anne' Frank (1950), and The Catcher in theRye (1951) are among the better examples of what came to be .

considered appropriate adolescent literature. The problem in themovement was the rigid definition of books that would be interest-ing to adolescents as books that dealt with the specific (and oftenrather superficial) life problems reported when students were asked."Now, what- is bothering you today?" As 'Richard Alm of theUniversity of Hawaii noted in a sympathetic review of the movement. "The last twenty years have seen not only the coming of ageof the novel for the adolescent but also a flood of slick, patterned,rather inconsequential stories written to capitalize on a rapidlyexpanding market."" Since the interest in such literature wasformulated exclusively in terms of the problems dealt with, therewas nothing to caution the teacher against bringing such formulanovels into' the curriculum along with others of some independentmerit. Indeed, because justifications were formulated in terms ofthe problem rather than its solution, there was little attention to howthe popular adolescent novels solved the problems they posed. As amuch later analysis pointed out, the formula-plots had a number ofcommon implications:

(1) Immaturity . . is somehow to be equated with isolationfrom the group.

(2) All prohlems can he solved and will be solved successfully.(3) Adults cannot help you much. . .

(4) Solutions to problems are . . either brought about byothers or discovered by chance.

(5) -Maturity entails conformity."

Such implications. which were shared by . many other activitiessuggested at this tine, eventually engendered the violent and .effective reaction against the "life adjustment" philosophy which isdiscussed in Chapter VII.

Develnping Cnmpetence in Language

Language and Communication

If one aspect of the general education movement was a concernwith adjustment, a second sought to insure that the general stu-dent would have the "competence" necessary to meet the varieddemands of life. As this emphasis was worked out in the teaching of

NA !MOWED GOAIS 157

literature. it merged with studies of semantics anti, ultimately, withthe principles of the New Criticism to provide a broader definitionof reading skills. Carried to their logical conclusion, the principlesOf this movement implied the study of literature as form quitedivorced from experience or adjustment, but at least until themid-fifties such broader implications were carefully ignored.

Most discussions of the experience approach to literature hadassumed that students, if given the appropriate book, would in facthe able to understand what they were reading. Rosenblatt's discus-sion in Literature as Exploration (1938) had questioned that as-sumption by posing the task of the teacher in terms of helping thestudent reflect upon and thus refine his responses. The discussionshe provided, however, had few examples of how this would bedone; what she did offerthe example of sophisticated adult con-versation about booksimplied quite a high level of initial re-sponse,

The twenties and thirties, however, also saw the beginnings of anew body of scholarship concerned with language as a vehicle forconveying meaning. Originally prompted by the use of propagandaduring World War 1, the work of I. A. Richards. C. K. Ogden, andAlfred Korzybski sought to explicate how systems of meaningoperate and, as a corollary. how meaning can be distorted." In thelate 1930s. with war drawing near, Americans became especiallyinterested in such studies, especially as they related to newspapers,radio, and film. An Institute for Propaganda Analysis was set upwhich took an active interest in school programs; later a HarvardCommittee on Communication provided more sophisticated sug-gestions for school work. 1. A. Richards, both through his writingsand through. his work with teachers (he was involved in theHarvard Committee. for example) had by far the greatest influenceon school programs, but other forces also contributed to the meth-ods that evolved. S. 1. Ilayakawa's Language in Action (194.1) wasespecially influential in bringing the term "semantics" into popularparlance; through his work semantics became a topic in its ownright in the English curriculum, often as part of the analysiS ofpropaganda or advertising."

The earliest full exploration of the implications of these newlanguage studies for the teaching of literature was provided by thesame PEA commission that had sponsored Science in GeneralEducation (1938) and Literature as Exploration (1938). Its Com-mittee on. the Function of English in General Education understoodits charge to refer to the nonliterary aspects of language studies.putting its work in the traditions of grammar, rhetoric, and com-position rather than of literature. The final report, Language inGeneral Education (1940). was nonetheless to share the fate ofearlier studies in these traditions: though conceived and presented

158 TRADITION AND REFORM

as a separate discipline, it was taken up by many teachers as auseful technique for the study of literature."

The report began fully in harmony with the concerns of "lifeadjustment." It talked of achieving "optimum development of per-sonality"; of helping the student "find his place and his direction";of providing the general education "that alone could be justified inthe schools of a democracy." For this committee, however, such acharge implied that all children must be given the necessary toolsfor successful living; and the prime tool, that without which allothers would be useless, was language. As the opening paragraphput it, the committee centered its work "around a concept oflanguage as an indispensable, potent, but highly fluid set of sym-bols by which human beings mentally put their feelings and exper-iences in order, get and keep in touch with other human beings, andbuild up new and clearer understanding of the world around them"(p. 3). This would be studied as a system of oral and writtencommunication, requiring the techniques of "critical thinking":"classifying, sorting, ordering, clarifying experience" (pp. 61-63).

The sorts of activities which the committee envisioned wereillustrated at a number of points, though no attempt was made tooffer a pattern curriculum in the various semantic concepts. Thoughthere were some inconsistencies in the report, the committee clearlydid not think that the techniques of reading could be developedincidentally. At one point they even described the language "text-book of the future" as a series of graded exercises (p. 156). A fewpages later it was suggested that such teaching could instead arisenaturally in the course of other studies. One suggestion pointed outthat when a class "runs across the sentences: 'His whole life wasdevoted to one cause. . . His devotion ultimately proved to be thecause of his death,' " the shift in meaning would be easily recog-nized (p. 161). Though one would be hard pressed to defend such anexample as improving the students' reading of that particularpassage, it does illustrate one way in which semantic studies wereabsorbed into the curriculum.

Richards himself provided more convincing illustrations of theusefulness of close and rigorous scrutiny of the semantics of a text.He was careful to put the emphasis on the act of reading, however,rather than on such generalizations as "meaning shifts"; as hepointed out two years after the report of the PEA committee, "Thebelief that knowledge of linguistic theory will make a man a betterreader comes itself from . . . a misunderstanding." In How to Reada Page (19421," he illustrated at length the techniques involved.One example came from R. G. Collingwood's Metaphysics, the firstline of which read "Among the characteristic features of a pseudo-science are the following." Richards' reading began;

Line 1. The unpleasant flavor of pseudo spreads to make characteristicfeatures anthamong reek with the same scorn. C'haractoristic is very

NARROWED GOALS 159

ready to take it. Nine times out of ten when we say **characteristic ofher, isn't it ?" we are not admiring. Features when they cease to beportions of the face or of a landscape, and become abstract, tend tosuggest a sort of nondescript, what -you- may- call-'em character. If wewere favorably inclined we would be more likely to say characters,qualities, attributes, or marks. Among, of course, reflects the implica-tion that there are any number of other nasty features (pp. 59-80).

After carefully dissecting the rest of CoRingwood's argument,Richards concluded that in fact it did not hold together.

Teachers of literature immediately grasped the implication thatreading is hard work, full of obstacles to be overcome on the way toappreciation and enjoyment. As the head of the English depart-ment at Metamora (Illinois) Township High School put it in 1944,"The act of reading occurs when the reader surmounts the obstaclesin his way": his solution was to use a reading program to replacethat in literature "which the majority of the students could notread." Most teachers were not so ready to abandon literaturealtogether, preferring instead to replace talk of "experience" and"breadth" with "small, intensive studies . . . that can operate tomake all reading more meaningful" the justification, incidentally.that Richards used for the exaggerated detail of How to Read aPage.

Such an approach to the teaching of English won immediatefavor for the same reasons that the principles of "life adjustment"were so quickly adopted: the goals were precise and limited: thecontent was clear: and the philosophy indicated a continuing con-cern with the needs of the student. These reasons alone would haveinsured that some such attention to language became importantafter 1940: the exigencies of war speeded up the process. When anNCTE committee working in the months just before Americanentry into World War II prepared a list of "Basic Aims for EnglishInstruction in American Schools.- its, first point was that language"is a basic instrument in the maintenance of the democratic way oflife." Though it also included attention to other goals, the NCTEcommittee followed the lead of Language in General Education(1940) in placing the emphasis on the "four fundamental languagearts: reading, writing, speaking, and listening."'"

This emphasis on the unity of the language arts was furthered byprograms set up in some colleges to meet the problem of illiteracyin the armed services.. These programs usually united departmentsof speech and of English under the blanket term "communications."Lennox Grey of Teachers College. Columbia. helped to popularizethis term among secondary school English teachers. Outlining thebackground in "An Urgent Letter" (1943) published while he wassecond vice president of NCTE, Grey found antecedents for com-munication studies in prewar concern with propaganda, in studies ofthe mass media, in the work of Edward Sapir and of George 11erbert

I OD TRADITION AND REFORM

dead, and in courses in communication that had appeared inexperiments with a core curriculum. But the real impetus came fromthe importance of communication in a nation at war. Grey successfully focussed NCTE's efforts around communication, even securinga Board of Directors resolution to that effect at the 1942 convention.When the USHE (with NCTE prompting) later called a two -dayconference on English in the Victory Corps, the list of goats thatemerged placed effective communication ahead of all other con-cerns.'

After the war, the concern with communication and with the"four fundamental language arts." continued as a separate. thoughnot a conflicting, emphasis from the concern with adjustment. Bothnuivements could and did point to Literature as Exploration asproviding the fullest expression of their philosophy: the differencewas in which chapters they chose to stressthe goals of accultura-tion or the techniques of careful refinement of response. The rap-prochement. between English and speech. however, was less suc-cessful, though NCTE continued to emphasize speaking and listen-ing as part of the English program. After a 1947 meeting aboutcommunications programs in the freshman college course was jointlysponsored by NCTE and the Speech Association of America. the Iwoorganizations again went their separate ways. The Speech Associa-tion founded a National Society for the Study of Communicationduring the following year, and NCTE countered in 1949 with apermanent Conference on College Composition and Communicationas part of its own organizational structure..

Reading.

During the 1940s. teachers of English as well as of reading beganto take a new interest in the problems of the relatively maturereader. Propelled in part by the new evidence of how difficultaccurate reading could be, this concern. led eventually to theinclusion of "developmental reading programs" in many secondaryschools.

The methods adopted in these programs were strongly influencedby the remarkably successful training units set up during WorldWar 11 to teach illiterate inductees to read. " In these programs,instructional materials were based primarily on the adventures of"Private Pete" and his friends, who were introduced in _carefullygraded films, comics, and basic texts which kept as closely aspossible to the experiences and vocabulary of army life. Postwarschools attempted the same sort of match by selecting materials tomeet life needs (sometimes reconceptualized in Robert HavighursCsterms as "developmental tasks") and by grading the selectionsusing statistical measures of "readability." These measures derivedfrom studios by William S. Gray and Bernice E. Leary (1935) and

NARROWED GOALS 161

seemed to offer a '',scientific precision of the highest order.Even before the wartime programs. Reader's Digest encouraged

a siniilar approach. To many secondary school teachers it seemed toprovide contemporary writing on topics of general interest whileinsuring that the materials were of an appropriate level of difficulty.Though for adults habitual reading of Reader's Digest might be arather limiting experience, for children in developmental programsit offered just enough challenge and diversity to insure continuedgrowth of skills. In 1941 the Digest issued a school edition with asupplement of suggested questions and activities prepared by StellaCenter and Gladys Persons, both of whom had been very active inNC'l'E. Initial experiments comparing classes using these materialswith others not using them seemed to bear out the claims whichhad been made for the program and certainly helped to bring thematerials into wider use."

The Digest edited its materials to a standard format, simplifyingand clarifying as it thought necessary to "get the message across."A similar motivation led to a revival of interest in simplifiededitions of popular novels. As one summary described them. "Longexpository passages, tedious descriptions, and turgid narrativesections have been telescoped. The impatient reader may now geton with the tale." The "scientific" readability indices were ofconsiderable importance here, the object being to produce textsappropriate for a given grade level. Still, the list of books that wereeventually offered teachers in "simplified" editions is rather aston-ishing: Black Beauty and Pinocchio stand with Ivanhoe and LesMiscrables among those submitted to the editor's blue pencil."

The other aspect of the army programs which had considerableinfluence on schools was the concern with careful specification andorderly sequencing of component skills. Reading was broken downinto such factors as "word attack," "sentence comprehension,""reading speed," "phonics." and "vocabulary." each of which couldbe separately drilled through workbooks and study exercises. DeanWilliam S. Gray of the University of Chicago, long a leading figurein the field of reading. was coeditor of Bask Reading Skills forHigh School Use, a workbook covering such topics as phonics,vocabulary, and dictionary use. Many other publishers offeredmaterials following a similar format. At a somewhat less mechani-cal level, Reader's Digest extended the editorial approach of itsmagazine to a series of texts, Reading Skill Builders and Secrets ofSuccessful Living. Science Research Associates later used the sameconcept of controlled level of difficulty and accompanying compre-hension questions to structure its Reading Lahoratory, a kit ofindividualized reading lessons. Such materials found quite wideacceptance, especially in the junior high school and with lower trackstudents."

162 THADITIllry A Ni ) REFOIn

In spite of their popularity, such approaches failed to recognizecertain limitations in the "science" which supported them. Inparticular they tended to ignore two important lessons that earlierexperience should have taught them: (1) the range of ability withina given grade level is as wide as the range between the high schoolyears. so that a difficulty index ot, say, "grade 6" has very littlemeaning, and (2) interest level is of more importance than thelinguistic and syntactic elements that were used in arriving atmeasures of "readability."

The New Critics

Changes in Literary Theory

The concern with language and 'meaning which led the highschools to emphasize communication was part of the developmentof a new school of literary criticism with many of the sameantecedents. The "new criticism" (as John Crowe Ransom called itin 1941) was a general reaction against the impressionistic andsentimental criticism that prevailed during the early twentiethcentury. It was simultaneously a movement that attempted toprovide techniques and a rationale for discussing the modern poetsEliot. Auden, Yeats,. and Pound, among many otherswho seemedto violate the now traditional Romantic and Victorian literaryprecepts."

To deal with the new poets and to escape from the impressionis-tic focus on "message," the New Critics turned to studies of thelanguage and form of literary works, especially of poetry. How apoem means, rather than what a poem means, became the firstquestion to be answered; questions of meaning were held to heinextricably intertwined with questions of form. These criticssimultaneously excluded from the area of primary -concern ques-tions of history, biography. or ethics; their special task was toexplore the structure (and hence meaning) and the success lendhence worth) of a given piece of literature, with the success itselfbeing judged on the basis of structural principles,

The men who can be grouped together as the New Critics rangefrom 1. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot to Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks,and Robert Penn Warren; they differed markedly in the details of.their approaches and in the general evolution of their points ofview, Nonetheless they shared the initial focus on the work itselfand owed allegiance to the same intellectual and critical traditions.T. S. Eliot is generally viewed as the forefather of the New Critics,and his was the first strong voice urging that attention be turned

NAIIIIONVF.11 GOALS 16'3

back upon the poem itself. I. A. Richards, with his semantic andpsychological interests, is primarily responsible for the methodsthat were taken up to carry out El Hot's concerns. His Principles ofLiterary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) tied theevolving critical theory into the broad stream of concern withsemantics and language studies, a natural and fruitful union.'"

The twenties and thirties, however, were years of development inwhich the New Critics were evolving techniques and experimentingwith approaches; academic scholarship remained dominated byother approaches. The late thirties and forties saw the flood ofinfluential books that eventually moved the New Critics into thedominant position which they have held since. Cleanth Brooks'Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939), John Crowe Ransom'sThe New Criticism (1941), Beni: Wellek and Austin Warren's Theoryof Literature (1949), and Brooks' The Well Wrought Urn (1947),provided a theory and technique which gradually replaced the.earlier emphases. Though Brooks could write in 1943 that the New

ritics "have next to no influence in the universities," by 1953'Wellek was observing that such interests completely dominated theyounger staff members and would inevitably come to dominategraduate training."

The single most important influence in transforming such criticaltheory into classroom practice was Understanding Poetry (1938),an introductory anthology for college students compiled by CleanthBrooks and Robert Penn Warren. The book was a thorough illus-tration of the implications of the New Criticism for instruction inliterature, and was carefully designed to insure that its purposescould not be subverted. The opening "Letter to a Teacher" directlyattacked previous methods of teaching:

This book has been conceived on the assumption that if poetry is worthteaching at all it is worth teaching as poetry. The temptation to make asubstitute for the poem as the object of study is usually overpowering.The substitutes are various, but the most common are:

1. Paraphrase of logical and narrative content:2. Study of biographical and historical materials:3. Inspirational and didactic interpretation.

In place of the three "substitutes" for a poem, the editors offeredtheir own list of principles that "a satisfactory method of teachingpoetry should embody ":

1. Emphasis should be kept on the poem as a poem.2. The treatment should be concrete and inductive.3. A poem should always be treated as an organic system of relation-

ships. and the poetic quality should never be understood as inher-ing in one or more factors taken in isolation.'"

TitA0E110N AND REFORM

Brooks and Warren were well aware that such an approach wasnot common in the colleges. and hence gave their anthology ahighly unusual form. Instead of a collection of poems with perhapsan introduction and "questions for study," the' presented elabo-rate, illustrative analyses of the way a poem should he read. Onemight say that the book provided both the materials for study andthe lectures on themlectures which would have the effect ofeducating the teachers aswell as the students (a fact which Brooksand Warren were diplomatic enough not to point out). Selectionswere arranged in a rough scale of complexity that began withsimple narrative and ended with complex studies in metaphor andambiguity. The analyses focussed on each poem as a whole, how-ever, taking into consideration all of the various elements thattogether made up the structure. Brooks and Warren explicitlyrejected earlier attempts to concentrate on literary form throughsuch studies as "figures of speech" or "metrics," arguing that theeffect of a work "can only he given accurately by a study of therelations existing among all of the factors" (p. xiv). The book waswidely used. and was soon folloWed by companion volumes, Understanding Fiction (1943) and Understanding Drama (1996).

The New Critics and School Programs

The first use ivhich high school teachers would make of the NewCriticism was foreshadowed by -Allen Tate in a 1990 review ofModern Poetry and the Tradition (1939). One of the major conclusions which he drew was that "modern poetry is difficult becausewe have lost the art of reading any poetry that will. not read itself tous. ..Y. The implication that literature offered special problems ofreading, that indeed it required close study before one can expect,to appreciate it, was of course directly parallel to the conclusionsthat were being derived from studies of semantics, and served toreinforce them.

This concern with reading techniques was not in conflict with theconcurrent stress on adolescent needs, but by the end of the fortiesit was gradually becoming clear that there was a fundamentalantagonism between the basic principles of the two movements. Aslong as teachers responded only to the concern with the full rangeof meaning, they could apply the techniques of the New Critics withlittle problem. When they also took up the criteria of value basedon formal coherence, the doctrine of needs (with its stress oncontent) and that of the New Critics were in serious conflict. Evenhere, however, the full extent of the incompatibility was somewhatameliorated by the fact that one was primarily interested in prose,the other in poetry.

If there was any doubt in teachers' minds about the true importof the concern with form, it must have been thoroughly Aispelled

Netaitowan GoAis 165

when the 13ollingen Prize "for the highest achievement in Americanpoetry in 1948" was awarded to Ezra Pound for his Pisan Cantos;the resulting controversy was covered in detail in the EnglishJournal. The f3ollingen Prize was awarded by the Fellows of theLibrary of Congress in American Letters, with money provided bythe I3ollingen Foundation. In 1948 the Fellows included LeonieAdams, Conrad Aiken, W. It Auden, Louise Hogan, T. S. Eliot,Paul Green, Katherine Anne Porter, Karl Shapiro, Allen Tate, andRobert Penn Warrena highly respected group dominated byproponents of the New Critics. Although Pound was an expatriateAmerican under indictment for treason, the jury concluded that

. . permit other considerations than that of poetic achievementwould destroy thy significance of the award and would in principledeny the validity of that objective perception of value on which anyciviliwd society must rest.

"tick a statement was a clear and direct challenge to any theory ofliterature which granted a place to what was said as well as how itwas said in establishing a hierarchy of literary values. It provokedan angry, even savage, reaction led by the Pulitzer Prize-winningpoet Robert Ili Ryer; WK. first articles"Treason's Strange Fruits"and "Poetry's New Priesthood" were published with editorial(indorsements in the Saturday Review of Literature.

.111113/or's attack charged the New Critics with "sterile pedantry"and a "blurring of judgment both aesthetic and moral': he prophe-sied that the award had "rung down the curtain on the ingloriousAge of Eliot with all its coteries and pressure groups.""

Rather than the end of an era, however, the award of theBollingen Prize to Pound marked the emergence of the New Criti-cism as the established and conventional wisdom. Hillyer's vilifica-tion, though initially tapping a current of uneasiness about thenward,was soon criticized by such varied sources as the Net' YorkTimes, the New Republic, the Hudson Review, and the Nation. Themon he had been attacking were now the grand old men of letters:Eliot. Pound. and Ransom, for example, were all in their sixties.-Modern poetry,- concluded a December 1948 article in Poetry, "isin fact in secure possession of the field, and its heroes are aged menwith a long public career behind them.-"'

Though the New Critics were beginning to dominate scholarshipand criticism during the 1950s, the rhetoric of "life adjustment"dominated the high schools. Though younger teachers trained inthe New Criticism in their college programs were beginning to comeinto the schools. the much earlier report on Language in GeneralEducation (1940) represented the most extreme statement of theirviews that received anything like widespread support. Criticaltheory which emphasized form as the essence of literature, and

UM TRADITION AND REFORM

which derived standards of value from the coherence of that form,had no place. It would not be until the early sixties, when the lifeadjustment movement had been thoroughly discredited and a newgeneration of teachers had assumed control of the English program,that the implications of the critical theory as well as the readingtechniques of the New Critics would begin to affect high schoolprograms."'

The Changing Curriculum

The NC'TE Curriculum Studies

The most elaborate attempt to outline the form and substance ofan English curriculum to reflect postwar concerns was that of theNe'll'E's Commission on the English Curriculum. Organized in 1945under the general direction of Dent V. Smith, the thirty-one-member commission worked through a series of subcommitteesinvolving some 150 other teachers and scholars to produce a seriesof five reports. These illustrate both the implications of "life adjust-ment" for instruction in English and the striking inability of themovement to provide a coherent set of principles to give order andstructure to the curriculum."

The first report of the commission, issued in 1952, presented anoverview of the curriculum from preschool through graduate school,as well as an outline of the general approach to curriculum studywhich had been adopted. The commission's description of how tomake a curriculum is interesting for what it says about the func-tioning of the commission itself: most of the emphasis is oninsuring a wide representation of the various interest groups in thecommunity, and of having them arrive together at a mutuallyacceptable consensus. It is interesting to note in this descriptionhow much the process has changed from its earlier formulations.Though the Clapp report is mentioned briefly, there is no seriousattention given to empirical specification of life demands. Indeed,the "desired outcomes" of the program have become part of theprocess of consensus in the first stagepart of the "platform" ofthe Curriculum Commission itself. It is probably inevitable withsuch an approach that the goals arrived at will be both global andunsystematic. And as Bobbitt had pointed out many years before,imprecise formulations of what, the schools were trying to accomplish would be of little value in organizing a curriculum. Even theillustration of the process provided by the commission shows theseproblems. A goal such as "Personal Values" is given such "specific"subtopics as "1. Development of personalitya sense of belongingand of being accepted," and "6. Establishment of enduring andworthwhile personal interests."'"

NARItOWED Goers 167

The empiricism which in earlier curriculum discussions had fo-cussed on the list of goals was now turned toward the description ofcharacteristics of the students, Such an approach was essentiallystatic: it provided a description of a given point in time, and verylittle else. If such a description were the most that could heavailable, then the teacher would have to be constantly and indi-vidually making similar assessmentslearning the characteristicsof each student so that he could define the "needs" toward whichinstruction should be directed,

The activities suggested as relevant "experiences" to be includedin the curriculum would then be those which could be seen asreflecting the specified goals at a level of difficulty suitahle to theoutlined characteristics of the student. Given the global nature ofthe goals and the static nature of the description of the students,virtually any kind of activity could find its place as a valid"experience" in the curriculum, and the experiences themselvescould in turn serve as the setting for any numher of practicalEnglish skills. Thus, for example, "Correct usage" and "FormS, ofIntroduction" were both listed as incidental Iearnings derived fromthe outcome "Development of personality" (p. 621.

The task given Volume I was global; later volumes were to givepractical guidance at each curriculum level. Angela M. Broening,who had edited the earlier report, Conducting ExperiOnces in Eng-lish 119391, was head of the Production Committee for Volume Ill,the secondary school report. This volume (1956) had the benefit ofseveral more years of life adjustment theory, and is even moreexplicit in its acceptance of the general philosophy. The ProductionCommittee for Volume 111 saw students as shaped by two sets offorces. The first was external, and embodied the demands that acomplex and rapidly moving modern world made upon its citizens;the second was internal,reflecting the changing physiological andpsychological nature of the organism. These were explicated with adetailed list of characteristics, subdivided into one section of Physi-cal, Mental, and Emotional Characteristics and another section ofLanguage Characteristics. Physical characteristics reflected recentattention to growth curves and physiological influences on behavior.Twelve- to fifteen-year-olds, the committee noted, "undergo internalchanges involving the heart, gland, and hone structure; the heartgrows faster than do the arteries, thus causing strain on the heartand often conflicts and emotional upsets." The list of "languagecharacteristics" treated language as an incidental activity: the firstcharacteristic listed, for example, is "Desire to have fun, a factwhich manifests itself in language expression related to sports,amusements, and humorous situations."KS

When the committee turned to the problem of appropriate activi-ties for the curriculum, it became clear that incidental teaching of

His 'Ennuino% Asa REFORM

the language arts really justified virtually any activity with whichthe teacher might feel comfortable. The committee emphasized unitLeaching as the best approach Lo building up a curriculum, but theirdefinition of unit was rather all-encompassing: "All that is meantby the term here is that varied activities in the language arts aredeveloped around a central theme or purpose, clear and significantLo .the student" 69). The Production Committee and .the Curricu-ium Commission itself, because they stressed needs narrowly de-fined as immediate problems and left the language arts us inciden-tal. never did attempt to limit what would he "clear and significant."

Literature was dealt with in two sections whose differing titlesemphasize the Lwin strands of psychological needs and essentialskills Lhat were part of general education. One section was called"Meeting Youth's Needs through Literature," the other, "Develop-ing Competence in Reading." Neither section offered much more

. than a series of echoes of the fuller discussions in Literature asExploration, .4n Experience Curricalum, and the professional liter-attire during the ensuing two decades, Literature was to be taughtfor "discovery and imaginative insight"; it would "meet the needsof youth and promote growth"; "general traits as well as individualcharacteristic); must be taken into consideration"; "students dif-fer"; literature can provide "broadened thinking and experience": itis a "source of pleasure" and can aid in forming "moral values:'"The phrases are glib and are offered with little elaboration ordefense,

The section on reading skills is striking in its disregard of thekinds of skills which the New Critics were stressing. The importantskills it did list for reading literature were "Evaluating truth tohuman experience"; "Discovering theme or central purpose"; "Re-lating detail to central theme or purpose of the selection"; and"Following different types of phit structure." Points of importancein the reading of poetry included rhythm, rhyme. "word color,"figures of speech, and "Inechanies." The general level. of instructionis indicated by the final sentence; "Practice and group reading anddiscussion of poetry will make the inverted sentence pattern famil-iar:1'i IL is indicative of the general emphases that Max Eastman is

cited in the bibliography for the literature section: W. S. Gray(extensively) in the bibliography for reading: RichardS, Brooks, andthe other New Critics in neither.

The ultimate difficulty was that the curriculum specified by thecommission lacked a set of structuring principles. The membersfound their metaphor for education in the concept of "growth,"which involved "a definite sequential pattern" whose dimensionswere clear enough: "The normal child grows .constantly more com-plex, more effective, and more mature in each of his patterns" (p.al). Yet they had no theory of cognitive or moral developmentwhich would allow them to state any more specifically the nature of

NA [MOW ED GOALS 169

the "growing complexity," the changes involved, or even thenatural next stage of development. Instead, all they could offer wasthe static delineation of what the child is like at a given point in.time so that activities could be structured to change him. Anynumber of activities, unfortunately, could he justified as "moredifficult." "more complex," or "meeting a need," and all kinds ofactivities were offered."'

The Nurse of Study

In 1959 Arno Jewett, English specialist .at the .U,S. Office ofEducation, published a survey of 285 courses of study from 49states, the District of Columbia. the Canal Zone, and Hawaii. Hisfindings suggest that such guides reflected the emphases evidencedin the work of the Commission on the English Curriculum, thoughhe felt that the guides described programs that were "less tradi-tional, more flexible, and more closely geared to local needs" thanthose of schools not engaged in curriculum work."'

Jewett found that "almost all" of the courses included in -thesurvey provided a definite sequence for the curriculum, with topicalor thematic units almost totally replacing lists of Classics as themethod of organizing the work. Units often cut across the languagearts, attempting- to provide (as the Curriculum Commission hadsuggested) a wide base for incidental- teaching of language andcommunications skills. Topics varied greatly, but "the importanceof student interest as a means of facilitating and strengtheninglearning" had been "generally accepted." The junior high yearstended to stress thematic units organized around the interests andneeds which various traditions of research on adolescents haddelineatedanimal stories, adventure, and mystery from readinginterest studies. for example, and family life, growing up, andmaking friends. About half of the junior high curricula includeddevelop:tient& reading programs."

In the upper grades, Jewett found a much more traditionalpattern. but most programs had been modified to include severaldifferent approaches. The most common pattern in grade 10 wasthe study of types: but in grade 11, with its now-traditional coursein American literature, a wide variety of units were being taught:"Chronological, thematic, regional, literary, works of famous au-thors, American ideals and principles, and various others" (pp.65-66). In the twelfth grade program the traditional course inEnglish literature-had begun to lose ground and was being replacedby a variety of electives. The most frequent substitute, however,was a course in world literature in which English literature played asubstantial and usually predominant role. Some 13 percent of thecourses of study included a required world literature course in grade

170 TRADITION AND REFORM

12. and another 10 percent offered it as an elective. Smith in 1932had found virtually no attention to such studies.

Jewett also found that schools were incorporating the concern forlanguage and communication that had developed during World WarII. Over half of the courses of study that he examined includedsuch studies, those published earlier focussed on propaganda analy-sis and critical thinking while later courses emphasized semanticsand the nature of language.

The Anthologies

Jewett's findings indicate that those in charge of the courses ofstudyin general the more active and dedicated teachers in a givencommunitywere responding to the emphases in the professionalliterature, Courses of study. however, are only one of the factorsinfluencing what actually happens in the classroom; in this periodas in the previous one, the literary anthology is at least as impor-tant. Two detailed studies of anthologies are available, one ingeneral sympathetic and the other part of the reaction against theprogram of secondary education that developed during the postwarperiod. Together they provide quite a complete picture of theprogram in literature which the anthologies represented.

The more sympathetic discussion is James Olson's summary oftrends between 1946 and 1957. He found a gentle evolution ratherthan a major shift from the pattern that had been deveicped duringthe 1930s. Those series that had not yet reorganized their ninth andtenth grade texts around thematic or topical units did so; and thetopics themselves were shifted toward the more immediate needsand interests of adolescents. In the eleventh and twelfth gradevolumes, the major change was the introduction of a thematic unitin contemporary literature at the beginning of the volume beforereturning to the standard chronological presentation for the rest ofthe text."

The increasing concern with practical problems of living wasevident in both the organizing themes and the editorial apparatusprovided. The 1950 Singer anthology dropped its opening unit on"The Short Story," replacing it with one titled "UnderstandingOurselves and Others"; a subtopic covered "Family Portraits andProblems." The parallel Scott, Fon mian text introduced a unittitled "Families Are Like That" in an edition issued the followingyear. Even the anthology titles began to reflect the new orientation:Harcourt, Brace and Co. started a Living Literature series in 194ThHolt followed in 1952 with one more explicitly titled Read Up OnLife."

Responding to the concern with human relations, the anthologiesalso hegan to give attention to world literature. Some combined itwith the study of English literature in the twelfth grade; others

NARROWED GOATS 171

issued separate volumes. An ungraded Harper and Brothers text,World Neighbors. illustrates even in its title the limitations on thegoals for such studies. The preface emphasized world peace anddomestic harmony, and the selections themselves were surroundedwith "practical" study questions, After reading Bernier's "TheDivided Horsecloth," for example, students were asked: "Besidesteaching married couples how to treat their parents, what does thestory teach parents concerning their money ?" Synge's Riders to theSea demonstrated the "comfort" of religious faith but also illus-trated "stupid beasts Who allow a it alignant nature to dominatetheir lives."''

As in previous periods, there was considerable difference inemphasis from series to series, with those collections designed mostspecifically for upper-track and college-bound students maintainingthe most traditional focuses, and those for vocational students or thelowest tracks going furthest in the direction of "life adjustment."

One can conclude from Olson's survey that "life adjustment"brought no major change in the organization or content of highschool anthologies. They continued to exert a moderately progres.sive influence on the curriculum through both their increasingattention to modern literature and their continuing de-emphasis ofstudies of form and technique. There is no indication that theanthologiesany more than the Commission on the English Cur-riculum of the NCTE or the state courses of studyhad respondedto the implications of the New Criticism: even the conservativeeditions for college-bound and upper-track students emphasizedolder methods of scholarship: biographical and historical studies,the characteristics of genre, and rhetorical devices predominated.

A trenchant and detailed critique of the anthologies by JamesLynch and Bertrand Evans documents exactly what was happeningto literary values. As a status study rather than a history, it treatsthe form of the anthology as a given in need of change, rather thanas an evolving set of materials. To choose texts for study, theauthors solicited information on state adoptions, surveyed practicesin two hundred cities, corresponded with publishers, and checkedtheir results with practicing teachers. They concluded that theirfinal list of seventy-two texts represented all of those in major use.The sample overlaps Olson's but includes only five from the fortiesand some fourteen editions published between 1958 and 1962: mostof these were minor revisions of earlier texts, however, so that theLynch and Evans statistics probably provide an accurate picture ofthe texts Olson surveyed."'

Their report, High :Jahool English Textbooks (1963), is a goodillustration of the fundamental antipathy between the emphasesthat had been developing in the secondary schools and the em-phases of the New Critics. The task of the English teacher as Lynchand Evans saw it was "the teaching of the reading of literature"

172 TRADMION AND REEDRM

Ip.5). Their emphasis was firmly on literature as literature: anthol-ogies "should be the repositories of the very best ever thought andwritten in the spirit of the humanistic tradition and the Anglo-American heritage; whatever does not fulfill these criteria has noplace in an anthology, regardless of grade level or the kind of readerto whom it might be directed" (L), 409). Given the professionalemphases over the preceding fifty years, it wag inevitable that theanthologies would not fare well in their eyes. Literary values hadnot been the primary emphasis in the selection of .materials; muchof the "very best ever thought and written" had been deemedinappropriate; the second best had often been found useful.

Lynch and Evans made a number of major criticisms of theanthologies, documenting each point somewhat repetitively as theytook up each genre in turn. Their major charge was that theselections Were inadequate and "second-rate," placing too muchemphasis on such "currently popular topics as the space age,electronics, travel, and communication"; attention to "information,'real-life' adventure, and social behavior"; selection for "sociologi-cal or historical reasons." To these considerations Lynch and Evanscounterposed "ideas and the exercise of thinking logically andcritically," "literary quality," and "promise of permanence" (pp.64-73).

In the anthologies' treatment of each genre Lynch and Evansfound a core of "respectable quality" which filled out the lists of

most frequently printed selections." These, however, were a verysmall percentage of the total; the frequently anthologized shortstories. for example, made up only 4 percent of all short storyselections, Observations of the remainder led Lynch and Evans toconclude that "the short story is not commonly regarded as aserious literary genre, but rather as an attractive short piece easilyhandled by the teacher and appreciated. by students with a mini-mum of teaching." The mist frequent sources of the stories were, indescending order, The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, The NewYorker. Scholastic Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire.('osmopolitan. This Week. Story, Boy's.Lije, Seventeen, Harper's,American Girl, and Ladies' Home Journal. Seventy-three percent ofthe selections appeared in only one anthology and were "commer-cial" or "formulary." To 'Lynch and Evans the results were adisaster:

the principal criticism to be made is not that such stories are notto lath reading but that as entertainment they do not deserve a place inthe textbooks prepared at considerable expense for high school class.rooms. 'I'n give such stories as much space as more enduring works ofgenuine literature is at once to blur distinctions between the gmarandtile mediocre ft hereby frustrating the development of taste). (pp. 38-21b.

NARROWED COALS 173

Their parenthetical note is of particular interest, since it is a directcontradiction of the assertions of the experience approach. Thequestion of the processes involved in the development of taste is thecentral pedagogical issue, but it has never been successfully ad-dressed by proponents of either point of view.

Their second set of criticisms dealt with alteration of selections,a practice that had reached such proportions that nearly half of theselections in some texts were not presented in their original form.Many of the alterations represented unacknowledged "silent edit-ings"; others involved major omissions noted with a simple ellipsisor misleading footnote (p. 442), Such changes were a source ofcontinuing irritation to Lynch and Evans, who contended that theyviolated the duty of the anthology to present "the work as theauthor wrote it"a necessary first step, of course, if the techniquesof the New Critics were to he applied in teaching.

Another general point of criticism was the domination which thesystem of organization seethed to have over the selections included.As many as three-fourths of the volume's seemed to have beenorganized before the selections were picked. Topical (thematic) andchronological patterns of organization were the chief villains here,because hoth imposed a set of extraliterary considerations on thematerials to be used. The ,study found too that such topical andchronological anthologies were the dominant forms, the first ingrades 9 and 10, the second in grades 11 and 12. Lynch and Evansblamed the overemphasis on "miscellaneous nonfiction" directly onthe use of topical units, which led to collections "that are moreaccurately described as socially therapeutic than personally andhumanely educative" (pp. 79.80, 410). Again, of course, whatthey find offensive is a result of the success of the anthologies inresponding to the concerns the secondary school.

Lynch and Evans also criticized the fact that over half of theselections were from the twentieth century; literature written before1800 was hardly represented at all. Looking for a reason, theyfound that the "correlation between the topical organization andproportion of recent literature is obviously very high," from theirpoint of view providing another bit of damning evidence againstthis approach. Their worry about the displacement of "majorauthors in the Anglo-American tradition" also led them to object tothe emphasis upon world literature in some collections: "It is atleast questionable whether a high school student inadequately readin the poetry of his own culture is prepared to undertake the studyof another" (pp. 113, 150-58).

The last general criticism that Lynch and Evans had to offerdealt with the tone adopted by the anthologists: in particular the"fear of difficulty** and the "deliberate catering to the adolescentmind even to the point of embarrassment."

174 TRADITION AND REFORM

Pieces are chosen because they lie within the narrow boundaries of theteen-age world, and their heroes and heroines are Dick and Jane just afew years older. now dating instead of playing, going to a danceinstead of the local fire station, saying "round, round, jump the rut,round, round, round, jump the rut, round, round" instead of "Jump,Spot, jump," but otherwise hardly different. The "image" of theAmerican Boy that emerges is of a clean-cut, socially poised extrovert,an incurious observer of life rather than a participant, a willing con-former, more eager to get than to give:a bit of a hypocrite but a ratherdull companionaxon-adjusted youth not much above a moron. Andthe "image" of the American Girl? She is the one who likes theAmerican Boy (pp. 412-13).

It was to end the catering to that moron, to restore the anthologiesto the state of "textbooks, to be studied in and taught from," thatthe, criticisms of High School English Textbooks were ultimatelyoffered.

It should he clear that what Lynch and Evans were challengingwas not the anthologies' success at the task undertaken, but thedefinition of the task itself. In a sense the fact that their studyneeded to be conducted at all is the strongest testimony to thedomination that had been achieved by the progressive movement.

Summing Up: Literature in the Progressive Era

Lynch and Evans conducted their study in the early sixties,safely in the midst of a vigorous collegiate reaction against suchtrends: they were professors at Berkeley themselves. The attackswere on "life adjustment." and the narrow focus on adolescentneeds. but since these were the final stages of progressivism it wasthe movement as a whole that was eventually discredited. The lossof the impetus toward reform and progress, with its concomitantde-emphasis of academic achievement, provided the rallying pointfor a variety of forces to unite against the unfortunate image of abrave new world filled with legions of school children in gray flannelsuits, an image which "life adjustment' managednot withoutjustificationto bring upon itself.

The attack on "life adjustment'. would simultaneously end JohnDewey as the basic reference point for educational thought: he andhis followers became the villains instead of the heroes in the neweducational rhetoric. Yet though the name was discredited, theprogressives made many solid and continuing contributions to theteaching of literature in American schools. Any list will of necessitybe limited and thus misleading, but the following points give somesense of their accomplishment,

NARROWED GOALS 175

Ill They effectively ended the limitation of the literature curric-ulum to the nineteenth century canon of classic texts, open-ing the way for the inclusion of more, and more modernselections as well as for important examples of world litera-ture.

(2) They documented the wide range of individual differencesin ability and achievement that could be expected withinany high school classroom, and experimented with ways toprovide a meaningful program in literature for all students.

(3) They recognized the importance of student interest in anysuccessful program in literature; they developed a widevariety or techniques to insure that interest would be pres-ent; and they described patterns of interests in children andadolescents that remain valid today.

(4) They began the debate about the nature of the developmentof taste and discrimination, recognizing that it is the essen-tial question which should shape the curriculum in literature.

(5) They gave English a place at the heart of the curriculumand defended literary studies as a part of English even whenunable to define their values precisely or well in the face ofdemands for social relevance, efficiency, or adjustment tolife.

The failure of the progressives were also major and contributedto the rapid rate at which their views of the curriculum would fallfrom Favor.

(I) In turning from literary scholarship toward the relationshipbetween the student and literature as the basis for the cur-

. riculum, they abandoned the old pattern before they haddeveloped a new set of practical criteria for determining therelative value and the proper order for classroom studies.They sought growth in response without a useful phi-losophy of what growth entailed.

(2) In part because of their lack of structuring principles, theyallowed the program in literature to be dominated by per-ipheral activities often having little to do with "literaryvalues": in the end the rhetoric, at least, gave literature afunction which other activities could and did fulfill as well.

(3) In their concern with general education for the general stu-dent, they adopted a condescending position that removedvirtually all "striving" and challenge from the activitiessuggested, especially for the nencollege-bound students.They allowed their empiricism and pragmatism to narrowtheir definitions of needs to the point that they were trivialand dull.

171; TRADITION AND REFORM

(4) In their fear of college domination they lost touch withscholarship in their field, thus setting the stage for con-frontation with the New Critics, rather than the reconcilia-tion and acconv nodation that might have revitalized themovement.

NARROWED GOA IS 177

CHAIM:It VI NOTES

I. Wilford M. Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study (New York:Harper and Bros., 19421, p. 16.

2. I. A. Richards, How to Read a Page: A Course in Efficient Readingwith an Introduction Lou Hundred Great Words (New York: W. W. Norton& Company, 1942). p. 10.

3. Lennox Grey. "Communication and War: An Urgent Letter toEnglish Teachers," English Journal 32:1 (January 1943): 12-19.

4. Frances Broehl, "The Teacher of English and Education for AllAmericanr Youth." English Journal 34:7 (September 1945): 403-06.

5. Commission on the English Curriculum, The English Language Artsin the Secondary School (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 19561, p. 15.

6. "General education" is a term that has been used to cover amultitude of sins; almost all approaches to education have been encom-passed under the term by one writer or another. Discussion here will followthe Fifty-first Yearbook of the NSSE in denoting by general education theconcern with the nonspecialized student with specific personal needs to bemet through the schools, and in considering it an alternative to "liberaleducation." by which will be denoted a more subject- and culture-orientedprogram. See also the discussion of the Harvard report at the beginning ofthe next chapter. National Society for the Study of Edification, GeneralEducation, Fifty-first Yearbook. Part I (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 19521. See also NSSE, General Education in the American ('allege.Thirty eighth Yearbook (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939).

7. Cited by Elbert LenroW, Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction: Anintroductory Essay, with Bibliographies of 1500 Novels Selected, Topically('!ossified- and Annotated for Use in Meeting the Needs of Individuals inGeneral Education. For the Con-mission on Secondary School Curriculum(New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 19401. p. :1.

8. "Summary and Report," English Journal 33:1 (January 19441:49-52. The speaker was Brigadier General Joe N. Dalton.

9. "Summary and Report," English Journal 32:5 (May 1943): 285-87.The statement originated in a committee of the American Council onEducation =twos later accepted by the American Association of Colleges.For statements of the relationship between general education and Englishbefore the war, see Lou LaBrant. "The Place of English in GeneralEducation." English Journal 39:n.1Muy 1940): 356-65; and Dora V. Smith,"General Education and the Teaching of English," English Journal 29:9(November .19401: 707-19.

10. On these developments, see C. A. Bowers, The Progressive Educa-tor and the Depression (New York: Random House. 19691, pp. 216 it, andLawrence A. Cromin. The Transformation of the School (New York: VintageBooks, 1961). pp. 251 ff.

11. Thu series was titled Adventure in American Education and pub-lished by Harper and Bros. (New York) during 1942, It included Wilford M.Aikin, The Story of the Eight-Year Study: H. H. Giles et al., Exploring theCurriculum: Eugene It. Smith et al., Appraising and Recording StudentProgress; Dean Chamberlain et al., Did They Succeed in College? andThirty Schools Tell Their Story. The quotation is from Chamberlain. p.'viii.

t78 TRADITION AND REFORM

12. See Giles, Exploring the Curriculum, and Chamberlain, ThirtySchools. for more detailed discussions of this evolution, the first from thepoint of view of the curriculum consultants, the second from that of theindividual schools.

13. Giles, Exploring the Curriculum, pp. 315 ff.14. Ibid., especially pages 4 and 44. See also Chamberlain, Thirty

Schools, pp. 6 ff.15. The Curriculum Commission which produced An Experience Cur-

riculum (1935), for example, included at least nine members who wereinvolved in the Eight-Year Study, though the PEA was not among theorganizations asked to name an official representative.

16. At the time of the release of the first of these reports, the commissionincluded, among others, the presidents of Harvard and Cornell; the U.S.Commissioner Of Education served as an advisory member. Cremin. Trans-formation of the School, p. 329; Bowers, Progressive Educator and theDepression, p. 220.

17. Cited by Cremin, Transformation of the School, p. 334. See also LifeAdjustment Education for Every Youth, U.S. Office of Education Bulletin1951, no. 22 (Washington. D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951; firsted.. 1948).

18. English Journal carried many articles arguing the pros and cons ofintegration from the mid-thirties till the mid-forties. The largest concentra-tion of conflicting points of view was gathered together in two 1945 series:"Our Readers Think: About Integration," English Journal 34 (November1945): 496,502; "Our Readers Think: More About Integration," EnglishJournal 34:10 (December 19451: 555,59. The tide of opinion was clearlyagainst the concept.

10. Mark Neville, "Sharing Experiences with Formville," EnglishJournal 34:7 (September 19451: 368-72.

20. Marion C. Sheridan, "Life Without Literature," English Journal37:6 (June 1948): 29197: Grace S. Wright, Core Curriculum in PublicHigh Schools: An Inquiry Into Practices, 1949, U.S. Office of Education,Bulletin 1950, no. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office;1950). See also Grace S. Wright. Core Curriculum Development: Pmblemsand Practices, U.S. Office of Education Bulletin 1952. no. 5 (Washington,D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952).

21. Sarah I. Randy, "Developing- Personality through Literature;"English Journal 36:6 (June 1947): 299.304. She referred her readers toSchaffer's Psychology of Adjustment, Howard and Patry's Mental Health,and Mental Hygiene News. One of the most frequently cited early articlesin this tradition was Mitchell E. Rappapores posthumously published"Literature as an Approach to Maturity." English Journal 26:9 (Novem-ber 1937h 705-14.

22. Margaret Edwards, "I low Do I Love Thee?" English 'Instruct' 41:7(September 1952): 335-40.

23. Hada T0lia, The Dynamics of Education: A Methodology of Pro-gressive Educational Thought (London; Regan Paul, Trench. Trubner and

19321. See especially pages xvi and 257.24. Hilda Tabu, Elizabeth Hall 13rady, and John T. Robinson. Inter-

group Education in Public Schools (Washington, D.C.: American Councilon Education, 1952).

NARROWED GOALS 179

25. The strategies which Taint developed continue to he an importantmodel of the process of discussion. See Robert I.. Trezise, The HildaTuba Teaching Strategies in English and Reading Classes," EnglishJourpal 61:4 (April 1072): 577-80.

26.. Publications up to 1952 are summarized in a lengthy bibliographyin the final report. The only one to be widely cited by English teachers wasIteadirn!. Ladders for Human Relations (19471, which will he discussed onpages. 153-54. An WIT Committee on Intercultural Relations was activefmm 1943 till late in the decade. Its major accomplishment was a specialissue of English Journal (June 1946) on racial and religious tolerance, withLouise Rosenblatt as guest editor. The mast impressive part of the volumewas the names of the contributors; they included Thomas Mann. Edna.Ferber. Horace Ka lien, Ruth Benedict, and Ernst Kris.

27. George II. Henry. Our Best English Unit," English Journal 36:71September 1947): 356-62.

28. Holland D. Roberts, Walter V. Kau Berm and Grayson N. Many-er. Ms., English for Social Living (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.,1943). pp. 11-12.

20. Dwight L. Burton. "Books to Meet Students' Personal Needs."English Journal 36:9 (November 1947): 469-73.

30. Ralph D. Itabinovitch. "Our Adolescents and 'Their EnglishJournal 44:5 (Nlay 19551: 261-67. The director of the Child Guidance Clinicof the Catholic University of America had talked of "hihbotherapy- as earlyas the 1944 convention ("The Columbus Meeting." English Journal 34;2(February 19451: 102-061. See also George Robert ('arisen. "Literature andEmotional Maturity," English Journal 38;3 (March 1949): 130-38; 0. R.('arlson. "Deep Down Beneath, Where I Live," English Journal 13:5 1May1954): 235-39:. Don M. Wolie, "Students' Problems: A New Survey MadeEspedally for Teachers of English." English Journal 11:4 (April 1955):218-25.

31, Bertha Ilandlin. "Group Discussion of Individual Reading, .En-glish Journal 32:2 (February 1943): 67-73; Dwight Burton. "There's Al-ways a Bonk for You." English Journal 18:7 1September 1949): 371-75;Robert C. NIcKvan. "Students like Thematic Udits,- English Jaurtud45:2 (February 1956) :82 -8'3; William G. Fidone. HO Theme's the Thing,"English Journal 48:9 (December 1959): 518.23. On glum status of themes bythe 1959s, sue the discussion of lewett'4 survey later in this chapter.

32. Verona F. Rothenbusli. "Developing Active, Thinking Citizens,"English Journal 2214 (April 1943): 188-95; Nellie Mae Lombard, "Atner-icon Literature for Life and Living," English dourtud 33:7 (September1944): 383.84; "Report and Summary." English Journal 39:5 (May 1950):280.83. Lombard's course was inspired by 11. D. Roberts and English forSocial tiring.

Lettrow, Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction. p. 15. Ilk school uas oneof the thirty in the Eight-Year Study.

at Ibid., pp. 10-24.115. This sect ion included. among at hers, Iluxley's /WV 'aunt er Point.

Anderson's Winesburg, Lawrence's The Iblinhow, and l)reiser'sSister Carriebooks of merit hut a far cry front the standard high schoolcanon.

180 TRADITION AND REFORM

36. Hilda Tuba et al., Reading Ladders for Human Relations (Washing-ton. 1):C.: American Council on Education, 19471. This was preparedduring the summer of 1946. A revised and enlarged edition followed almostimmediately. published by ACE in 1949. Recent editions have beencosponsored by NCTE. A companion volume explained the rationale andteaching procedures in more detail: Hilda Taba, Literature for HumanUnderstanding (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Education, 1947).

37, Tabu, Dynainics of Education, p. 223. She summarized the goal ofher method as "a continuous reconstruction of the total social and individualexperience through self-directed activities,"

38. George W. Nowell, The Receding interests of Young People (NewYork: I). C. sleuth and Co., 19501. See also his What Boys and Girls Like toRead (Norristown, N.J.: Silver Burdett Co., 1958), and an earlier summaryreport, "Some Results of a Twelve-Year Study of Children's ReadingInterests," English Journal 35:10 (December 1946): 331-36.

39. James Warren Olson, The Nature of Literature Anthologies Usedin the Teaching of High School English 1917-1957 (Dissertation, Univer-sity of Wisconsin, 1969; University Microfilms No. 69-22.4541, 259,

40. Smith explains the origins of her program in "Extensive Reading inJunior High School: A Survey of Teacher Preparation," English Journal19:6 (June 1930): 449.62. Surveys of teachers in two summer sessionsindicated they were unfamiliar with such materials; the course on "juvenileliterature" followed. Courses on children's literature date back muchfurther.

41. See Richard S. Alm, "The Development of Literature for Adoles-cents," School Review 64 (April 1956): 172-77: Jean DeSales Bertram,"Books to Promote Insights into Family-Life Problems," English Journal45:8 (November 1956): 477.82; Learned T, Bulman, "Biographies \forTeen-Agers," English Journal 47:8 (November 1958); Emma L. Patterson,"The Junior Novels and How They Grew." English Journal 45;7 (October19561; 381.87. Earlier, see Isabel V. Eno, "Books for Children from BrokenHomes." English Journal 38;8 (October 1949): 457-58.

42, Richard S. Alm, "The Glitter and the Gold," English Journal 44:6(September 1955): 315-22.

43. Barbara Martinet/. "PopularBut Not Just a Part of the Crowd:Implications of Formula Fiction for Teenagers." English Journal 60:3March 1971); 339-44.

44, See W. H. N. Ilotopf, Language, Thought and Comprehension: ACase Study of the Writings of L A. Richards (London: Itoutledge andRegan Paul, 19651; Douglas Waples, Bernard Berelson, and Franklyn R.Bradshaw, What Reading Does to People (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1940).

45. The Educational Director of the Institute for Propaganda Analysisaddressed the 1939 NCTE convention (Violet Edwards, "Developing Criti-cal Thinking through Motion Pictures and Newspapers." English Journal29;4 (April 1940): 301(17). Paul Diederich reviewed Language in GeneralEducation for the Harvard Committee ("The Meaning of The Meaning ofMea»ing." English Journal 30;1 (January 1941): 31-36, S, I. Hayakawaspoke on propaganda, analysis at the 1938 convention ("The St. LouisConvention," English Journal 28:2 [February 1939): 143-50). See Lou:guage in Action New York: Harcourt. Brace, and Co., 1941).

Natutowsn GoArs 181

48. Commission on Secondary School Curriculum, Language in GeneralEducation. A Report of the Committee on the Function of English inGeneral Education (New York: D. Appleton.Century Co., 1940). Theconunittee stated that its primary debt was to I. A. Richards, who hadadvised it and;read drafts of the report. Rosenblatt's book was.endoSed asthe proper approach to literature (p. vi, fn. 2); she was not on thiscommittee but also acted as an advisor. Lou LaBrant, who was a memberof the committee, has emphasized to me that the committee's languagestudies were seen as separate -from literary work, though completelycompatible; they were not meant to supplant it. Cf., however, EdwardGordon's comments ten years later: "Interpretation of poetry is a furtherextension of the general language work; it is another, complex andconcentrated, example of emotional communication" ("Teaching Studentsto Read Verse," English Journal 39:3 IMarch 19501: 149-54).

47..1. A. Richards. How to Read a Page. p. 19-48. Charles 13, Hodgman, Jr., "A Nigh -School Program," English

Journal- 33:1 (January 1944): 35-40; Edward J. Rutan, "Meaning inLiterature Study," English Journal 33:9 (November 1944): 505-07: andBasic Aims Committee. "Basic Aims for English Instruction in AmericanSchools." English Journal 31 :1 (January 19421: 40-55.

49. Lennox Grey, "Communication and War: An Urgent Letter to En-glish Teachers." English Journal 22:1 (January 1043): 12-19: "The CouncilMeets in Wartime.- English Journal 32:2 (February 1943): 104 -05: and"English in the Victory Corps," English Journal 32;8 dune 1943); 393-99.See also Planning Commission, "English Instruction and this War." Eng-lish Journal 31:2 (February 1942): 87-91,

50. Paul Witty was especially frank about the influence of thesebn hisown thinking: Reading in Modern Education (Boston: 1), C. Heath, 1949);pp. 10-11, 194.201. Another important presentation of the developmentalapproach was Constance NI. McCullough, Ruth M. Strang, and Arthur E.Trax ler's Problems in the linpeorement of Reading (Nee, York: McG raw-lill Book .Co., 19481. This discussed reading skills all the way from

"Prcrending. Experiences in Preschool Years" through "Higher Levels idGraduate Study."

51. ItobOrt .1, Havighurst, "Characteristics, Interests. and Needs ofPupils That Aid in Defining the Nature and Scope of the ReadingProgram," in Adjusting Reading Progranzs to Individuals, SupplementaryEducational Monographs no. 52, ed. W. S. Gray (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1941), pp. 53-59. These tasks were cited by Witty. Readingin Alodern Education, p. 13. William S. Gray and Bernice N. Leary. What-Makes a Book Readable? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935).

52. See Samuel Beckofi, "The Rainbow," English Journal 32:6 (June19131: 325.30: Herbert A, Landry, -Teaching Reading with the Reader'sDigest,- English journal 32:6 (June 1043): 320-24.

53, Olive Eckerson, "Give Them What They Want." English Journal113;:iymber 19471: 523-27; Daniel J. Assuma, ''A List of Simplified

Classics." English Journal 42:2 (February 19531: 94 if.; John R. Kinzerand -Natalie R. Cohan. "How Hard Are the Simplified Classics?" EnglishJournal 4(1 :4 (April 1951); 219-11.

54. M. Agnella Gunn et al., What We know about High SchOolReading lUrbana. NOTE, 1958). See especially Helen I lunlon's article,

182 TRADITION AND REFORM

"What Does Research RevealAbout Materials for Teaching Reading?"55. See Rent(Wellek. "Literary Scholarship, in American Scholarship

in the Twentieth Century, ed. Merle Curti (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 19531: Clarence I). Thorpe and Norman E. Nelson, "Criticism inthe Twentieth Century, English Journal 36:4 (April 19471: 165-73; Wil-liam Van O'Connor, "A Short View of the New Criticism," EnglishJournal 38:9 (November 19491: 489-97; David Daiches, The New Criti-cism. English Journal 39:2 (February 19501: 64-72. Wellek's discussion isthe fullest: the others are interesting as examples'of contemporary roue-than; to the growing importance of the New Critics, Daiches is particularlyperceptive about the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the approach,and foreshadows later disillusionment,

56. These bOoks had the curious fate of being virtually ignored by highschool teachers for some twenty-five years, and then becoming basicpoints of reference at a time when their approach was already somewhatdated. Richards's Practical Criticism in particular became a commonreference during the period of academic reform discussed in the nextchapter. Principles of Literary Criticism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench,Trulmer and Co.. 1945; first published 19241; Practical Criticism: A Studyof Literary Judgment (London: Kegan Paul,- Trench, Trubner and Co.,1946; first published 19291.

57. Wellek, "Literary Scholarship... p. 123. Wellek refers to Bmoks'scontinent in the course of his own observations.

58. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry:An Anthology for College Students, rev. ed, New York; Henry Ilolt andCo.. 1950; first published 19381, pp. xixv.

59. Allen Tato. "Understanding Modern Poetry, English Journal 29:4(April 10401: 263-74. Brooks dedicated Modern Poetry and the Tradition to'fate.

60. "Report and Summary,- English Journal 38;7 (September 19491:405.07 (jury quotation, p. 4061; 30.3 (March 1950): 170-71; and 39:5 (May19501; 28'3-

61. "Report. and Summary , "- English Journal 39 :3 I March 19501: 170-71.62. For a good example of the assimilation of the "skills" defined by

the New Critics (in fact citing the 1950 edition of Understanding Poetry),see Rosemary S. Donahue. "A Problem in Developmental Reading,"English Journal 42:3 (March 19531: 142-47. For an early example accept-ing their principles more fully. .see Herman 0. Makey. "Why?" EnglishJournal 38:10 (December 19491: 554 ff.; and "In the Literature Clans."English Journal 39:7 (September 19501: 360.66. As examples of programsduring the period of transition. see Elizabeth Williams, 'teaching Judg-ment of Prose Fiction." English Journal 47:8 (November 19581: 95-99;David NI: Litsey. "Comparative Study Of Novels, English Journal 48:3(March 19591: 149-51.

03, Volumes I to V were titled. respectively. English LanguageArts (19521. Language Arts for Todays Children (19541, The EnglishLino:nage Arts in the Secondary School II9564, The College mingling ofEnglish (19651. The Education of Mothers of English for AmericanSchools and Colleges (19031. MI were published by Appleton-Century-Crofts. New York, The much-delayed Volumes IV and V are of a differentperiod and emphasis.

NARROWEil GOALS 183

64. The English Language Arts, pp. 62-67.65. The English Language Arts in The Secondary School, pp. 16.20.66. Ibid.. 123-29.67, ibid.. 180.87.68. In spite of their shortcomings. the books were in step with educa-tional thought at the time they appeared. Volume I was named one of the"Outstanding Educational Books of the Year" on the Pratt Library List,and Volume 111 in general provoked favorable comment, e.g., "Report andSummary," English Journal 42:7 (October 1953): 400; "The Significance ofThe English Language .4 rts in the Secondary School," English Journal46:5 (May 19571: 286-93.

The advocacy of a 'multiple approach" without clear standards forincluding or excluding activities was also typical. See J. N. (look, "TheMultiple Approach," English Journal 37:4 (April 1948): 188-92; and Wal-ter Loban. "Teaching Literature:. A Multiple Approach," English Journal45:2 (February 1956): 75-78+.69. Arno Jewett, English Language Arts in American High Schools,U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of EducationBulletin 1958, no. 13 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,1959). p. 5.70. Ibid., pp. 31-39, 50 ff.71. Olson, Nat are of Literature Anthologies, pp. 246.47.72. Ibid., pp. 246-49.73. Ibid., pp. 258. 273-77.74.. James J. Lynch and Bertrand Evans, High School English Text--hooks: .4 Critical Examination (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,1963).

In their false liberalism, the progressive educators confused discipline withlegimeritation, «nd forgot lhal true freedom is impossible without minds

tnade free by discipline.Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book,

19401

l'he issue in American education today is not drawn between those whobelieve in scholarship but are indifferent to good leaching, and those who

believe in good leaching but are indifferent to scholarship. The issue is drawn

between those who believe that good /coshing should be directed to soundintellectual ends, and those tette are content to dethrone educational valuesand eullicale the techniques of teaching for Their own sake; in an intellectual

and eulluniteacuum,Arthur E. Bestor, Educational Wastelands,

19532

The ultimate result of these pressuresThe greater heterogeneity of pupils, theincreasing complexity of our society, the development of modern media ofcommunication, the proliferation of tesponsibilities of the English. teacheristhat English as a subject is in danger of losing still more its central focus. Intoo many locales English has become all things to all students. The lines ofthe discipline have blurred, and the proper path for preparing its teachers has

faded.NCTE Committee on National Interest,19013

It is obcious that random patching of the existing curricula, though it mayhave a practical look, is no longer practical. The only thing that is practical

now is to gain a new theoretical conception of literature. Most of ourdifficulties in the leaching of English result from an imniature scholarship

that has not properly worked out its 01141 leachingprinciples.Northrup Frye, in all address to the

Modern Language Association, 1963'1

. the primary motivation for this curriculum lies in the fact that the English

program in most Nebraska schools lacks a planned, sequential, developmentalpattern. Thu frequently one teacher has no notion of what her students havedone in English in previous years or what they be expected to do insucceeding years. Consequently, each teacher feels that she must educate her

students in every area of English at once... , She cannot possibly do so.

Nebraska Curriculum DevelopmentCenter, 19655

Chapter VII

An Academic Model for English

The excesses of the "life adjustment" movementeventually provoked a reaction which (petitioned the tnost basicprinciples of progressivism in education.111 concern for the child ledto school programs with no clear purpose or structuring principles,then perhaps these principles could be reestablished by returningattention to the subject matter. This was the underlying premise ofthe academic resurgence which-dominated secondary school instruc-tion from the late fifties till the late sixties. This resurgence,though limited in its own way and relatively short-lived, forcedboth progressives and their opponents to formulate their goals andmethodologies with a rigmr, and :precision that had been lackingthroughout much of the "lifeldjitstment" period. As one result, thestudy of education became once again a respectahle endeavor, one inwhich academics las well as educationists were willing to engagethemselves.

Critics of the Schools

The Academic Critics

Fundamental criticism of the progressive movement was begin-ning even as the movement hit its zenith in the late 1930s; thesources were primarily university scholars concerned about whatthey saw as a lack of intellectual rigor and historical perspective inthe evolving school programs. Maintaining the distinction made inthe previous chapter, these critics were the proponents of "liberal"as opposed to "general" education. One of the earliest influentialcritics was Robert M. Hutchins, inaugurated as president of theUniversity of Chicago in .1929. In a series of lectures at Yale in

185

I8(1 TRADITION AND ItgrODAt

1936, later. published as The Higher Learning in America (1936),Hutchins outlined a program which placed its emphasis on disci-pline and culture as a prescribed body of knowledge, summed up asthe "Great Books."6 This was in turn popularized by MortimerAdler in his somewhat polemical How to Read a Book (1940). Aprofessor of law rather than of literature, Adler first taught withMark Van Doren at Columbia and later with Hutchins at Chicago.Blaming the progressives in general and John Dewey in particularfor what he saw as "the almost total neglect of intelligent readingthroughout the school system," Adler is interesting for his funda-mental unity of purpose with most of the progressive movement.To him, too; reading was "a basic tool of good living," one"intimately related to the art of thinking wellclearly, critically,freely." Education in general and reading in particular were "ameans toward living a decent human life." Even the list of ques-tions that Adler thought should he asked by a reader were basicallycompatible with progressive doctrines: "What in general is beingsaid? . . flow in particular is it being said? . . . Is it true?What of it?"'

Adler in the end differed from the progressives he was criticizingon only one important point: what should he read to achieve thesegoals. And his answer was simple: the Great Books, and only theGreat Books, were vorth spending time on. They alone would teachthe reader to read well, and until he could read well there would beno sense in reading widely. Adler was well aware that the Great-Books (he included a lengthy list in an appendix) were considerahlymore difficult than the standard school fare, but he defended thisdifficulty as providing the necessary discipline without which truefreedom of the mind could never be achieved.

Van Doren, whom Adler acknowledged as a shaping force in hisown education, was himself commissioned by the Association ofAmerican Colleges to prepare a discussion of liberal educationduring the midst of World War II. His book, far more scholarly andreasoned than Adler's popularization, recognized the fundamentalunity in goals with the progressive educators, but like Adler splitwith them on what it was that should be studied. As Van Dorenput it, progressive education failed at being "perfect" precollegeeducation by neglecting two things: "The deep resemblances be-tween human beings, calling for a fixed program of learning whichno child may evade, and the importance of the past." And likeAdler, Van Doren pointed to the Great Hooks program as a goodmodel to follow.'

Two Harvard committees appointed by president James 13.Conant provided similar discussions of secondary school programs:first The Training of Secondary School Teachers Especially withReference to English (1942), and later General Education in a FreeSociety (1945). Both reflected an awareness of conditions in Amer-

AN AeADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGLISH 187

ican secondary schools and a healthy appreciation of the progres-sive efforts at reform; both, however, came down squarely in favorof a more academic and intellectually rigorous curriculum thanseemed to be emerging. The NCTE in particular was castigated bythe Committee on the Training of Secondary School Teachers forhaving "ended whatever monopoly the classics still enjoyed"through a series of reports that exhibited "a decreasing power ofdiscriminating between books of permanent worth and books of anephemeral nature." Rather than a leisure time or recreationalactivity, the committee saw reading as a difficult and disciplinedsubject, one that would "challenge" the mind and thus make it"grow.""

Both Harvard committees traced the ills of education to theexpanding school enrollments of the early twentieth century, enroll-ments that had grown so fast that the liberal arts faculties hadgladly relinquished their traditional responsibility for teacher train-ing. The result, inevitably, had been a widening chasm betweenschool and college people, the one poorly trained in subject matter,underpaid, and without time to pursue their own continuing educa-tion; the other isolated from the schools, unconcerned with meth-odology. and luntil much later in the century) safely protected fromthe problems of "mass" or "general" education. As a result of thissplit, education lost touch with its earlier humanistic roots, thoughthese continued to flourish (the Darvard committees hoped) in theuniversity liberal arts faculties. The goals of secondary education,in this view, were now too oriented toward practical and vocationalends; there was a need to re-emphasize the ethical and culturalheritage through a return to "great authors" and "great books."'"

The implicit and explicit criticism of progressive education of-fered in the early forties by proponents of liberal education set thestage for the later and more volatile criticism that would in aremarkably short time make progressive education a term of deri-sion, and John Dewey a scapegoat. Lack of intellectual rigor,neglect of common culture, avoidance of questions of values, andthe control of the schools by an isolated and ingrown school ofeducation these would he the rallying points for critics who wouldfail to recognize any fundamental unity of purpose with progressiveeducation. Much of their criticism simply missed the point, contin-uing a long tradition of talking past one another that had grown upbetween the schools of education and the liberal arts faculties." TheGreat I3ooks course is itself the hest single example of this: criticsof progressive education claimed that such books were being ne-glected, while in fact the progressive theorists could claim self-righteously that they had already !mined that the way to fullappreciation of these classic texts was indirect, through the lesserand more ephemeral works that they had been assiduously bringinginto the curriculum. In fact the progressives may have been in

188 TRADITION AND REFORM

danger of losing sight of their ultimate goal, concentrating on theephemeral as an end in itself, but since the issue was put notpedagogically but on the basic principles, neither side benefitedfrom the wisdom of the other.

A Crisis of Confidence

As "life adjustment" became more popular, such criticism in-tensified. Some hint of the changing tone is evident in the titleschosenthey progressed from Van Doren's simple Liberal Educa-tion (1943) to Bernard Idding Berns Crisis in Education (1949) and,in the same year, Mortimer Smith's And Madly Teach. By 1953 thetransition from criticism which acknowledged many points of con-tact with the progressive movement to outright confrontation wasnearly complete; that year produced Albert Lynd's Quackery in thePublic Schools, Arthur Bestor's Educational Wastelands, RobertHutchins's 7'he Conflict in Education, and Paul Woodring's Let'sTalk Sense about Our Schools. Rudolf Flesclis Why Johnny Can'tRead with its subtle linking of progressivism and communismfollowed soon thereafter. Such efforts were eventually institution-alized through the Council on Basic;Esiucation, founded in 1956with Bestor and Smith among the directors."

The major charge which the critics brought against the progres-sive movement was anti-intellectualism; all of the other points theywould make could eventually he brought back to the fear that theprogressively-educated child would not be the intellectual equal ofhis forebears, his mind weakened by "lollipops" instead of "learn.ing," the "discipline" of content replaced by the triviality of "lifeadjustment," Here was the heart of the loud protests that would bemade about the "educationists," who progressed in the rhetoric froman innocent (if unfortunate) product of the rapid expansion of theschools to an interlocking and self-serving directorate with a strangle-hold on the system of public education."

The harsh rhetoric of the academic critics opened the way for avaried and unlikely coalition of forces. Conservatives seeking waysto reduce school budgets, superpatriots outraged by the socialreconstructionists and fanned by McCarthy, parents disturbed bythe implications of "life adjustment,- old-line teachers who hadnever embraced progressive doctrines in the first place, and youngteachers to whom progressivism meant resistance to new modes ofscholarshipall came together in their criticism of the schools. Thesins of the progressives had been many, and as the attack gained inintensity the tendency to look at their virtues grew weaker andweaker,

The final blow was Sputnik. Launched in the fall of 1957, itbecame a symbol of the failure of the schools and a milestonemarking the end of one era and the beginning of another," It also

AN ACADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGLISH 189

provoked its own period of national soul-searching, summed up inViceAdmiral H. G.. Itickover's Education and Freedom (1958). "Lifeadjustment" and John Dewey were his scapegoats, engineers and

talented youth" his Chosen People, and high academic standardsthe road to salvation. "Only massive upgrading of the scholasticstandards of our schools," Rickover wrote, "will guarantee thefuture prosperity and freedom of the Republic.'" Congress followedwith a new infusion of federal fluids through the National DefenseEducation Act of 1958an act which carried in its title an ever -present reminder of just exactly what it was that had promptedfederal concern.

With the passage of the NDEA, English found itself taking adefinite second place to math and science, the new "core" curriculoni for producing Rickover's nation of engineers. it was a sobering-experience, but one that gave the many factions within the teachingof English a common cause.

In their attempts to reassert the values of English, however.teachers of English did have some powerful allies. One of the mostimportant was Harvard's James B. Conant, who returned from asojourn as ambassador to Britain to provide a series of trenchantcritiques of the schools. The first of these, The American HighSchool Today (1959), examined the comprehensive high school, aninstitution which Conant viewed as the proper embodiment of theAmerican commitments to excellence and to democracy. Aftervisits to a, selected sample of schools, Conant offered twenty-one"Recommendations for the Improvement of American HighSchools." These were designed in large part to improve the prepa-ration of the academically talented students by substituting a morerigorous program in the basic subjects, including English. Heasked, among other things, for subjectby subject ability grouping(instead of the across.theboard tracking that then predominated),the use of an academic honors list, advanced courses with specifiedprerequisites. special classes for the highly gifted, more emphasison composition, and four years of English for every student. Thegeneral implications of Conant's recommendations for English wereclear: an important place in the curriculum. butone requiring somesubstantial changes in approach."

English as a Discipline

Concern for the Talented

Though Sputnik in 1957 crystallized public opinion and thusserves as a convenient benchmark for the beginning of reform, infact the underlying reemphasis of academic achievement was al-

190 TRADITION AND itEFORM

ready well underway. One of the early forces was a revival ofinterest in special programs for "academically talented" students inreaction against the preoccupations of the progressives with the"general- courses and "life adjustment.- Concern for the academ-ically talented was given considerable impetus by experimentssponsored by the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Education.

Established in 1951, the Fund for the Advancement of Educationexperimented with two approaches to break the lockstep progres-sion through the secondary school grades. The first, early admis-sions, received considerable publicity during 1951 and 1952 butnever hecame very popular: high schools protested that they werebeing stripped of student leaders, and colleges worried about thesocial maturity of the early adrnittees. The second experiment,advanced placement, was initiated in 1952: it became popular withIvy League schools and their prep school feeders, insuring steady ifnot spectacular growth. By 1955 it was well enough established tobe taken over by the College Entrance Examination Board, withthe first exams under CEEB auspices being given in the followingyear."

The Advanced Placement program was simply a. series of exam-inations: there was no syllahus or prescribed course of study.Nonetheless, like all examinations, it developed an established formand series of emphases that could not help but shape high schoolteaching. Indeed, its influence often extended far beyond the lim-ited number of students directly involved, leading to changes inmethods and materials at all levels of the curriculum.'" From thebeginning English was one of the most popular advanced placementsubjects, and the emphases in its examination were those thatcharacterized t he next wave of reform. Textual analysis and literarycriticism on the model of the New Critics was the most importantaspect of the exam; very little attention was given to the philo-sophical or ethical dimensions of literature.

The advanced placement model of special attention to intellecrtually gifted students offered the public schools one relatively directway to respond to the growing criticism of progressive education.Arno. Jewett, USOE specialist in language arts, told the NCTEconvention in 1952 that neglect of the fast learner was "the hasisfor much of the honest criticism of our educational efforts:. Todemonstrate a lowering of the average instructional level, he usedstatistics on the increasing proportion of children of high school ageremaining in school until graduation.'" Jewett was tapping such ageneral concern that the Council's Executive Committee voted afew months later to estahlish a Committee on English Programs forHigh School Students of Superior Ahilityl to help teachers providefor these "neglected" student:i. The final report of the committeedid not appear until 1960, when it was brought out as a joint

AN ACADEMIC MODEL Fog ENGL:ISII 191

publication of NOTE and the NEA's Project on the Academically'I'alented Student, but its emphases are those of the mid-fiftieswhen the committee was most active." The report makes it clearthat the teacher of the academically talented should have a specialstatus wjthin the high school faculty. The arguments parallel thosethat had arisen during the initial enthusiasm for ability groupingduring the twenties: the students are brighter than the average;therefore the teacher must be brighter than the average, with abetter preparation in literature and &broader cultural background.As a corollary, he would need a lighter teaching load and extrafinancial support for advanced preparation.

The special competence of academically talented students wasgeneralized to all aspects of school life. In addition to advancedplacement exams, accelerated. or "enriched" classes, and earlyadmissions, they would be encouraged to make reports to theclass, to serve as chairmen of student committees, to conduct bookfairs. to do creative writingto do, in fact, virtually anything outof the ordinary. It is very difficult, however, to understand thepeculiar qualifications of the academically talented to read an-nouncements over the loudspeaker system, or why families ofsuperior studentsand not of all studentswere to be given adviceon activities to broaden a student's interests (visits to places ofhistorical or cultural interest, trips to museums, or evenings at thetheater). Most of the activities suggested for these students wereexactly the kinds of undertakings that the progressives had urgedfor everyone.

The third point that emerges from the report is a direct con-sequence of the extent to which the concern for the academical-ly talented pupil was motivated by criticism of their academicpreparation: the model for academic work was the college curricu-lum. so the proposed changes in high school programs followedvery closely what went onor was thought to go onin collegeclassrooms "Achanced work" was the single answer to the prob-lem of what to offer the academically talented, and this meantintensive reading, the Great Books, and literary rather than per-sonal focuses for the curriculum. Often the courses simply adoptedone of the introductory college anthologies.

.4 New Curriculum Model

The programs which began to appear for academically talentedstudents differed fundamentally from those developed by the "lifeadjustment" movement. Where the progressives had come to stressimmediate needs and the characteristics of the student, the newprograms placed their emphasis on long-term goals and the nature

R32 TRADITION AND It EFORM

of the subject. At the same Lime, liberal arts faculties becameinvolved in curriculum reform in a way unparalleled since the latenineteenth century. when the college had also served as the modelfor the high school program. As early as 1951, the University ofIllinois Committee on School Math set the pattern that late!: effortswould follow: scholars working to develop new programs that wouldstress concepts fundamental to the subject areaor the "disci-pline" as it came to be called. Though educators were usuallyinvolved at various stages of curriculum development, it was sub-ject area rather than educational principles which determined thescope and sequente of the new curriculum. The University ofIllinois project was followed by the Physical Sciences Study Com-mittee (1956). the School Maths Study Group (1958), and byvarious other efforts in science and math.!' AL the same time, theNational Science Foundation (NSF) developed a model for inServiceeducation based on summer institutes. Founded by act of Congressin 1950 as an independent body to oversee nisearch and training inscientific and mathematical areas, the NSF funded a series ofinstitutes for college Leachers during the summer of 1953. Thesewere extended to the secondary school level the following year,again directly -involving liberal arts departments in problems ofLeacher training and curriculum development.

Interest in academic reform in Englishaside from the initialresponse to the problems of the academically talentedbegan moreslowly. On a regional level, a series of annual conferences on theLeaching of English grew out of the Yale Master of Arts inTeaching program during 1955. Under the direction of EdwardGordon and Edward S. Noyes, these conferences offered an aca-demic view of English and stressed three separate components:language, literature, and composition. This "tripod" became themajor metaphor for English during the ensuing period of academicreform. Literature at the Yak conferences was dealt with using theapproaches of the New Critics, with .Cleanth, Brooks: and otherdistinguished faculty members helping teachers assimilate the newpoint of view." Of more significance nationally, the Modern Lan-guage Association IMLA) became involved in secondary educationfor the firs( Limp since the turn of the century, as a result of theForeign Language Program (1952-58) funded by the Rockefeller

-..Foundation. Under the directitm of MLA Executive Secretary;NV illiatn Riley Piltker, this pTogram led to many reforms in foreign1/4anguage Leaching and culniinated with the inclusion of funds forforeign languages in the National Defense Education Act of 1958.Parker's successor at MLA, Georg,' Winchester Stone, Jr., turnedMLA efforts toward the teaching of English at about the same timethat the leadership of NCTE, with J. N. Hook of the University ofIliina serving as its first full-time executive secretary, began torea he principle's on which English programs were based.

AN ACADEMIC MODEL. FM ENGLISH 193

The Basic Issues Conferences

The first important manifestation of .renewed scholarly interestin secondary school English was a series of "Basic Issues" confer-ences held during 1958 with funds from the Ford Foundation. Inthe atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion that had developedbetween academic and education departments. MLA initially pro-posed to sponsor such a series without directly involving otherprofessional organizations who might have been presumed to havean interest. After NCTE protested that MLA, with its collegeorientation, lacked the competence to deal adequately with secon-dary school teaching, the conferences were eventually funded underthe joint sponsorship of the American Studies Association, theCollege English Association,. MLA, and NCTE: the series broughttogether twenty-eight teachers of English for three three-day and-afinal one-day meeting to consider and define the basic issues in theteaching of English. The conferences reduced the initial mistrustamong the leaders of the organizations involved and produced twoshort but important reports that were widely distributed: "TheBasic Issues in the Teaching of English" (1959), and "An Articu-lated English Program: An Hypothesis to Test" (19590

The first of these reports was presented as a "sharpening" ofpoints of disagreement within the profession, but a clear point ofview radically different from that of the progressives emerges fromthe leaflet as a whole. The most important assertion was thatEnglish must be regarded. asa "fundamental liberal discipline," abody of specific knowledge to he preserved and transmitted ratherthan a set of skills or an opportunity for guidance and individual.adjustment.: As -such, the importance of specific works, of thetechnical vocabulary of the literary critic, and of sequence deter.mined by the logic of the subject matter could be opened fordebate in a way that was impossible when the subject was definedin terms of the needs or interests of the student. College professorsof English rather than of education or psychology became the bodyof expert opinion of most importance. in curriculum development,and national leadership through the professional organizationsbecame the natural way to bring Such scholars into the process ofcurriculum development. Because the basis of the curriculum wasfelt to lie in the subject matter, such experts could provide guidanceof a nearly universally applicable sortin contrast with tho dictumof the NCTE Commission on the English Curriculum ,:hat thecurriculum must emanate from the needs of the Studeitt in hisparticular local community.

The Basic Issues conferences, not surprisingly, turned t& theprograms for the academically talented to sharpen some of theissues they presented. To the extent that there was any evidentconcern for individual differences, the paradigm usually followed

MI TRADITION AND REFORM

was quite consistent: "What can we do with the best students? Ifsuch an approach is good for them it must be good for everyone.How should we modify it so we can use it with the less giftedalso ? "" It was, a very handy mode/ for the academics to follow,since with it pedagogical issues could for the most part be ignored.Whatever sequence and manner of presentation were chosen. theacademically talenteli student would be able to handle it; thus theconstruction of a fiinctioning model of the academic curriculum wasnot an insurmountable problem. When it came time to modify thecurriculum for the less able, howevera process that was reallyneglected for most of the sixtiesit would take radical reformrather than simple modification to produce a viable structure:

The most important issue in the minds of the conferees was thatof providing a curriculum that would be "sequential and cumulativefrom the kindergarten through the graduate school." Such struc-ture would be the key to insuring that English-the-school-subject ihfact remained English-the-discipline. Without the structure, therewould be nothing to prevent a return of the present curriculardisorder" with its ad hoc activities and, even after the advent of "lifeadjustment," its virtually unlimited scope!" The conferees wereuncertain about the proper basis for the sequence they hoped todevelop, presenting their own conception M the second leaflet, "AnArticulated English Program: An Hypothesis to Test." Echoingthe Yale Report of 1828. they portrayed the literature component of.the English program as "a continuous furnishing of the mind." Theskeleton course they provided was distinctly traditional, beginningwith the simple literary forms of folklore, legend, and fairy tales inthe early elementary years, progressing through myth and legendin the upper elementary grades, and the bac,kgttninds of the Wes-tern cultural heritage (through, for example. selections from Homerand from the Bible) in junior high school. The high school Would bethe place for an emphasis on intellectual development and "masteryof certain blocks of knowledge" important to the literary heritage.Though the conferees stopped short of proposing a return to setbooks (calling it "probably inadvisable"), they proposed that thecurriculum introduce all students to certain specific varieties ofliterary experience, Thus for the novel, they deemed it "necessaryand practicable to insist that novels of the following kinds must beread":

Simple narrative (e.g.. Robinson CrusoelPicaresque novel (Lazarillo de Torrnes)Historical novel (A Tale of Two Cities; The Great Meadow)Novel of manners (Pride and Prejudice)Rildungsroman (David Copperfield; Jane Eyre)Novel of ideas (The Scarlet Letter; Arrowsmith)Psychological novel (The Red Badge of Courage)

AN ACADEmIc ;UMW. ran Escusa 195

The same years would also be used to introduce the student toPlato. Lucretius. Cicero, Augustine, Dante, and Montaigne. "Whata foundation for students entering college!" the conference ex-claimed, "And what a challenge to those who are not. "2 Theentlmsiasm was high, and only time would temper it with reality.

The Spiral Curriculum

The most influential discussion of sequence again came from thesciences, this time from a ten-day conference called at Woods Holeby the National Academy of Sciences. Under the chairmanship ofIlan-aril's Jerome Bruner. the conference brought together physi-cists, biologists. mathematicians, psychologists, educators, andhistorians "to consider anew the nature of the learning process, itsrelevance to education, and points at which current curricularefforts have raised new questicns about our conceptions of learningand teaching."

Bruner's final report as chairman, The Process of Education(1960, presented a detailed and lucid argument for a curriculumthat concentrated on providing a sense of the structure of thediscipline (that is, subject) under study; it also developed a conceptof sequence through a "spiral" curriculum. As envisioned by Brun-er, the curriculum would be based around the central ideas of thediscipline. ideas which would be returned to again and again atsuccessively higher levels of complexity. In such a program, thestudent would progress from an initial intuitive knowledge to aneventual explicit formalization of basic principles: In keeping withthe academic and intellectual nature of the reaction of which WoodsHole was a part. the emphasis at all levels was on "scrupulousintellectual honesty," which as developed by Bruner implied adiscovery or inductive approach to learning. The child would learn.physics by doing the kinds of things a physicist does, being facedwith the same sorts of choices and learning to make those choicesby the rules of inquiry that govern physics, at ever more complexlevels. "We begin," Bruner wrote in the most-quoted line from hisbook, "with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effec-tively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stageof development" (p. 131. Though the Woods Hole Conference beganas a project in science teaching, it attempted to deal with the fullrange of humor, learning; Bruner carefully interspersed examplesfrom the study of English in his final report. lie talked explicitly ofbuilding "an ever more complex and mature understanding of theliterature of tragedy." for extra*, and of "the great themes."Many of the later attempts to build an academic curriculum inEnglish would try to implement 13runers ideas."

196 TRADITION AND REFORM

The Commission on English

The first major formulation of an academic curriculum in Englishwas provided by the College Entrance Examination Board, which inthe fall of 1959 appointed a Commission on English to "proposestandards of achievement" and "to suggest ways of meeting them."

The commissionwhich like the Basic Issues conferences wasdominated by college teachers was active over approximately afive-year period and set the tone of reform during the first half ofthe decade. With only sixteen members and two full-time execu-tive staff, it was a small enough group to deliberate effectively;with James R. Squire from NCTE, George Winchester Stone fromNBA, and the prestige of the College Board behind it, it was alsodestined to be heeded.

The fullest expression of the commission's point of view was itsfinal report, Freedom and Discipline in English (1965). This indi-cated very little development since the Basic Issues conferences.The commission continued to use the tripod of language, literature.and composition as the basic image of the English curriculum, andthough the legs of the tripod were weakened by attention to orallanguage activities, the discussions and recommendations in thefinal report were presented separately for each of the three original"legs." The discussion showed the same lack of clear structuringprinciples that had weakened the earlier conferences' attempt tooutline a sequence for English, indeed bearing a striking thoughcertainly unintentional resemblance to the earlier NCTE curriculumcommission in its reliance upon a "consensus" curriculum."

Given that the report was the work of sixteen people. the strikingof some sort of consensus was probably inevitable. Still it stands inrather disturbing contrast to the emphasis on an intellectual andacademic approach to English as a disciplineand thus presumablya study governed by more rigorous principles than consensusimplied. The commission was in fact able to formulate languagestudies in somewhat more rigorous t$rms, but literature as a"liberal discipline" lacked an organizing theory. Here the commis-sion proposed no more than reliance upon the teacher as a "profes-sional'- -that is, as one who had himself through long exposurecome to "know" literature, and thus who, because of the depth andrigor of his training, would be able to select appropriate works anddiscuss them in appropriate ways. (Here lay one of the motivesbehind the choice of title: the teacher would be free to choose whatto teach, but his choices would be governed by disciplined train-ing.)

Though the commission was not able to deal with the problem ofwhat to read, it had little doubt how that reading should be carriedout. The New Critics were fully and uncompromisingly adopted inthe commission's dismission, which included an outline of "funda-

AN ACADEMIC MODEL ton ENGLISH 197

mental questions the 'teacher must face as he prepares for class andthen must teach his students to face as they study the work withhim":

I. Questions about the text itselfA. Questions of form

1. What is its kind?2. What are its parts?3. flow art the parts related?

B. Questions of rhetoric1. Who is speaking?2, What is the Occasion?3. Who is the audience?Questions about meaning1. What meaning has each word in its particular context?2. What do the diction and grammar of the text tell us about

its purpose?3. What is the paraphrasable content of the work, its "state-

ment"?4. What intentionhigh seriousness, irony. comedy. and the

like is apparent and how is it made apparent?5. What part of the meaning is sacrificed by paraphrase, by

substitution of words other than those used by the author?H. Questions of value

A. Questions about personal responseB. Questions of excellence fp. 58)

The majority of the questions hinge around close, analytic attentionto the text; only one topic deals with personal response, and itshares the general heading of "Questions of value" with a secondpoint, "Questions of excellence," which before the writings of theNew Critics had rarely been seen in the school syllabus.

Because it had to place such a heavy emphasis on the profeS-sionalisin and training of the individual teacher, the Commission onEnglish devoted a considerable part of its endeavor to improvingthe training and working conditions of teachers of English, Of thefourteen specific recommendations in the first chapter of the report.for example, all but three dealt with certification requirements andteaching conditions; most were quite specific, urging that theteacher "be assigned no more than four classes a day" or that hispreparation include-as a minimum "one course in the psychology oflearning" (p. 111.24

The commission's greatest success, however, came not from itsrecommendations in Freedom and Discipline, but from a series ofinstitutes during the summer of 1962. The twenty institutes fol-lowed the model of Taba's human relations work and of similarinstitutes in other disciplines, providing 868 secondary school Eng-lish teachers with a six- to eight-week program of graduate work in

198 TRADITION AND I{EFORNI

language. literature, and composition. The quality of the instituteswas. as the commission itself noted. inevitably uneven, but they didsucceed in involving a number of distinguished university facultymembers directly in the problems of school curriculum, as well as inreinvigorating the teaching of many of the participants. The modelset by the institutes was widely followed, with many of the originalhost institutions continuing the program on their own in later years.and others beginning -them. Finally, the model they provided wastaken up by the U.S. Office of Education when government fundsbecame available three years later.'"

Recognizing that the institutes could at best reach a smallminority of practicing teachers, the commission found other waysto attempt to reeducate more substantial numhers. Freedom andDiscipline was of course one such effort, and it was unusual as acurriculum statement in that well over a third of its pages weredevoted to "Examples of Criticism" that would demonstrate directlyhow useful the suggested critical approach could be. A somewhatearlier report (1963) had taken much the same tack by providing aset of sample questions for end-of-year examinations in English,together with carefully graded student responses. Teachers wereinvited to focus attention on the questions as illustrations of "theskills and understandings" that ought to be required, and on theannotated compositions as a way to improve their own themegrading. Like all of the work of the commission, the questions andanswers emphasized close analytical reading and writing. Finally,the commission prepared a series of kinescopes which were circu-lated free to interested schools and professional groups, illustrating"tested classroom procedures.""

Federal Support for English

The Struggle for Funds

The Commission on English began its efforts at a time whennational curriculum reform had largely neglected English. (Thecommission was appointed just as the earlier College Board Com-mission on Mathematics was completing its work.) By the time itswork was done, a massive infusion of federal funds was in thepmcess of effecting reform on a broader basis than even the CollegeBoard could have managed. The funds did not begin spontaneous-ly, however; they were the result of a vigorous and sustained effortby a number of national organizations.

Most of the battle involved the simple need for publicity. ThoughNCTE had had a Committee on Public Relations since immediatelyafter the First World War, during the ensuing decades the major

AN ACADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGLISH S99

Council efforts had been directed toward other members of theEnglish teaching profession; very few of its publications weremeant for the general public, or even for the rest of the educationalcommunity. Under J. N. Hook (appointed in 1952), the Councilbegan to explore more direct means of generating publicity andimproving the professional standing of the teacher of English."One of the most obvious publicly-oriented programs was the Achieve--ment Awards, begun in the 1958-59 academic year. This sought toidentify outstanding high school English students, honoring boththe student and his school with publicity in local papers andannouncements to college admissions and scholarship offices. TheCouncil also begat) a drive to increase the size of its membership,taking public stands on issues such as teaching load. It document-ed its position with studies which seem-ld to prove with scientificrigor that it was physically impossible for the English teacheradequately to teach the number of pupils he could ordinarily expectto be assigned." Yet such activities were lost in the tide ofnational reaction to Sputnik, a point painfully demonstrated whenCongress approved the National Defense Education Act of 1958without including any funds for English. A dramatic presentationwas clearly needed, and two years later it was offered by an NCTECommittee on National Interest chaired by Hook's successor asexecutive secretary, James It. Squire." Produced in a record-break-ing twelve months, The National Interest and the Teaching ofEnglish (1961) was a direct and shrewd presentation of the impor-tance of English to the national welfare, coupled with a startlingdocumentation of instructional inadequacies. The report made noattempt to discuss the sometimes subtle issues of concern to theprofession; it was enough to define English as "language, literature,and composition" and to delineate the twin issues of articulation andteacher preparation as "so important and so large that they can beundertaken only by a nationally supported program..-

The committee defended its assertions with a carefully preparedarray of facts, some previously availahle and others gatheredspecifically for the report. The important position of English inhigh school programs was easy enough to demonstrate; over 90percent of all pupils were enrolled in one or another English course,and graduation requirements in the majority of states demandedfour years of study. At the same time the demand fur teachers wasoutrunning supply by some 27 percent, with school populationsexpanding while the number of prospective English teachers gradu-ating each year was holding at a level below that of the early fifties,'

flow well were teachers being prepared to carry out the task set.them? The committee's surveys found that between 40 and 60percent of teachers in junior and senior high schools lacked even theminimum level of preparation required for a college major. Nearlyhalf the college programs did not require a course in methods of

200 'TRADITION AND REFORM

teaching English: only one-fifth specified a course in contemporaryliterature or in literary criticism. One-fourth of all elementaryschool teachers the first and perhaps most important teachers of'Englishwere not even college graduates. Other-sections of thereport concentrated upon such crucial problems as workload, booksupply. and the high cost of the remedial instruction which collegeswere forced to provide. (The committee's estimate: 510.114.736.62 ayear.',"

This first National Interest report generated widespread nationalattention: Look magazine for otw commented approvingly andcalled it "a rallying cry for reform." It was distributedtogetherwith a strategically brief overviewto all members of Congress andto other influential government figures. Still, Congress continued toresist placing English on an equal footing with the "defense-subjects of the earlier bill, though during 19(31 it did open up somesources of funds fur research and curriculum development in IgIng--fish under an amendment to another act." Thus the Committee OnNational Interest was forced to continue its work, producing anoth-er major report. Tlw National Interest and the Continuing Educa-tion of Teachers of English, in 1964.

This second National Interest report followed the same generaltOrmat as the first, with data organized and presented to generatesupport for reform. While the first study had concentrated uponpreservice training, the second emphasized continuing education;again the findings were startling. Only 50 percent of the Englishteachers surveyed in a national sampling had majored in English: athird had not majored in a subject even related to English.Over 45percent were required to teach at least one other subject; one-fourthmet 150 or more students each day. Only half the teachers feltcomfortable with their own preparation to teach literature, a thirdwith their preparation to teach composition. and 10 percent withtheir preparation to teach reading, Yet 30 percent had not taken acourse in English in the last ten years; over half worked in schooldistricts that required no evidence of professional growth in theirsubject area; most had never had the opportunity to confer abouttheir programs with a college specialist in English or Englisheducation, with a trained local supervisor, or even with a fellowteacher. Only 800 English teachers a year were receiving any formof financial assistance for graduate study, whereas during 1962 theNational Science Foundation alone had supported institutes for40,800 teachers of science and mathematics, 90 percent of themfrom the elementary and secondary school. To combat these defi-ciencies, the Committee on National Interest again called for amassive program of federal aid, coupled with supporting activitiesat state and local levels."

With strong support from the U.S. Office of Education, theCommi.ision on English, the Modern Language Association, and

AN ACAPEMIC M001.3. jolt EN61.1S11 201

other professional groups, the National Defense Education Act wasfinally broadened in October 1964 to provide funds for English andreading. as well as for many other previously excluded subjectareas. In recognition of NCI'E's long and active campaign for suchlegislation, both Squire and Council president Albert Kitzhaberwere invited to witness the signing of the amended legislation intolaw. In one sense Llw ultimate expansion of federal support to othersubjectsor its withdrawal from those already being fundedwasprobably inevitable. Education, even in a defense-minded Congress,could not long be defined primarily in terms of technology andscience, and when the trauma of Sputnik began to recede in thenational consciousness, the limited view of education implicit in Lheoriginal NDEA was bound to be challenged. In the end the greatestbenefit of the battle for federal funds was probably not the fundsthemselves but the spirit of professional unity which the fight. itselfproduced. Teachers from school and college, specialists in eduCationas well as the liberal arts, worked together toward a common goalin a way they had not done for many years: it produced at leastwithin the national organizations a sense of profession and of theability to bring about change that was sorely needed and thatwould help them maintain control over the massive influx of fundsthat would soon be forthcoming." .

The First Programs

In Septenther 1961 Congress authorized the expansion of theCooperative Research Program of 1954 to include limited funding ofprojects in English, thus initiating the flow of federal funds. Aconference called by the USOE the following February outlined thescope of activities of the new program, which became known asProject English; J. N. Hook was named as first coordinator. Theinitial efforts followed closely the suggestions of the Basic Issuesconferences and of the National Interest reports Hook acknowl-edged both of them as shaping forces on his own thinking. Agtivi-ties MI into three somewhat different categories: basic and appliedresearch (over thirty Projects were funded in the first year alone);curriculum study centers to produce new materials for classroomuse: and conferences and professional meetings designed in general -to increase professional involvement and in particular to outlineneeded areas of research to guide future funding. During its firstyettr of operation, Project English expended some S400,000 offederal funds, and the figure grew spectacularly thereafter.'"

Though a number of highly significant research studies weresupported by Project English, none during the early years con-cerned themselves more than peripherally with literature. Composi-tion, reading, and language skills were the primary focusespartly

202 TaAorrION ANR REFORM

because of congressional restriction, but more importantly becauseresponse to literature remained a difficult and intractable area ofresearch," The curriculum study centers, however, were a differentmatter. Virtually all gave at least passing attention to literature:many based their major efforts around it. The over two dozencenters that were eventually funded operated independently andwith diverse emphases: there are certain generalizations, however,which can safely be made about most of them, with the realizationthat there were important exceptions.'=

The majority of the centers epitomized the "academic" approachto curriculum construction outlined at the Basic Issues confer'sicesand again in Freedom and Discipline in English. They were staffedwith a combination of liberal arts and education specialists: subjectmatter rather than methodological concerns predominated.. Most ofthe centers did not attempt to develop a radically new curriculum,instead elaborating established conceptions of English into fullydeveloped curriculum structures. The main issues which each centerhad to confront were thus organization (or "focus") and sequence.

The question of the organization of the course of study wassubstituted at most centers for the first of the basic issues from the1958 meetings: "What is English?" hecame in practice "Whatstructure can best hold the legs of the tripod together?" As in thecontemporaneous Freedom and Discipline report, language, litera-ture, and composition were .the major elements of the programsdeveloped at most centers, though the interrelationships might bestressed in the "overview" and other dimensions of English studiesgiven some passing attention. A few centers moved one or anotherof the studies to the center and treated the remaining "legs" asconcentric, relPi d studies, but whatever focus was chosen, theunvarying point of view was that such studies were carried on fortheir own sake, not for any presumed utilitarian values. Viewingthe subject as a set of basic principles with their own inherent logicand sequence, it followed that the curriculum in English would havethe same form and structure for all students. As G. Robert Carlsenput it in a review of some of the materials produced, the work of thecenters reflected "The original meaning of the word curriculum as arace track having a single beginning point, a single course to runfor all racers. and a single outcome.'"'

For answers to the problem of sequence, the centers turnedpreeminently to the work of Harvard psychologist Jerome Brunerand Canadian literary scholar Northrup Frye. Bruner's work offeredboth the pedagogical justification for building a curriculum aroundone or another conceptualization of English as a discipline, and ananswer (in the "spiral curriculum") of how to address the questionsof sequence. What Frye offered was the conceptualization of Eng-lish needed to lit it into Bruner's mold: a series of basic structur-ing principles that could be discussed at increasingly complex

AN ACADEMIC MODEM SOK ENGLISH 203

levels. Frye's own attempt at a synoptic theory of criticism, out-lined in most detail in The Anatomy of Criticism (1957), stressed ananalysis of conventions and archetypes; in particular he presented atheory of "pre-generic modes" within which, he argued, all works ofliterature took their place. His four modes--Comedy, Romance,Tragedy, and Ironywere taken as important structuring elementsby many of the curriculum study centers, often serving as umbrel-las to justify thematic units. None of the centers heeded Frye's ownsuggestion that if our "immature scholarship" worked out its own"elementary teaching principles," the proper sequence would in-volve a shift in the center of gravity from one school of criticism toanother as the child progresses. Frye postulated that the insights ofthe linguists would be most useful in creating kindergarten andfirst grade programs; the New Critics would dominate the upperhigh school and lower college years; and his own concern with mythand archetype would gravitate toward the junior high schoolgrades."

Frye recognized much more fully than those who turned to hiswritings for guidance that English lacked the kind of comprehen-sive theory required for an effective use of Bruner's principles, andthat any attempt to base a curriculum on one of the less compre-hensive bodies of theory that did exist would be too narrow for akindergarten through college program. The curriculum study centerat Florida State was one of the few that came to such a realizationearly in its work, abandoning Bruner as "too hazy"; most simplyused the haziness to find support for their own particular positions,thus delaying till the late sixties serious attempts to redefine thestructuring principles of the discipline."

Anyone looking at the final products of the two dozen centers inthe hope of finding in each a new conception of English would bedisappointed; but such an expectation would be unfair as well asill founded. Federal funds were approved in September 1961; byApril 1962 the first six centers had been funded; the rest followedquickly. All were conceived of as three- to five-year projects. Com-ing into existence so rapidly, the centers inevitably were establishedat universities where interest was already high and, often, whereprograms were already underway. What the new funds did in mostcenters was allow them to more thoroughly and more quicklydevelop curriculum models that had already been formulated. Therewas no time for the fundamental rethinking or even the basicresearch that might have generated radical change. Yet what thecenters did accomplish was important enoughthey produced thefirst sets of academically oriented material for the high schoolcourse, involving university professors of the liberal arts once againin the process of curriculum development in English.

The process of developing the courses of study was in the endprobably more important than the materials themselves, A few

20.1 TRADITION ANS/ REFORM

centersNebraska was the prime exampleplanned their work aspart of statewide curriculum revision, sn that some programsfunctioned on a wider basis within circumscribed geographic areas.Still, many centers simply closed their offices at the completion oftheir work, filing the requisite reports with the U.S. Office ofEducation. Others offered their materials to commercial publishers,from whom they gradually became available. By the time theybecame available, however, the academic course in English was wellestablished and the focus of professional concern was moving inother directions. The specific approaches developed by the variouscenters were nn longer needed because the general point of view hadalready been assimilated by most teachers. (The two centers whosework was an exception to the general academic approach arediscussed in the next chapter.)

Changing Programs

Literary Values and the Threat of Censorship

One of the major shifts brought about by the first wave ofacademic reform in English involved the basis for selecting mater-ials, Literary values were to prevail over all other considerations,leading to the use of selections far more sophisticated than theusual high school fare. This in turn created new pressures forcensorship of school materials.

Censorship in programs in literature usually focussed nn one oftwo issues: political ideology or sex. The first became a problemduring the late 1940s, when the first major gaps were opening upbetween the values of society and those of the progressive educa-tors. The threat of communism, exaggerated by the tactics ofSenator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-Amer-ican Activities, became the excuse for a widespread wave of re-striction of instructional materials. Mark Van Doren, a RomanCatho lie, found his books banned as communistic from the libraryof Jersey City Junior College; some NCTE members lost jobs inCalifornia for refusing to sign a loyalty oath; Senior Scholastic wasbanned from Birmingham, Alabama, The Nation from the schoolsof New York City: and the American Medical Association attackedthe schools for having "conducted an active, aggressive campaignto indoctrinate their students . . with the insidious and destruc-tive tenets of the welfare state:. Such pressure prompted reactionsfrom many professional teaching organizations; NCTE went nnrecord as early as its 1948 convention with a resolution urging thatthe principles found in the Constitution of the United States

should be completely practiced in every classroom in America." Itset up its first committee on censorship at the same meeting.'"

AN ACAUEMIC Moma. FOR ENGLISH 205

As the wording of the 1948 resolution suggested, initial reactionsto censorship relied simply on the extra-professional considerationsof the constitutionally 'protected freedom to dissent. This wasbecause until the late fifties and early sixties, English teachers usedvery little that could be found objectionable. When they did, theywere rebuffed by their seniors in the teaching profession before thepublic had much chance to object. As late as 1936 a student ofCharles Swain Thomas at Harvard offered an article on literatureand sex in which he urged the teaching of such "advanced" novelsas The Scarlet Letter and Women in Lore, only to meet a stiff waveof rebuttal from professional leaders across the nation." And even.the 1956 report of the NCTE Commission on the English Curricu-lum carried a cautious note about. book selection, urging teachers toavoid works that might disturb youthful minds." Elbert Lenrow'sarguments in The Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction some fifteenyears before had obviously made little impression.

Attitudes did change, however, stimulated in part by the land-mark 1933 Supreme Court decision in the Ulysses case, the risingsales of "pocket" books with their often explicit stories, and thestream of frank's war novels that emerged from World War il. Asthe New Critics became the acknowledged literary authorities, andas the writers of the early twentieth century gained too much ageand respectability to be ignored, professional leaders began to urgethe inclusion of more and more works that could be expected toprovoke unhappy reactions from some dements of the community.Teachers as insecure in their own professional preparation as thosesurveyed by the Committee on National Interest were hardly pre-pared to resist the direct personal attack which often followed; thefirst reaction of many teachers and librarians was simply to removea challenged book as quickly as possible.

Yet capitulation to the censors could only gm so far, and somededicated teachers resisted the pressures from the beginningthough they sometimes lost the battle anyway. A 1963 survey ofthe schools of Wisconsin found that the list of censored bookswitha few exceptions"would make a relatively good [reading list] torecommend to high school juniors and seniors." Specific titlesbrought under attack during a two-and-a-half:year period includedthe Bible, The Canterbury Mks, The Catcher in the Rye. ADictionary of American Slang, Fail-Safe, and A Tree Grows inBron/dynseventy-eight titles in all from 606 returned question-naires. During the same period, seventeen magazineu were thesubject of censorship attacks, and in eight casesincluding Life andThe Atlantic Monthlythe magazines were removed from circula-tion,'"

Such pressures led the professional organizations most directlyinvolved lin particular the NCTE and the American Library Asso-ciation' to take steps to protect and educate their members, In

206 'I'RA DITION AND REFORM

addition to a continuing series of resolutions on freedom-to-teachand freedomLo-read; NCTE committees prepared a number of moreextensive discussions, including procedures for English depart-ments to follow to guard against such attacks, case studies ofspecific incidents, and lengthy discussions of the values of some ofthe particularly vulnerable works." Defenses against censorshipduring the sixties still cited the issues of liberty and freedom ofthought that had marked the first reaction, but two new argumentswere added out of the changing professional orientation. One fo-cussed on literary values and principles of criticism, the other onthe professional nature of Lhe judgment of whether a hook should orshould not be used with a given child at a given time.

The literary arguments were based on the importance of contextin evaluating any given phrase or incident; according to the NewCritics, a literary work was an entity unto itself, one that could notbe legitimately fragmented nor its pieces individually examined.Thus Holden might visit a prostitute in The Catcher in the Rye,but the incident was moral rather than immoral because of the partiL played in the total meaning of the work. A second part of theliterary argument focussed upon the place of each work within Lheliterary tradition. Thus Lhe NCTE Committee on the Right to Readcould protest indignantly that

Becimse of outside pressures many English teachers cannot carry outtheir central responsibility: teaching the cultural heritage of Westerncivilization. Hawthorne. Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Hemingway.Faulkner. to take just .a few American examples, either are omittedcompletely or are inadequately represented in the high school curial.lum ("The Students' Right to Read," p. 10).

The decisions on whether or not a book was a legitimate part ofthe cultural heritage and whether objectionable elements were in-deed redeemed by context were ultimately professional decisions.Confidence in the Leaching profession would have to be quite highto accept Wayne Boeth's argument, for example, that "The skillrequired to decide whether a work is suited for a. particular teachingmoment is so great that only the gifted Leacher, with his knowledgeof how his teaching aims relate to materials chosen for students at agiven stage of development, can be trusted to exercise it.""

Creating just such trust in Lhe professional competence of theLeacher of English was a major goal of the period of academicreform, but the pressures of the late 1960s and early 1970s insuredthat censorship remained a continuing professional concern. In-creasing student unrest, with a concomitant assertion of studentrights. liberal treatment of controversial political and sexual topicsin hooks and popular media, and the continuing agitation for therights of minority groups made it inevitable that the selections byteachers who wished to remain topical and current would risk

AN ACADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGLISH 207

offending one or another segment of the community. ClaudeBrown's Manehild in the Promised Land as well as Joan Baez'sDaybreak have been among recent targets. Some of the mosteffective censorship in fact comes from within the school. TheWisconsin survey found that a high proportion of the incidentswere initiated by fellow teachers, librarians, or supervisors. Andeven a 1969 English Journal article written in mild "jive" provokeda number of angry letters. Whether because they wish to protectthe school from any possibility of public pressure, or because theypersonally object to certain political or moral viewpoints, peopleinside the school as well as from the community at large seemdestined to continue their efforts at censorship.'''

Other Materials

The academic approach of the early shales also led to a redefini-tion of what could legitimately be considered to be literature in thefirst place. Lynch and Evans were not alone in their outrage at thetravesties (as they saw them) committed in the name of "lifeailjustment," Both the adolescent novel and the anthology hadcome under attack by the end of the 1950s. The common objectionwas that these books, in attempting to serve nonliterary goals, hadabandoned literature altogether; they lacked the "flesh and blood"of the classic. as Stanley Kegler put it in discussing the relatedgenre of "simplified" works. In place of anthologies, most authorsurged a curriculum based around the increasingly popular paper-back books.

The revival of interest in paperbacks dated to the "quarterbooks" of the early forties, but during the fifties and sixties theirpopularity among teachers rose sharply. One reason was the found-.ing of a series of book clubs like the Weekly Reader Children's BookClub (which began in 1953) and the Teen Age Book Club, which bythe 1956.57 academic year could boast sales of six million volumes.The availability of standard literary selections in paperback edi-tions made them a natural resource for the academically orientedteacher. with a corresponding shift in emphasis from their value inoutside reading to their use in the program for direct class study."

Finally. the emphasis on literature as a matter of form andtechnique led. to a redefinition of the role of the "public arts" (asthey came to be called). Throughout the period of "life adjust-ment," studies of radio, movies, television, and journalism hadfollowed more or less the lines of the rest of the curriculum inliterature and reacting. Units were offered that were to help "devel-op maturity," meeting the needs of youth exactly as would theunits of more standard selections. Other teachers, responding to theskill emphases, would attempt to "raise standards of taste," tomake students -better" or "more intelligent" consumers of the

208 TRADITION AND REFORM

products of the popular mocha. Soup operas and pinup girls -simplyhad to be suppressed.

Gradually, however, as the emphasis in the teaching of standardliterature shifted, so did that with the public arts. The film inparticular began to be presented as a legitimate discipline, with itsown rules and conventions quite distinct from other art forms. Asone author protested. to apply strictly literary modes of analysis tomotion pictures was like talking about the "musical qualities of astatue.-- Though Max Herzberg and a few others had presentedsuch arguments many years before, it was only as the academicemphases began to he apparent in other areas of the Englishcurriculum that the study of film, radio, television, or journalismbegan to emerge as important in its own right.

One of the strongest proponents of the academic view of popularculture was Patrick Hazard. RadioTV editor of Scholastic Teacherand a teacher himself, he initiated a column, "The Public Arts," inEngli.sh Journal in 1956. This presented trenchant critiques ofcurrent programing, bibliographies of materials for teachers, and,always, an emphasis on the artistic successes and shortcomings ofthe several media. His columns kept the media firmly in perspec-tive: at the same time, he urged their fuller consideration byteachers of English. By the mid1960s NCTE could point to a seriesof publications dealing with most aspects of popular culture, eachtreating its suhjeet as a legitimate field of Study rather than simplyas one of the utilitarian chores that English teachers had ever beenwilling to shoulder."

The Humanities Course

Most of the changes discussed so far were the result of the workof academic scholars. with assistance From teachers..,only to theextent that the teachers were convinced of the value of the aca-demic point of view. A second and quite different "academic"tradition was more directly related to the teacher's as opposed tothe scholar's view. This was the so-called "humanities course."

In general, these courses emerged out of a much earlier concernwith world literature us part of the "total heritage" of the Americanstudent; in the earliest forms it reflected the desire to build thefriendship with which the early NCTE committee on internationalrelations had been concerned. In 1926 the Lincoln School at Teach-ers College, Columbia University, iptrodaced a world literaturecourse that can be seen as a forerunner of present programs: in 1931the English committee of the North Central Association 'recom-mended the teaching of,some literature from other countries. Inte-rest remained low, however, till the concern with human relationsduring the forties and fifties led to the introduction of such coursesin a number of seltools. Often, the evolution of the course of study

AN ACADEMIC' MODEL. FOR ENGLISH 209

was strongly influenced by Morthner Adler and the "liberal educa-tion" critics, fat whose lists of Great Books translations of classicaltexts figured prominently. Throughout. the fifties an earl) form ofhumanities class as world literature held its own in the schools;Jewett reported it in 20 percent of the programs he surveyed."

Two forces assisted in transforming these courses into theirpresent form, and in popularizing the label "humanities" in place ofthe earlier course titles:One was the John flay Fellows program,after I95$ under the directorship of Charles Keller, chairman of thehistory Department at 'Williams College. (Keller had also directedthe Advanced Placement program during its first two years underCollege Board auspices.) The John Hay program,. which provided

_ year long fellowships for a carefully selected group of high schoolteachers to continue their studies, produced a high proportion ofthe teachers who popularized the humanities approach, experiment-ing with it in their clasSes and discussing the results in journals andat professional meetings. The second force was the Council for aTelevision Course in the Humanities for Secondary Schools,. formedin 1957 by a group of teachers from the Boston area. With FloydRinker as executive director, and with funds from the Ford Fundfor the Advancement of Education, the group enlisted the aid of animpressive series of scholars and performers to prepare a series oftelevision programs on the humanities. The programs that resultedwere widely distributed by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, becom-ing in this form rather than their televised versions the core of manynew programs.

There was little uniformity in the outward shape of the humani-ties programs of the sixties. Like the correlated and fused coursesthat preceded them, some were organized chronologically, somearound "cultural epochs." others around themes, "Great Works,"orin a newer developmentaround elements of artistic form (withao emphasis; on a'variety of media). In spite of this variety, most ofthe programs had roots in the ethical tradition of English studywith a ''social conscience" rather than "scholastic competence" wasone way Keller phrased it. Almost inevitably the programs wereinterdisciplinary, often involving a "team" of teachers from severalsubject areas, in particular from English and the social studies."'Both of those aspects have deep roots in earlier progressive pro-grams, a parallel that has been noted by some critics.

The chief difference from the earlier programsand it is animportant one was the level at which the humanities courses werepitched, Though virtually all of its proponents talked of the impor-tance of such studies for all students, the practitioners (with a fewvocal exceptions) directed them at the college-bound classesatrend readily explicable by a look at the proposed content. Thoughthe length and organization of the list varies greatly, the titlesincluded would usually be quite secure on any list of "Great

210 Titaorrms AND REFORM

Books-; sometimes it was from exactly such lists that they wereoriginally chosen. Emphasis, as in all other parts of the ,academicreform, was on subject matter first, with virtually no attention tothe characteristics of the student. (Such characteristics Were ofcourse being given a kind of backhanded acknowledgement bylimiting the course to advanced students, usually college-boundseniors.) On the other hand, the academic emphasis insured thatthe courses remained very much within the humanistic tradition;they were as a whole less subject to the practices of using the artforms studied as vehicles for historical or sociological studies.(Whether the history teachers found their conception of historicalstudies being subverted is another and quite different mattert"

Almost all humanities courses have relied on paperback books asthe core of materials for study: there were no humanities antholo-gies. Very often (again on the college model) students were asked topurchase their own paperbacks, filling them with notes and mar-ginal comments as they wished. A high proportion of the schoolsinvolved also used the humanities sequence as a means to introducefilm studies into the curriculum, a trend more evident in thosecourses that focussed around themes or elements of art than thosethat chose some version of the chronological or cultural-epochapproach.

The dangers in the humanities course were exactly those of theintegrated curricula of the thirties and forties: superficial coverage,"intellectual indigestion," neglect of important skills, and a broad-.ening of the course beyond the competence of the teacher. Criticismon all these grounds was Leveled against one or another of thehumanities courses of the sixties, together with new charges thatthey used works too difficult for the high school student to discussmeaningfully that many, indeed, provided little time for anydiscussion. Both charges were at least indirectly the result of theextent to which the humanities course took college programs as amodel. offering the same works for study and using the samelecture mode of presentation. The latter trend was fostered by theenthusiasm for large group instruction and team teaching as a wayto meet the multidisciplinary demands of most humanities courses;the simplest way to insure adequate treatment of history, forexample. was to ask a history teacher to lecture all the studentsabout the particular topic under study. (And similarly for art,music, religion, philosophy, or whatever.) Though such lectureswere an interesting reinforcement of the image of teacher-as-scholar. some critics have questioned whether they serve any otheruseful function."

The National Study of High School English Programs

The ferment of the early 1960s also led to the National Study ofHigh School English Programs, directed by James It. Squire and

AN ACADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGUSill 211

Roger K. App lebee. This study was designed to be an ekamination-in-depth of 158 schools selected because of their outstanding pro-grams in English; the usual questionnaire data was followed upwith extensive classroom observation, interviews with staff, andtalks with students. Teams of observers from the University ofIllinois were trained for the visits, which usually lasted .two daysand included observations of as many as twenty classes 4t a singleschool. School visits for the study proper were spread over two andis half years: the academic years 1963-64, 1964-65. and the first halfof 1965-66. Initially designed as a means to "ascertain the ways inwhich stronger schools are already achieving important results inEnglish." the study in the end became an extensive record of theinitial stages of the academic approach to the teaching of English.'"

To summarize the complex and detailed findings of the project asbriefly as possible. teachers in the outstanding schools Were profes-sionally oriented. Some 72 percent had a major in English thefigure rises to 82 percent if related fields such as speech and dramaare included): another 19 percent had minored in the field. Fullyhalf had master's degrees. Compared with those in the slightlyearlier National Interest surveys, the staff in the project schoolswere more likely to belong to professional organizations, more likely

. to subscribe to English Journal, and more likely to he providedopportunities and incentives for continuing education. Fully 20percent of the teachers received locally sponsored aid to continuetheir studies. The organization and supervision of the Englishdepartment as a whole also had a strong influence on resultingprograms, so much so that the project staff call6d two specialconferences on the role of the department chairman and publishedthe ensuing recommendations in a separate report."1

The classroom visitation yielded a numher of results whichstartled the project staff. One was the finding that a . average of 52percent of actual class time was devoted to the study of literaturerather disturbing in the age of the tripod but quite ili line with theprevious history of the subject. In general, literature receivedslightly less attention in the early years of high school, andconsiderably less in courses for terminal as opposed to academicstudents. but even with these students over 40 percent of the timeobserved was devoted to literature. In the traditionally more aca-demic private schools the figure reached 83 percent. The lack ofattention to other aspects of English was especially disturbing toproject observers, because they found little real effort to relate thevarious aspects of English studies one to another.

As Dora V. Smith had found in her far less extensive visitationsduring the thirties and early forties, classes were overwhelminglyteacher-dominated. Though teachers professed to emphasize dis-cussion, observations of more than 1,600 classes showed that recita-tion and lecture dominated; discussion and Socratic questioning

212 TRADITION AND Rh:FORM

together accounted for only 2:3 percent of class time observed.Observers also found virtually no evidence of group work or the useof audiovisual aids. A slight increase in discussion was evidentbetween the tenth and twelfth grades, paralleling an increase inattention to literature and a shift away from formal studies ofgrammar and usage; classes for terminal students, however,showed higher percentages of recitation, lecture, and silent work,with corresponding decreases in discussion or other student activi-ties. Such findings, though the staff of the National Study foundthem distressing, were fully in accord with the academic model forEnglish instruction, with its glorification of the college class-roomand lack of interest in most aspects of progressive methodology.

The course in literature directly reflected the academic emphasesof the years immediately preceding the study. Though use of thesingle anthology was still the most frequently observed practice.anthologies were liberally augmented by supplementary texts, es-pecially paperbacks. Over 50 percent of the teachers rated closetextual study as of "great importance" in the teaching of literature,though observers were distressed to find that many teachers werehaving difficulty translating these beliefs into successful practice.The specific selections chosen for study were in general moredistinctly literary than during the "life adjustment" period, but theeffects of censorshipreal or only threatenedwere very evident;as one result, observers found evidence of a deliberate de-emphasisof major twentieth century works. Using a checklist of fifty titlesthat had been reported as significant high school reading exper-iences by gifted college students, augmented by a few others whoseappropriateness had been questioned, observers used card catalogsto check whether or not they were available in 84 of the schoollibraries. Only twoThe Scarlet Letter and .4 Tale of Two Citieswere available in all of the schools. Exodus was available in only 83percent; The Crapes of Wrath and The Ugly American in 75percent; The Once and Future King in 65 percent; and The Soundand the Fury. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Frannyand Zooey, and The Stranger in less than half. Though it had beenexpected, the preponderance of modern fiction among the books oflimited availability was nonetheless disturbing. In one of the morememorable collections an observer found six biographies of WilliamFaulkner but not one of his work& In large part because of suchlimitations, nearly three-fourths of the students found the schoollibrary inadequate for their reading needs, turning instead to thepublic library or paperbacks.

The National Study, designed to discover the strengths of on-going programs, also highlighted their weaknesses; foremostamong these were the provisions for terminal students. Whatevercriterion was chosen, the lower tracks were being shortchanged inthese academically oriented schools. The teachers assigned to the

AN ACADEMIC MODEL POE ENGLISH 213

slow sections were often among the least adequate in the depart-ment; the materials were of lower quality; the teaching techniquesless varied: the amount of time spent on worksheets and seat-workgreater. The extent of the neglect of the lower tracks, though againa natural result of the emphases of the preceding years, becameclear during the course of the study in a way that had not yet reallysurfaced in the professional literature. Though 86 percent of theschools used one or another fnrm of tracking which affected thecomposition of classes in English, very few had even begun to facethe problem of what to do with their lower tracks."'

In general, then, the National Study of High School EnglishPrograms suggested little in the way of radical change in profes-sional orientation, though it did make clear the need to directattention to instruction in the lower tracks. The image of the betterprograms that emerged from the study was the image which theNCTE and other groups had been offering since the Basic Issuesconferences in 1958: well-prepared teachers confident in their sub-ject Matter; a solid departmental organization giving scope anddirection to the program as a whole; generous supplies nf books andmaterials: reasonable teaching loads. Indeed, after expanding thestudy to a number of schools which had been attracting nationalattention for their experimental programs, the study staff felt itnecessary to include a ''Cautionary Note" that warned that much ofwhat they had seen was mere administrative innovatinn, Thoughoccasional programs seemed to offer the germ of an idea that wouldlead to useful change, the challenge to the academic ideal of theEnglish program was not destined to develop from within theseongoing efforts,

High Points and Lnw Points

As has been hinted several times in the course nf this chapter,the major accomplishment of the period during which the Englishcourse was remolded on the academic model was the sense ofprofession generated among teachers at all levels. The battle forfederal funds, the attempt to prnvide an academic curriculumthrough the work of the various curriculum study centers, thesummers of study in the CEEB and NDEA institutes, the renewedcooperation between NCTE and MLAall contributed to the sensethat teachers nf English at all levels shared common problems,

Concurrent with the new sense of prnfession was a new stress byNCTE on upgrading professional standards." Some of these activi-ties have already been mentinned in the discussion of the strugglefor federal funds. Others included statements on the workload nf thecollege teacher (1966) and nf the elementary teacher (1967); an

21-1 TitAurtIoN AND REFORM

Honor Roll for schools reducing the workload of the secondaryschool teacher was established in 1962. Preservice training was alsoof concern. Agitation for improvements in state certification re-quirements began during the 1950s under the prompting of EugeneSlaughter, Robert Tuttle, and others, and was carried forward inthe much-delayed fifth volume of the Commission on the EnglishCurriculum series, The Education of Teachers of English for American Schools and Colleges (1963). This in turn was a major referencepoint for an English Teacher Preparation Study begun in 1965under the joint sponsorship of NCTE, MLA, and the NationalAssociation of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certifica-tion. Before they were published in 1967, the resulting guidelineswent through some twenty drafts and extensive discussions atlocal, regional and national levels."'

All of these activities contributed to the teacher's sense ofself-esteem, and with it his confidence in his own competence toeffect change. Here the developments in English paralleled a grow-ing militancy within the teaching profession as a whole, highlightedmost sharply by the numerous and unprecedented teachers' strikeswhich closed schools in many of the nation's cities. Such improve-ment in the caliber of the profession was desperately needed;certainly the lack of it contributed to the failure of the progressiveframework for English during the 1940s. It seems likely that theteacher of English in the years to come will remain a well-trainedprofessional. since recent changes have been institutionalized throughthe system of state certification requirements.

The durability and importance of the academic model for Englishinstruction is more in doubt. In their disgust with the excesses oflilt) adjustment'. and the isolation of the "educationists" from therest of the academic community, the academic reformers ignoredsome important lessons that the progressives could have taughtthem. The programs that emerged were developed with little refer-ence to the characteristics of the student or to the important issuesof interest and relevance, about all of which the progressives hadlearned so much. As will be clear in the next chapter, the attemptto provide programs that would be viable for nonacademic studentseventually posed basic questions about the curriculum for theacademically talented too.

The other major lesson which the progressives could have taughtthe academic reformers was the need for careful and scientificevaluation of results. Subjective impressions of teachers involved incurriculum reform are almost inevitably highly positive; the excite-ment and stimulation inherent in the process of change itselfinsured that the programs of the curriculum study centers wouldbe successful at at least this basic level. Unfortunately land againwith a few exceptions) any evaluation beyond this simplest levelwas ignored by most of the centers; the kind of careful documents-

AN ACADEMIC MODEL FOR ENGLISH 215

Lion of long-term results that had marked the Eight-Year Study wassimply beyond the ken of most of the staff involved in these efforts.The result was a mountain of essentially untested materials which noone really knew what to do with Very few of the centers admitted toany failures, but very few carried on the kind of studies that wouldhave told them if they had failed." With federal support turning inother directions, and with leaders of. the profession once againbeginning to recognize the importance of the student in the educa-tional process. it is highly unlikely that there will he any major effortto evaluate these curricula now.

It is because of these failures that the attempt to upgradeprofessional standards looms so large. The period of academicreform produced no curriculum materials comparable to the PSSCphysics course or the UICSM math curriculum; the shape ofEnglish continues to be very much a private thing, governed by theextent to which the individual teacher responds to changing empha-ses in the professional journals and among his colleagues. To theextent that his professional competence and self-assurance havebeen strengthened, the curriculum will continue to develop at afairly rapid rate; to the extent that the teacher remains unsure ofhis own professional skills, he will probably continua to cling tothose methods and materials with which he is most familiar,leaving professional leaders to protest as in the past at the slow anddifficult pace of change.

216 TuAorrioN AND lifirDRM

CHAPTER VII NOTES

1. Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book: The Art of Getting a Lib-eral Education (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1940). p. 82.

2. Arthur E. Bestor, Educational Wastelands (Urbana, Ilk: Univer-sity of Illinois Press, 1953), p. 11.

3. Committee on National Interest, The National Interest and theTeaching of English: .4 Report on the Status of the Profession (Urbana,111.: NCTE, 1961), p. 26.

4. Northrup Frye, "Elementary Teaching and Elemental Scholar-ship," PAULA 79 (May 1964): 11-18.

5. Nebraska Curriculum Development Center. Introduction to theElementary Program: ti-6 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1965).

6. Though a Great Books course was conducted by the University ofChicago extension, it was St. ,Johns College which came closest to embodying Hutchins's ideas in a fulscale course. The concept of GreatBooks is even older than this, however. See Father W. Farrar, GreatBooks (('mwell, 1898). On the courses at St. Johns and Chicago, seeDaniel Bell, The Reforming of General Education (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. 1966). pp. 13-26.

7. Adler, How to Read a Book, pp. vi-ix.8. Mark Van Doren, Liberal Education (New York: Henry Holt and

Co.. 1943), p. 92.9. The earlier committee specifically criticized An Experience Curricu-

lum, A Correlated Curriculum, and Conducting Experiences in English.Joint Committee of the Faculty of Harvard College and of the GraduateSchool of Education, The Training of Secondary School Teachers Espe-cially with Reference to English (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,1942): General Education in a Free Society. Report of the HarvardCommittee (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945).

10. The committee on the training of teachers acknowledged its in-debtedness to an earlier report from the School and College Conference onEnglish. much of which it simply paraphrased (p. 90). School and CollegeConference on English, Report of the Literature Committee, April 1942;reprinted in Issues, Problems, and Approaches in the Teaching of English,ed. Geort,Te Winchester Stone. Jr. (New York: 'loll_ Rinehart and Winston.1964; Modern Language Association, 1961).

II. These critics provoked little reaction from secondary school teach-ers. Hatfield reviewed Van Doren's book when it appeared, without, seeingany need to counter the arguments: W. Wilbur Hatfield, The Debate onLiberal Education." English Journal 33:3 (March 1944). 167-68. A briefdiscussion and longer bibliography on the early criticism of progressivismis given by Lawrence A. Cremin in The Transformation of the School:Progressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (New York; VintageBooks. 1961). p. 325.

12. The Lynch and Evans study of English textbooks discussed in theprevious chapter was among the critiques produced by this group. SeeCremin, Transformation of the School, pp. 339-46. C. Winifred Scott andClyde M. Hill have gathered a representative collection of the criticism andresponse through 1952 in Public Education Under Criticism (New York:PrenticeHall. 1954).

i%ti ACADEMIC NIODEI. FOR ENGLISH 217

13. Arthur E. Hestor's critique. Educational Wastelands was one ofthe most comprehensive indictments of the "educationists." See the quoteat the beginning of this chapter.

I-1 Sputnik was only a symbol, however: by 1957 the reform move-ment was already well underway. (See "English as a Discipline," later inthis chapter.)

15. II. G. Rickover. Education and Freedom (New York: E. P. Dutton& ('o., 1959). p. 15.

10. Though the profession welcomed his support for English, there wasless enthusiasm for his recommendation that composition should occupy"half the time devoted to English. with an average of one theme a week."This was counter to the emphasis on the "tripod's of language, literature,and composition. James 13. Conant, rh, Amerieun High School Today: AFirst Report to Interested Citizens (New York: Signet Books. 1964: firstedition. McGraw Hill Book Co., 1959), p. 99,

17. Hy May 1958 there were 355 participating schools: English was themost popular subject. Similar programs developed on a state level in someareas. notably in Connecticut. The Connecticut program, proposed by theAssociation of Connecticut Secondary School Principals and accepted bythe University Senate in 1955. involved a college-prescribed syllabus anduniversity approval of the teachers. Daniel Bell. Reforming of GeneralEducation (New York: Columbia University Press, 19661, pp. 125,28: JohnIt. Valley. "College Actions on CEEI3 Advanced Placement ExaminationCandidates." English Journal 48:7 (October 19591: 398.401: Helen J.Estes, "College Level English in High School," English Journal 48:6I September 1959): 332414.

18. This broader effect on the curriculum has often been recognized.See, for example, Edwin II. Sauer. "Programs for the AcademicallyTalented in English: What Are the Gains'!" English 'Animal 49 :1 (January1960): 10-15. From the late fifties till the mid-sixties, a high proportion ofthe new programs described in English Journal were directly or indirectlynoted to have begun in advanced placement or college-preparatoryclasses.

19, Arno Jewett, "l'he Underprivileged in Language Arts." EnglishJournal 42:3 (March 1953) 131-37. Jewett was, like Dwight Horton, a.student of Dora V. Smith, but he developed her ideas in quite a differentdirection. For a much earlier honors program introduced in Scarsdale. NewYork, "to give a small group of intellectual higher -ups the opportunitiesthey had hitherto been denied in our sometimes too democratic schools,",see Locyle I look, "English Honors," English Jon rnal 29:1 (January 1910):\10.13.

20. Arno Jewett, chairman. English for the Academically TalentedStudent, Report of the Committee on English Programs for High SchoolStudents of Superior Ability of the NC'l'E (Washington. I). C,: NationalEducation Association, 1960). See also "The Talented Pupil: A SpecialReport." English Journal 47:0 (September 19581: 368-71 t.

21. Hy the 1964.65 academic year. 1,350,000 students were using theSMSG math program alone. Bell, Reforming of General Education. pp.Ill ff.

22. Edward Gordon and Edward S. Noyes. Essays on the Teachingof English: Reports of the Yale Conferences on the Teaching of English(New York: Appletomeentury.Crofts. 19601.

218 'I'RA intios AND REFORM

23. The Basic Issues conferences have been widely heralded as the firstrecognition by professional leaders of the need to reformulate the curricu-lum. Shugrue dates his "decade of change" from the conferences. Of thetwenty.eight teachers, only three were from high schools. The reports werepublished in the journals of the cooperating organizations, widely distri-buted in leaflet form, and reprinted in George Winchester Stone, Jr.'sissues, Problems and Approaches in the Mocking of English. Michael F.Shugrue. English in a Decade of Change (New York: Pegasus, 19681.

24. This is virtually a paraphrase of the discussion of the fourth "basicissue." "What approaches to a literary work are possible and profitable atthe various educational levels'?"

25. "The 1308i12 Issues in the Teaching of English." in Stone, Issues,Problems and ,Approaches.

26. Stone. Issues. Problems, and Approaches. pp. 235-38.27. Jerome S. Bruner, The Process of Education (New York: Vintage

Rooks. 1960: first edition. Harvard University Press, 1960). Teachers ofEnglish quickly realized the implications of Bruner's arguments. Ruth G.Strickland, writing as NCTE past president, asserted that the report "isas applicable to our teaching of English as it is to the teaching of scienceand mathematics." ("Couneiletter," English Journal 50:4 (April 19611:287.88.1

28. The discussion of "Literature" began with u section titled "ACurriculum Arrived at by Consensus" 1pp. 42 ff.). Only three of thesixteen members were high school teachers. Commission on English,Freedom and Discipline in English (New York: College Entrance Examina-tion Board, 19651.

29. Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel credited the work of thecommission with improving certification requirements in over half of thestates as early as 1963, two years before the final report was published.Francis Keppel, Who Is to Speak for English?" PMLA 79 (May 1964):7.10,

30. The use of the three legs of the tripod to structure the institutecourse of study is one of the more direct bits of evidence of how thoroughlythe commission accepted the tripod metaphor for English studies. SeeCommission on English, Freedom and Discipline, p. 14: and John C.Gerber, "The 1962 Summer Institutes of the Commission on English:Their Achievement and Promise," PMLA 78 (September 19631: 9-25.Gerber was chairman of the committee of twelve evaluators commissionedby the USOE.

31. Shugrue, in English in a Decade of Change. p. 174, commented,"The enthusiasm of the lecturers and the quality of -their commentary onliterature, language. and rhetoric almost redeem the painful inadequaciesof the camera work and editing," The kinescopes were low-budget produc-tions. and showed it. See also Freedom and Discipline, p. 162: andCommission on English, End-of-Year. Examinations in English for College-Hound Students Grades 9-12 (Princeton: College Entrance ExaminationBoard, 19631.

32. Hook succeeded Hatfield on October 1. 1953, giving the Council thekind of full-time leadership that Walter Burnes had urged as early us 1933.In a sense Ilook's appointment marked the beginning of the Council'sattempt to regain control of curriculum development in English. See"Report and Summary," English Journal 42:9 (December 19531: 514-16:

AN ACADEMIC MODEL. FOR Ennusii 219

and J. N. Hook. ''The National Council Looks Ahead," English Journal44:1 (January 1955): 1.9.

33. NCTE passed a resolution on tlw workload of the secondary schoolteacher in 1957, the first since the reorganization period. A study byWilliam J. ousel, sponsored by the California Council of Teachers ofEnglish, was widely quoted and distributed. It paralleled the Hopkinsreport. also distributed by NCTE but not originating in it. William J.Dust& "Determining an Efficient Teaching Load in English," IllinoisEnglish Bulletin 43 (October 1955): 1-19; and E. M. Hopkins, Report onthe flist and Labor of English Teaching (For MLA and NCTE. Lawrence:Journalism Press. University of Kansas. 1913).

;14. Squire succeeded Hook on September 1, 1960, after spending a yearas associate executive secretary. Squire provided NCTE with a dynamicand personal leadership through a period of change as significant and rapidas the first years under Hosic.

35. Committee on National Interest, National Interest and the Teach-ing of English. pp. 3, 18-21. .

36. Given the general tenor of the report, one must suspect that thedecimal point was used to make the number look larger, rather than for thescientific precision of the estimate.

37. The hook was reprinted in full the volume of congressionaltestimony on the extension of the NDEA. The Senate. in fact, includedEnglish in-the revised bill, but this was deleted in the House. The fundsmade available came under the Cooperative Research Act of 1954. JamesIt. Squire. "Counciletter." English Journal 50:6 (September 1961); 434-37;Harold B. Allen, -Counciletter," English Journal 50:8 (November 1961):572.75; and J. N. Hook, "Project English: The First Year," PAHA 78(September 19631; 33-35.

38. The activities suggested parallel the earlier MLA Foreign Lan-guage Program. Committee on National Interest, The National Interestand the Nntintting Ethos:Min of Teachers of English: A Report on theState of tlw Profession, 1964 (Urbana. NCTE, 1964). See especiallypp. 16.27. 49.50, 66-69.

39. Squire commented on this aspect of the activity of these years inhis final report as executive secretary, paying tribute as he did so to theefforts of John H. Fisher, his counterpart at MLA. James It. Squire,Eight Year Report of the Executive Secretary 1960-67 (Champaign,NCTE, 1967).

40. Project English was shaped by the leaders of MLA, NCTE, andrelated organizations through extensive informal contacts with USOEpersonnel after the enabling legislation had been passed. These contactswere formalized through the February conference.

Of the conferences, one of the most important was held at AllertonHouse at the University of Illinois in December 1962. It resulted in thefounding of the Association of Departments of English. to which morethan half of the English departments in the U.S. belong. The department.chairmen present at Allerton declared their "willingne %s to share in theresponsibility- for the teaching of English." and many changes in programsat their respective colleges followed. On all these developments, seeShugrue. English in a Decade of Change, pp. 39 ff.; Hook, "ProjectEnglish: The First Year"; James R. Squire. "English at the Crossroads:

Pr The National Interest Report Plus Eighteen,'' English Journal 51;6 (Sep-

220 ThAorrios AND R EFORM

(ember 19621: 381.92; Ralph Flynt, The U.S. Office of Education Looksat Project. English," PMLA 78:6 (September 1963): 30-32: Robert W.Rogers. "Articulating High School and College Teaching of English,"English Journal 54.5 (May 1965): 370.74 4-.

41. The congressional appropriation implied primary concern with read.Mg. composition, and other English skills, but the announcement of theprogram inade clear that the USOE would "respect the unity of thediscipline in selecting proposals' to support." "Project English: An An.nouncement from the Office of Education," English Journal 51:2 (Febru-ary 1962): 149-52. See Shugrue. English in a Decade of Change, pp. 41 ff.,for a summary. of important projects in other aspects of English instruc-tion.

42. Two of the most important exceptions were the centers at HunterCollege and at the University of Michigan. Both belong to the second waveof reform rather than to the initial academic emphasis and will be dis-cussed in the next chapter.

43. On the work of the centers, see in particular Shugrue, English in aDecade of Change, pp. 50 IL; and G. Robert Carlsen and James Crow,"Project English Curriculum Centers." English Journal 56:7 (October19671: 986-03. Status reports prepared by the directors of each center werewidely distributed; Erwin It Steinberg. "Research on the 'Teaching ofEnglish... PMLA 79 (September 1964): 5046; Michael F. Shugrue, "NewMaterials for the Teaching of English from the English Program of theUSOE," HULA 81. (September 19661: 1.36; and Robert Bennett, edSummary Progress Report of English Curriculum Study and Demonstra-tion Centers (Champaign. III.; NCTE, 1966).

44. Northrup Frye. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays New York:Atheneum. 1967: first edition. Princeton University Press, 1957); andFrye. "Elementary Teaching and Elemental Scholarship."

45. As they finished their work, some of the other centers arrived atthe same conclusion. As Stoddard Malarkey of the Oregon center de-scribed it in a 1966 address, "Agreement as to what constitutes the 'greatand simple structuring ideas' of literature seems impossible of achieve-ment." "Sequence and Literature: Some Considerations." English Journal56:3 (March 196Th 394-400+. See Carlsen and Crow. "Project EnglishCurriculum Centers."

46, John DeBoer introduced the topic; Lou LaBrant proposed themotion. -See "Report and Summary." English Journal 38:6 (June 1949):355; "The Chicago Convention," English 'Marna/ 38:2 (February 19491:105.08; "Report and Summary," English Journal 40;4 (April 1951): 232-37; "Report and Summary." English Journal 40:5 (May 1951h 285-86; and"Report and Summary." English Journal 41:1 (January 19521: 42.

47. Hosic commented that "his conception of what constitutes whole-some reading for adolescents differs markedly from my own"; AllanAbbott suggested teachers should "move rather slowly": A. P. Boascommented that Prescott was talking of "works of post-war disillusion andpsychopathic maladjustment which already . . are going out of fashion."Waller Barnes, however, urged "Three loud huzzas.'"The point is thatthough there has always been censorship of school materials, until recentlyteachers supported it. Joseph 'Prescott, "Sex in Literature," EnglishLeaflet 35 (May 1936): 65.82.

48. The commission worried that "young people . will not see asunsatisfactory (both individually and socially) the pathological or sordid

AN ACADEMIC MODE:. PM ENGLISH 221

behavior with which such books deal." Among the specific titles men-tioned were The Grapes of Wrath. Mr. Roberts, and From Here toEternity. Commission on the English Curriculum, The English LanguageArts in the Secondary School (New York; Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956).pp 184-85.

49. Lee A. Burress. Jr.. How Censorship Affects the School, SpecialBulletin no. 8 (Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, 1963).

50. See, for example, Censorship and Controversy: Report of the('um wit tee on Censorship of Teaching Materials for Classroom and Li-brary (Chicago; NrEE, 1953); Committee on the Right to Read, TheStudents' Right to Read (Urbana. Will:. 1962): John P. Frank andRobert F. Hogan, Obscenity, the Law, and the English Teacher (Urbana,1112 Wit 1966); and John Hove, chairman, Meeting Censorship in theSchool (Urbana, III.: NCTE, 1967).

51. "Censorship and the Values of Fiction," English Journal 53;3(March 1964): 155.64. The NCTE Commission on Literature has recentlyechoed this: "No work is in itself proper or improper for the schools, Itssuitability mast be judged in terms of its development of the student'sintelligence and critical sensitivity, and the effect on the student of theWok as a whole." "This World of English." English Journal 57:4 (April1968); 583-86.

52. See "Riposte." English Journal 58:6 (September 1969): 938.40;Judith F. Krug. -Growing Pains: Intellectual Freedom and the Child,"English Journal 61:6 (September 1972); 805.13: and Kenneth L. Donelson."White Walls and !Ugh Windows: Sonic Contemporary Censorship Prob-lems," English Journal 61:8 (November 1972): 1191-98.

53. Stanley B. Kegler, "The Simplified Classic,- English Journal 44:8iNovember 1955): 475-76. One of the first attacks on the anthologies wasJohn V. Warner. Jr.. "Anthologies in the High School ClassroomlNev-yr!" English Journal 48:7 (October 1959): 382-87. Many teachers vigorous-ly defended the anthology, prompting a second article from Warner,. "Tothe Gallows with You, Miss Zilch," English Journal 40:9 (December 1960):627-29.

54, See John T. Frederick, "The Quarter Books," English Journal 37:5May 1948): 215-21: Max J. Herzberg. "Down Publishers' Row," English

Journal 46:6 (September 1957): 862-65: and Sister M. Harriet, "Let's Usethe Paperbacks." English Journal 46;4 (April 1957): 202.04,

55, See Helen Fox Rachford, "Developing Discrimination in RadioListening," English Journal 33:6 (June 1944); 315-17; Sarah Roody, "TheEffect of Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures on the Development ofMaturity." English Journal 41:5 (May 1952): 245.50; and C. 0. liedden,"The Pin-Up Girls at School: What to Do about Movies in the Class-room.** English Journal 35;1 (January 1946):41 -43.

56. Richard G. Lillard, "Movies Aren't Literary." English Journal 29:9(November 1940): 735 ff. A brief summary of the changing attitudes from1912 to 1960 has been provided by Henry B. Maloney. "Stepsisters ofPrint: The Public Arts in the high School English Class,- English Journal49:8 (November 1960): 570-79.

57. See Patrick D. Hazard. "The Public Arts," English Journal 45(September 19561; 367.69: G. Howard ['Meet. "Film as Language." En-glish Journal 57:8 (November 1968): 1182.86: Robert Meadows, "GetSmart: IA 'I'C Work for You," English Journut 56:1 (January 1967):121-24; Neil Postman, Television and the Teaching of English (New York:

222 TRADITION AND It F.FORM

Appleton - Century - Crofts, 1961); and Marion C. Sheridan. The MotionPit-ture and the Timer ing of English (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.1965).

58. See "The Course of Study." in Chapter VI. For some discussion ofearly approaches, see H. A. Domincovich. "On Literature Considered asOne of the Fine Arts." English Journal 30:5 (May 1941): 387-91; LawrenceP. She han. "Senior Humanities at Hanford High School," English Journal54:9 (December 1965): 836-38: and Irving Marks, "The Great BooksCourse." English Journal 56:3 (March 19671: 447-49. Domincovich wasChairman of the NCTE Committee on International Relations and head ofEnglish at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia.

59. A 1964 survey found that over half of the teachers describinghumanities projects were former John Hay Fellows. Robert W. Homer andSocrates A. Lagios, "An Overview of Humanities Programs throughoutthe Country.- English Leaflet 63 (Fall 1964): 39-57. English Journaldiscussions of humanities programs were dominated by John Hay Fellows,dating at least to Sarah Ni. Bush. "A Humanities Program that Works."English Journal 40:4 (April 1959): 208.10. In a. 1967 index to humanitiesprograms, over 40 percent used the Encyclopaedia Britannica Films.Jonathan Corbin. comp,. Annotated Humanities Programs (Champaign.Ill.: NCTE, 1967)-

60, The rationale for team teaching is presented in James L. Stafford,An Exploration into Team Teaching in English and the Humanities,sponsored by the Southern California Council of Teachers of English(Champaign. III.: NCTE, 1963).

61. Humanities programs have been discussed in several places, Eng-lish Journal published a series of articles, "Humanities in the HighSchool." in March 1965: English Leaflet, Fall 1964, was entirely devotedto humanities, Jonathan Corbin prepared his annotations in 1967, and asimilar pamphlet was prepared the following year by Richard Adler andArthur Applebee (Annotated Humanities Programs [Champaign, Ill.:NCTE, 19680. Sheila Schwartz has provided a- collection of relevantreadings in Teaching the Humanities (New York: Macmillan Co., 19701.

62. See John R. Searles, "Are Humanities Programs the Answer?'English Journal 54:3 (March 1965): 175.81; Fred H. Stocking, "HighSchool Humanities Programs: Some Reservations," English Leaflet 63

(Fall 1964): 31-38: and Bell. Reforming of General Education, pp. 227-28.63. James R. Squire and Roger K. Applebee, A Study of English

Programs in Selected High Schools Which Consistently Educate Out-standing Students in English, Cooperative Research Project no. 1994(Urbana, III.: flniversity of Illinois, 1966). An edited and abridged editionof this report is mord easily available as High School English InstructionToday: The National Study of High School English Programs (New York:AppletoCentury-Crofts, 1968). The study included two main samplesselected on differing criteria. Because no differences emerged between thetwo samples of schools, for the final report results were pooled anddiscussed as a whole.

64. James R. Squire. Roger K. Applebee. and Robert Lacampagne,High School Departments of English: Their Organization. Adm;nistration,arid Supervision, A Report of the Urbana and Cleveland Conferences,OctoberNovember 1964 ( Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, n.d. 11985P.

AN ACADEMIC MODF:I. FOR ENGLISH 223

115. Comments on the lower tracks were scattered throughout thereport. See Squire and Applehee, A Study of English. Programs, pp. 91,323, 345 ff.

66. 'though these activities have been discussed only as they mostdirectly affected the teaching of literature, they represented a major NCTEeffort throughout Squire's term asexecutive secretary. The Council's rolewas vigorous-and effective. See Squire's Eight Year Report and Shugrue'sEnglish in a Decade of Change for a fuller account.

67. English Teacher Preparation Study, "Guidelines for the Prepara-tion of Teachers of English," reprinted from English Journal 56:6 (Sep-tember 1967): Elementary English 44:6 (October 1967): and College En-glish 29:1 (October 1967). The project is discussed at length in Shugrue,English in a Decade of Change, and in a special issue of English Journal157:4 (April 1968)).

68. See *John Maxwell, "Readiness for New Curriculum Materials."English Journal 56:9 (December 1967): 1338-41.

Perhaps more than anything else, the disadvantaged learner needs to find hismen identity and to Male himself to the larger social community. Wherebetter than through literature can students team to rise above themselves andto extend the range of their intellectual and emotional powers?

Task Force on Language Programs forthe Disadvantaged, 19651

Response is a word that reminds the leacher that the experience of art is athing of our own making, an activity in which we are our own interpretiveartist. The dryness of schematic imagery, symbols, myth, structural relations,el ui. should be. passionately avoided at school and often at college. isliterature, not literary criticism, which is the subject.

Anglo-American Seminar on theTeaching of English, 19662

Anxious to validate our subject, we have claimed for it a place among theexacting studies presumably stabilized in a realm more secure than human.But we may have to accept the idea that the human experiences that get playin literature provide its only validation.

NCTE Commission on Literature, 19672

Educational objectives pinned to predictable, measurable student perform-ance would offer a much- needed basis for measuring program cost againstprogram effectiveness. Such cost ccti:ding, in turn, would promote moreeffective allocation of existing resources among competing educationalprograms.

Leon Lessinger and Dwight Allen,1969'1

Prom these considerations we derive another concept: accountability. Sc /tooladministrators and school teachers alike are responsible for their perform-ance, and it is in their interest as well as in the interests of their pupils thatthey be held accountable.

President Richard M. Nixon, 19705

But the technology changes the values, and dictates some of its otvn; notechnology is ever neutral.... Our most pressing educational problem, inshort, is not how to increase the efficiency of the schools; it is how to createand maintain a hilmane society. A society whose schools arc inhumane is notlikely to be humane itself.

Charles E. Silberman, Crisis in theClassroom, 19706

Chapter VIII

Winds of Change

Earlier chapters have traced the evolution of theteaching of literature in American schools from its beginnings inthe reading texts of colonial days into a major subject involvingsome 10 percent of the nation's instructional effort. During thattime professional leaders turned away from the colleges at thebeginning of the twentieth century, and swung back toward themduring the early 1960s. This is as far as the history of literature as aschool subject can he traced with much historical perspectivewith, that is, the vision of hindsight to.protect our prophecies. Yetthe issues which have been faced in the past continue into thepresent, generating during the last few years a debate which if it isnot hotter in its own right, rages more fiercely for those whoseinterests are ultimately in the teaching of English in schools today.This chapter discusses three major challenges that have beenoffered to the academic model of English in the last few years, andlooks briefly at the curriculum that is emerging in response. Theclosing chapter examines the unanswered questions which willcontinue to shape this history in the years ahead.

The Other Half of the Curriculum

Even as professional leaders were attempting to formulate anacademic program for English, other forces were at work thatwould ultimately offer an instructional model more in keeping withprevious progressive theory. The counter-movement began in the

225

226 TRADITION AND RE:1:0101

nation's slums, where teachers quickly found that the academicapproach had little relevance. James B. Conant, whose study ofThe American High School Today (1959) was one of the moreimportant documents in the development of the academic model;also provided an early and widely heralded perspective on theproblems of urban education. His Slums and Suburbs (1961) drewtogether observations of astonishing inequities in the quality ofeducation for urban and suburban youth. Conant worried that theproblem of the cities was more than just an educational issueintact. "social dynamite"; 'he tried to convey his sense of concern:

For without being an alarmist, 1 must say that when one considers thetotal situation that has been' developing in the Negro city stunts sinceWorld War I I. one bus reason to worry about the future. The buildingup of a mass of unemployed and frustrated Negro youth in congestedareas of the city is a social phenomenon that may be compared to thepiling up of inflammable materials in an empty building in a city block.Potentialities for troubleindeed possibilities of disasterare surelythere.'

lie documented his observations with details of Negro migration tothe northern central cities, of unemployment, and of dropout ratesand absenteeism.

Conant found that these social pressures were coupled witheducational inadequacy. The schools which had money, stable staff,community interest, and relevant materials were those in the sub-urbs. The urhan slums suffered with antiquated buildings, over-crowded classrooms, and inappropriate courses of study. His rec-ommendations were a remarkably accurate delineation of the direc-tion that inner-city education would move during the ensuingdecade: he argued for meaningful courses, adequate financial sup-port, involvement of parents in educational reform, and schooldecentralization. Battles over each of these were fought in theheinilines of the sixties.

Young authors added a personal and anecdotal dimension toConant's observations by recounting their own experiences in urbanschools. Herbert Kohl, Jonathan Kozo!, James Herndon, and NatIlentolf, among others, echoed the frustration of many youngteachers who had taken up urban education as part of a nationwideconcern with the welfare of Black America, This frustration amonga highly vocal group of teachers, coupled with a new militancyamong local community groups, put great pressure on city schoolsystems to alter their materials and approaches."

National leaders in English did not respond to such problemsuntil the middle sixties, when the forces unleashed by the 1954

Supreme Court decision on segregation began to culminate at thefederal level in the Job Corps (through the Economic OpportunityAct) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, NCTE, prompted by aneloquent address from its incoming president, Richard Corbin, tookofficial note of the problem by using its own funds to establish a

WINIi8 OP CHANGE: 227

Task Force on Teaching English to the Disadvantaged in 1964.

Twentytwo experts in teaching and in the problems of the dis-advantaged were charged with surveying efforts throughout thenation. In a ninety day effort beginning in March 1965, they

observed 190 programs in 115 school systems of sixty-four cities, ingeneral following the lead of the National Study in scheduling pairsof observers for two-day visits to each program. The final reportwas released the following fall (1965), with extensive discussions ofprograms from preschool to adult levels."

The Task Force attempted to dispel a numher of "widespreadbeliefs affecting the education of the disadvantaged"; their com-ments implied that the educational problems of the disadvantageddiffered in amount rather than in kind from those in any classroom.They found that the subculture of poverty was just as diverse andvaried as the parent culture; that there was need for a variety oflanguage experiences, not simply drill in standard English; that thechildren were not apathetic and did not offer unusual disciplineproblems: that inductive teaching could be used just as successfullywith these children as with any others; and that the teacher ofEnglish needed to be just as well prepared in his own subject areato teach disadvantaged children as to teach any others.

When they looked at secondary school programs in literature,the Task Force found it resting on "a shaky foundation" (p. 109).The two most prevalent patterns were an emphasis on reading skillsand workbook exercises, with a consequent neglect of literarymaterials. and slavish adherence to inappropriate courses of study.in one memorahle class, the teacher was carefully reading SilasMartter aloud to a group of students who could not read it them-selves, because it was "required" for all students in their grade.The Task Force's only recommendation on the teaching of literaturewas "that at all levels of instruction the English curriculum fordisadvantaged students include appropriate imaginative literaturechosen and presented with these students in mind" (p. 273), butthis was a radical shift from the concerns of the period of academicreform.

Two of the Project English curriculum study centers focussed onsimilar prohlems. and ultimately produced the most successful ofthe new programs. One, under the direction of Marjorie Smiley atHunter College in New York City, recognized from the beginningthe progressives' lessons about the importance of student involve-ment and interest as first steps in English instruction, The other.led by Daniel Fader at the University of Michigan, eventuallyreached very similar conclusions."'

Gateway English, the program developed at Hunter College,focussed its units around issues of personal and social significance.Smiley was well aware of the degeneration in the quality of mater-ials toward the end of the progressive era and took great care tochoose selections which would deal maturely and in depth with theissues raised. The emphasis was on contemporary writing, including

228 14RAMTION AND RKFORM

many selections by black authors, but traditional selections werealso included: excerpts from the Odyssey, for example, and some ofAesop's Fables. The program was presented in a series of slimanthologies, with titles which give a good sense of the program as awhole: A Family Is a Way of Feeling, Coping, and WhoAm I? weretypical texts. The teacher's manuals, like the materials themselves,echoed many earlier innovators. They sought "to help these childrenidentify the problems and to encourage them to find solutions," "tocast each of the students in a positive 'image,' and to "enable thesediscouraged youth to identify with individuals, both real and fic-tional, who have coped with problems not unlike theirs with varyingdegrees of success." Even when carried out with literature ofacknowledged merit, such emphases had little in common withthose of the academic model.

If Gateway English continued the progressive concern withpersonal and social problems, English in Every Classroom, theprogram devised at the Michigan center, focussed on extensivereading. This program was designed for the most difficult studentsof all: a group of delinquent boys in the W. J. Maxey BoysTraining School (Michigan). Later the center expanded its work topublic schools, and the program itself (popularized by Fader's 1966presentation. Hooked on Boob:;) spread to some thirty-seven statesand three foreign countries."

The basic principles were simple enough: students were to readas much and in as many different areas of their school experience aspossible. To achieve this, the program provided a library of 1,200paperback books and class sets of newspapers and magazines.These formed the core of the English curriculum and also providedmaterials to supplement the work in other subjects. In the processof implementing this approach, Fader rediscovered many educa-tional cliches, but because of the extreme conditions under which hewas workingand the obvious failure of other approachesthecliches took on a substance and appeal that under better conditionsthey might have lacked. The need for every teacher to be a "teacherof English"; the importance of relevant materials: the fact thatwithout interest nothing else would followthese basic principles ofprogressive education were rediscovered in meeting the problems ofeducation in a buys training school. There was very little that couldforce such boys to begin to read; the only hope was to make themwant to. And this Fader did, however many cliches he discovered inthe process.'1

The British Model

At the same time that progressive methods were being reestab-lished in the curriculum of the inner city and the lower tracks,

WINDS or CHANCE: 229

professional leaders were becoming aware of another model forinstruction which asserted the primacy of such approaches for allstudents. Though the liberal American reformersthe same groupwho had originally protested against the programs in slum schoolswere moving in much the same direction, it was the schools ofEngland that offered a functioning alternative to the academicmodel.

Initial contacts with British educators had begun during thefifties, first through NCTE-sponsored summer tours of Englandand later through a series of conferences on the problems ofteaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). As earlyas 1957, Harold 13. Allen. who had been deeply involved in TESOLprograms in Egypt, suggested that a conference on the teaching ofEnglish as a native language might be fruitful. During the follow-ing years, a number of Council leAders visited British schools, aNational Association of Teachers ofEnglish (NATE) was organizedin Britain, and a representative of the British Ministry of Educa-tion toured the Project English study centers. During 1964 BorisFord, president of NATE, attended the NCTE annual convention.His remarks again led NCTE leaders to consider a joint meeting,which was arranged for the following year." The 1965 meeting wasfollowed by two other projects which brought American educatorsinto close and stimulating contact with British approaches. Thefirst was a month-long invitational seminar on the teaching ofEnglish, held at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1966, fundedby the Carnegie Corporation, and cosponsored by. NATE, MLA,and WEE. Approximately fifty specialists in English and theteaching of English at the elementary, secondary, and college levelswere brought together in an unusual attempt to gain a new perspec-tive on their common problems, The ensuing clash of deeply rootedassumptions about the teaching of English was a cathartic expe-rience for all involved, and sharply altered the professional emphasesof NCTE leaders.''

At the same time plans were underway to extend the NationalStudy of High School English Programs to include a survey ofoutstanding British schools. Teams of observers visited 42 schoolsduring the spring of 1967; most of the people involved had partici-pated in the earlier American study. As had happened at Dart-mouth, the visiting Americans found their deeply rooted beliefssharply challenged by programs in the forefront of British educa-tion, and (again as at Dartmouth) they came away feeling that theBritish alternative had much to recommend it."

What the British offered the Americans was a model for Englishinstruction which focussed not on the "demands" of the disciplinebut on the personal and linguistic growth of the child. These goalsand no others justified the central place of English in the schoolcurriculum, and this impliedas had American progressive theory

230 TRADITION AND REFORM

a curriculum structured around the characteristics of the childwhose growth was to be fostered. American observers were espe-cially struck by these emphases in the lower forms in Britishsecondary schools (roughly equivalent to American grades 7 to BMthere they found "improvised drama, imaginative writing, personalresponse to literature, and a large amount of informal classroomdiscussion. Instruction is centered on the pupil his interests, Usresponse, big view of the world" (p. 52). Subject matter (the

"content" of English which had been of such concern to Americans)seemed hardly important to the British teacher; its function was toprovide the experiences through which the child could experiment,testing and strengthening his linguistic and intellectual skills byusing them in a variety of contexts.

Indeed. like the metaphor of "growth" itself, it was process oractivity rather than content which defined the English curriculumfor the British teacher. Strongly influenced by the work of theSwiss psychologist Jean Piaget, the Russian L. S. Vygotsky, andthe American George Kelly, British teachers saw language asimposing a system and an order, offering (in John Dixon's words)"sets of choices from which we must choose one way or another ofbuilding our inner world."" Hence the teacher must accept thetentative and incomplete response as part of the process of choice, a

testing out of a particular mode of thought or expression which itwould be perfectly legitimate for the student to abandon in mid-stream. American observers found such an. attitude most dramati-cally evident in written language instruction, where British teach-ers placed a much greater emphasis on the act of writing itself.They often assigned work which would never be read by theteacher, in contrast to the American pattern of write, grade, revise.In literature. -a similar concern was reflected in an emphasis on"talk," a term the British used to suggest the informality andessentially unstructured nature of discussion in which responseswere understood to he developing and tentative rather than com-plete and well formulated. Rather than the closure and summing upso often sought by the better teachers in the American study,British teachers relied on the process of discussion itself for theeducative effects they were seeking.

The aspect of British programs which most surprised Americans,both at Dartmouth and during the study of British schools, was theemphasis on drama. British teachers recognized, as had Americanprogressives, that drama was valuable both as a method for thestudy of literature and as a means to personal development. To act

out a scene successfullywhether as improvisation or as dramati-zation of part of a scriptimplies a sophisticated level of response

and understanding without requiring an explicit (or cognitive)formulation of response. In a sense the dramatic response is the

WINDS OF CHANCE 231

antithesis of the analytic, contentoriented teaching of Englishagainst which the British were in the process of reacting. At thesame time, drama is the embodiment of the role playing andexperiment which are part of the British pedagogy of growth. Totake a part in a drama is to take on at least for a moment newlinguistic, social, and personal roles, and to do so with all theprotection of self that the acknowledged "playing" in drama affords."'

Much of the teaching of literature observed during the study ofBritish schools involved drama in one form or another; the re-mainder was undertaken in a similar spirit of fostering response andinvolvement rather than analysis and criticism. The work in thelast two years of secondary school, where English is a specialistrather than a general subject, was an exception to this; even it,however, seemed to observers to build on the less formal work ofthe earlier years.) The result was a program which alternatelyexcited and disturbed American observers, who found it "frag-mented, uncritical, antiliterary, yet often explosive, engaging, andexciting" (p. 88). Concern with a literary heritage played virtuallyno role. being dismissed as irrelevant or redefined as a "legacy ofpast satisfactions" and hence not something that could be dis-pensed as so many grams of knowledge.'"

The various critical studies that had found their way into Amer-ican programs were similarly of little concern: the British teachersgave comparatively little attention to close textual analysis, to thestudy of genres, to literary periods, or to chronology. Instead, theBritish teachers emphasized a thematic approach and guided indivi-dual reading. Unlike their American counterparts, the British wereable to pursue these studies in virtually any direction they chose.Protected by a system of education in which schools are fundednationhlly rather than locally, they are virtually free from com-munity pressures. Censorship is very rare: Lady Chatterley's Loverwas the text in one class observed by the Americans, and similarlycontroversial books had a prominent role in other programs.

Perhaps the strongest tribute to the British efforts is thatAmericans have been willing to learn from them. Whereas theNational Study of outstanding American programs had led observ-ers to recommend that programs continue to he developed alongprevious lines, the visits to England led to major recommendationsfor change. The most important of these were concerned with therelative stress to be placed on formal and on informal, response-oriented studies; in general both study observers and Dartmouthparticipants were convinced that the British approach was thebetter alternative, with conscious formulation of critical responsesdeferred to the later years. "No evidence collected in this study,"the directors noted, "suggests that the absence of attention tocognitive processes affects the ultimate literary reactions of British

232 TRADITION AND REFORM

youth'. (p. 1161. More stress on dramatic activities and oral ap-proaches, greater freedom in the use of materials, less rigid curricu-lum guides, more attention to indirect methods of teaching, and thesearch for appropriate sequence in the growth pattern of the childare other points that followed more or less directly from acceptanceof the general approach.

The major effect of the confrontation with British programs hasbeen to reestablish, at least among an influential group of spokes-men for the teaching of English, some of the better parts of theprogressive vision. A concern with people rather than content hasreasserted itself: the personal and social values of literatUre areonce again being explored.'" Yet the men who are leading themovement hack toward these progressive ideals are men who weredeeply invoked in developing the academic model. They know itsstrengths as well as its weaknesses and have insured that it, too,continues to have its influence: they have a continuing awareness ofthe need for literature which is honest and mature, literature whichwill challenge rather than merely "adjust" its readers; they are._seeking to define more clearly its importance in the lives of all of us:and they are attempting to preserve and strengthen the sense ofprofession that developed in the process of building the academicmodel. These emphases, of course, are also true to the originalprogressive vision, but they differ greatly:from the emphases thatdeveloped after the Second World War!'

Industrial Models

Even as some teachers began to re-emphasize the traditionalvalues of English as a "humanistic.' or "liberalizing" subject, asecond aspect of the early progressive movement was also gainingnew momentum. This was the concern with efficiency and utilitar-ianism that first found expression in Franklin Bobbitt's lists ofspecific objectives and later in Henry Morrison's unit method ofinstruction, now reconceptualized as "behavioral objectives" and"accountability... Reinvigorated by industrial successes with the"systems am -,ach" to management. as well as by a national moodof austerity and tightening budgets, these approaches have re-ceived support from powerful segments of industry and govern-ment.

The proponents of the systems approach have taken industrialproduction as their model for the educational process. At one end ofthe system are the inputs, usually conceptualized as the presentachievements, attitudes, and skills of the students; at the other endare the outputs, the skills and attitudes that it is desirable for

WINOS or CoANGE 233

students to have. The discrepancy between input and output de-fines the educational task. Proponents have claimed a number ofvirtues for this system: it will be efficient instruction, in that it willbe possible to eliminate activities which do not contribute 'to theachievement of the specified goals; it will be individualized instruc-tion, since the discrepancy between input and output will differfrom student to student; and it will provide a measure of the extentto which each district., school, or teacher achieves its stated objec-tives. It. will also provide very direct cost accounting: the schoolboard will he able to see which programs are working and howmuch they cost. Within a system conceptualized in such terms, it isa short step to considering subcontracting one or another segmentof the total program. and indeed exactly such an approach has beentried on an experimental basis. in some versions, a "performancecontract" has been an in-school system of incentives, with salariesof teachers tied to the extent to which their students meet orsurpass prespecified performance criteria. In other versions, thecontract has been made with an outside, often profit-making,corporation, again with payment contingent upon successful per-formance by the students. In the 1969-70 academic year, the firsttwo experimental performance contracts went into operation; by1970-71 there were over 100. Initial results from these projects werenot encouraging. in Office of Education experiments involving sixdifferent companies, the 13,000 students in experimental classes didno better than those in conventional programs. All six companieslost money; the USOE withdrew its support for further attempts;and the number of experiments began to fall off.n

Still the emphasis on careful cost accounting has received verypowerful support and seems likely to continue, even if experimentswith performance contracts come to a halt. President Nixon, in his1970 Education Message to Congress. emphasized that schoolsmust be "accountable'. for the results they produce, and he did soin the context of reducing expenditures. Congress has reflectedsimilar concerns through its endorsement of the National Assess-ment of Educational Progress, and the USOE has sponsored large-scale demonstrations of the systems approach to educational prob-lems. More recently, the Committee for Economic Development, anorganization of 200 business leaders with considerable power toshape national policy, has endorsed similar principles in a policystatement. Education for the Urban Disadvantaged (1971):

We are convinced that the financial support of the schools should be insome way tied to their actual pmductivity, so that a better product.when judged by competent techniques of assessment, would yieldincreased support. If this were achieved, we believe the schools wouldbecome more inventive. more innovative, more effective, and moreproductive of good education."

23-1 TRADmoN AND REFORM

The difficulty of providing "competent techniques of assess-ment" has led to a concurrent emphasis on detailed specification ofinstructional objectives. Here one of the most influential publica-tions has been a brief book by Robert F. Mager, published in 1961as Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruction. It was re-issued the following year with the somewhat more general title,Preparing Instructional Objectives. The content of the two editionsis identical even in the pagination, but the shift in title recognizesthat the specification of "behavioral objectives" has become some-what independent of the concern with programmed instruction. Theobjectives that Mager describes are distinguished from other educa-tional objectives in that they are based on observations of the evertbehavior of the learner: to Mager. "A statement of an objective isuseful to the extent that it specifies what the learner mint be ableto DO or PERFORM when he is demonstrating his mastery of theobjective." Such objectives are the necessary building blocks of asystems approach to education. The tendency of such objectives istoward greater and greater specificity rather than toward globallystated or long-term golds."

Programmed instruction, as suggested by the original title ofMager's book, has been closely related to the evolution of behavior-al objectives. Though'it has antecedents in experiments with teach-ing machines dating back to the 1920s, the programming approachgained impetus only After B. F. Skinner and his disciples began toelaborate the pedagogical implications of his behavioral psychol-ogy. Initial experiments were carried out almost exclusively inindustrial and military training situations, where the aim was toteach a student a particular skill as quickly and efficiently aspossible. To a large extent behavioral techniques were successful inthese contexts, whether presented by machine, through pro-grammed texts. or with the use of instructional films or otheraudiovisual a ids .2'

Since the early sixties there have been attempts to generalize thesuccess of these training programs into a model for reform of publiceducation. It was this generalization that prompted initial attemptsto specify behavioral objectives. These were to provide the neces-sary reduction of general goals into very specific component skillsthat could be taught step by step, Each step would be assessedindividually, and progress continued only when the component hadbeen mastered. The great difficulties which programmers encoun-tered in their attempts to find operational specifications of goals inthe educational literature lie at the heart of the current focus on theobjectives themselves. But the research in programmed learningcontinues and seems destined to reassert itself as various subsets ofobjectives become adequately specified.

The response of teachers of English to these movements hasranged from vehement denunciations to considerable enthusiasm; a

WINDS OF CHANGE 235

middle group have resignedly concluded that since someone isgoing to write the objectives for English it had better be someonewho understands the subject. The most notable example of thisposition was the Tri.University Project, which included formerNCTE executive secretary J. N. Hook among its directors andRobert Mager as a "senior consultant"; many other distinguishedfigures in English education were involved. Supported by Office ofEducation funds, the project began as a two-year attempt to writeand test behavioral objectives for the high school English curricu-lum. Somewhat skeptical about the applicahility of the behavioralframework to the English program, the project as described byHook hoped to develop a "carefully prepared, well-reasoned statement subscribed to by representative leaders in the profession" thatwould "guide developers of such objectives and prevent their mis-use. "''

Most criticism of behavioral objectives in English instructioncenters on the measurement problems associated with the goalswhich teachers have long cherished, especially for the teaching ofliterature. What exactly does "appreciation" mean in terms ofobservable hehaviors? How does one tell if a student has had a"confrontation." or has clarified his system of personal values as aresult of what he has read? Supporters of hehavioral objectiveshave suggested that such concepts can he operationalized if teach-ers of English accept a hroad definition of behavior. For example,James Iloetker. then associated with the Central Midwest RegionalEducational Laboratory, offered such unorthodox behavioral specif-ications of objectives as "the students will cut class less often" or"the students will take a walk in the woods." The Tri-UniversityProject used a somewhat similar approach in some of the objectivesin its preliminary catalog. These emphasized that "the studentvolunteers and participates with animation," for example, or thathe "defends orally or in writing" the rights of others to readpotentially offensive material. Such approaches represented an at-tempt to preserve within the framework of behavioral objectives thekind of behaviors which a humanistically oriented teacher is likelyto favor.27

NCTE. through a new Commission on the English Curriculum,adopted a cautious, even slightly negative stance toward the issuesposed by behavioral objectives. While granting the value of specify-ing more precisely the goals of the course in English, the commis-sion offered a resolution to the 1969 annual business meeting urgingin part,

That those in the profession who do undertake to write behavioralobjectives; (a) make specific plans to account for the total Englishcurriculum: lin make an intention to preserve land. if need be, fightMr, the retention of important humanistic goals of education: and (c)

lit; TRADITION AND RkFORM

insist on these goals regardless of whether or not there exist instru-ments at the present time for measuring the desired changes in be-havior.'"

The papers which the commission chose to publish as a result of aspecial conference on behavioral objectives reflect the same cautiousambivalence, with contributions covering the full range from en-thusiastic support to outright denunciation.

Toward a New Curriculum in English

The late 1960s were years in which. the American high schoolunderwent a major realignment of values. In response to the na-tional agony over the Vietnam war, student unrest, escalating prob-lems in the inner city, and a widespread malaise even among aca-demically talented students, the emphasis in educational thoughtshifted gradually but unmistakably away from knowledge of anacademic discipline toward the process of knowing and the dig-nity of the individual. Men who had once led the attack on theprogressives shifted their ground, now attacking the dehumaniza-tion of the school that seemed to have accompanied the academicapproach. Charles Silberman, an early supporter of the academicresurgence, presented one comprehensive critique (1970) on behalfof the Carnegie Corporation, turning to Britain for a constructivealternative. The progressives and John Deweythe archenemies ofthe late fiftiesbecame once again leaders behind whom teachersand their spokesmen were proud to march.2'

This shift in values has led to its own period of experiment in theteaching of English. "Relevance" is one focus ofconcern; this is thecontemporary version of the progressive educator's emphasis on theneeds and interests of his students. In this context it is notsurprising to find that many of the experiments being offered arevariations upon methods that were central to progressive peda-gogy. Drama and oral expression, contracts, the project method,unit instruction, student-directed seminars, popular media, con-temporary literature and social commentary, minimum essentials,interdisciplinary studyall have reemerged in the past few years.'"There have also been new approaches: simulation techniques("gaming") and sensitivity training are the more prominent ex-amples." How these proposals will evolve is still uncertain. Ratherthan a new and fully formulated curriculum, they represent theattempts of the present generation of teachers to explore their ownversion of the progressive vision. As yet these explorations areopen minded; they have not coalesced around a new metaphor ofthe educational process nor produced their own articulated body of

WINDS OF CHANGE 237

theory. But it is out of them, and out of the many differenttheorists from whom the suggestions stem, that that metaphor andthat theory will eventually emerge.

Yet if the new pedagogy remains uncertain, the pressures on theEnglish course have already begun to break down the traditionalfive-dava- week. four-year institutional framework within whichthat pedagogy will be implemented. The erosion of the institutionalform of the course is highly significant, for it marks the end of along tradition of high school organization and opens the way foreven more radical experiment's than have yet been proposed.

The first attacks on the institutional pattern of the high schoolwere sponsored by the Ford Fund for the Advancement of Educa-tion during the 1950s. Early admissions and advanced placementhave already been discussed, but they are, clearly relevant here too;both implied that the four-year high school course was not inviol-able. Team teaching was another approath which received somesupport from the Ford Fund; it was especially popular in humani-ties programs where the breadth of content required the talents ofteachers trained in several different subject areas. Experimentswith instructional groups of different sizes often evolved out ofthese teaching teams: large-group lectures one day, for example,followed by seminar discussions the next.'2 The "Rutgers Plan"was another early experiment that advocated variable class size.This emerged from a six-week workshop, held at Rutgers underFord Fund sponsorship during the summer of 1959. This workshopsought ways to allow teachers to work with students individually orin small discussion groups, without forcing schools to enlarge theirfaculties. Their proposal, quite radical for its time, involved acomplete restructuring of the time schedule and the use of "para-professionals" as nonteaching monitors. English classes wouldspend two days a week doing free reading, in groups as large as200; one day a week doing diagnostic tests and self-correctinghomework: one day a week in group discussions of student papers;and one day a week in group discussions of literature. Though theRutgers Plan was not widely adopted, it is important as anotherearly suggestion that class size and class groupings might be variedfor different instructional purposes. 33

The approach which is now becoming widespread is the electivecurriculum in English, but this is a blanket label for a wide varietyof different approaches to curriculum reform. Electives themselvesare of course not new: a four-year English course as a graduationrequirement has never been fully established. Even where studentsmust take four years of English, the senior course has often offeredelectives which could be taken either to supplement or to replacethe standard course. Most of the humanities courses discussed inthe previous chapter were offered as electives; so were the worldliterature courses out of which they grew. This form of elective

238 TRADITION AND REFORM

never posed a challenge to the traditional course, however; thechoice was usually as much a matter of "tracking" as it was of"electing," with certain courses clearly regarded as the prerogativeof the college-bound and nthers clearly appropriate for the terminalstudent. During the late 1960s, however, this changed radically,with the elective curriculum in its various manifestations beingsuggested as a replacement for the junior and senior high schoolcourse in English."

one source of this shift has been the failure of the academicmodel for the curriculum to find any widely accepted structuringprinciples. If there is no structure, the argument has gone, thenthere is no reason to impose one artificially through a four-year,required course of study. Let the teacher teach what he knows best,and the students study the subjects in which they are mostinterested. Courses which have emerged from this point of viewhave °firm been constructed on a loose analogy with the collegecurriculum, with highly academic offerings like "Eighteenth Cen-tury Poetry... "Communications," or "The Modern Novel." Inspite of such traditionalism, hnwever, a major argument in supportof the elective curriculum has been that it is more responsive to thedemands of the students, more "relevant," than the traditionalcourse. The hope is that if students gre allowed to choose what theywill study, their interest and enthusiasm will increase. In manyschools this has been coupled with an attempt to discover thecourses which students would like to have offered, rather thansimply giving them a choice among the particular interests of theteachers.

In some of the more interesting experiments, interest groupsresulting from a completely elective program of study have beenused to replace the traditional agegrade organization of the highschool. Teaching groups may contain the whole secondary schoolage range, though more usually this is restricted through a "phaseelective" system roughly comparab!e to the system of introductory,intermediate, and advanced courses of the college curriculum. Thenongraded curriculum was popularized by experiments at the Mel-bourne (Florid& High School during the early sixties, but it wasonly later combined with the elective approach." Where electiveshave been carried furthest, they have been combined with radicalrestructuring of the curriculum as a whole into "shnrt-cores" or"mini-courses" of anywhere from few weeks to a semester inlength: these provide students with new sets of options at regularIntervals. Class periods of variahle length, courses which meet onlya few times a week instead of every day, and independent studyhave been natural results of the attempt to fit the institutionalstructure to the course content, instead of the courses to theexisting institutional frame. Computer-compiled timetables havebeen crucial in snme of these programs, overcoming the otherwise

WINDS OF CHANGE 239

overwhelming complexities inherent in frequent readjustment ofcomplex schedules)"

Finally, proponents of behavioral objectives and programmedinstruction have also found that a program of electives is one of themore convenient ways to introduce their approaches, often pairingthem with some form of minimum essentials examination. In someversions of such programs, students enter the elective phase onlyafter successfully completing an introductory "basic skills" comseor proficiency examination. In others, the two proceed in concert,with programmed (or "self-paced") instructional units forming partof the work and elected courses forming the remainder. There isusually no choice about the skills program; all students must worktheir way to a certain level of competence, though instruction is"individualized" in that they can proceed at their own pace. Eventhis is not universal, however; in some programs a wide variety ofself-paced units are offered as electives."

At present, elective English is an administrative convenience; itrepresents no particular pedagogical theory though it has usefullyserved the ends of several. Because it has no structuring principlesof its own, the elective program is volatile. All kinds of new studiesand new approaches can find a place in the curriculum, and olderstudies that have usually taken second place can emerge on anequal footing. Film has become a full-fledged part of the Englishprogram in many schools; drama has emerged from its long dol-drums; literatures from other countries are receiving new and morefocussed attention. On the other hand, the very openness of theelective approach leaves it vulnerable to charges of frivolousness,triviality, and lack of coherence"charges which emphasize theneed for the elective curriculum to be treated as a way to implementa broader pedagogical theory, rather than as an end in itself. Untilit is placed within such a larger framework, the elective curriculumtotters between the Scylla of the academic, subject-centered ap-proach and the Charybdis of meeting trivial and temporary "needsand interests."

240 TannfrioN AND REFORM

CHAPTER VIII NOTES

1. Richard Corbin and Muriel Crosby, cochairmen, Language Pro-grams for the Disadvantaged, The Report of the NCTE Task Force onTouching English to the Disadvantaged (Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1965), pp.273.74.

2. D. W. Harding. "Response to Literature: The Report of the StudyGroup," in Response to Literature, Papers Relating to the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English, ed. James R. Squire(Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1968), p. 26.

3. William Stafford, Friends to This Ground, A Statement for Read-ers. Teachers, and Writers of Literature from the NCTE Commission onLiterature (Urbana, III.: NCTE, 1967), p. 19.

4. Leon M. Lessinger and Dwight H. Allen, "Performance Proposalsfor Educational Funding: A New Approach to Federal Resource Alloca-tion," Phi Delta Kappan 51 (November 1969): 136.37,

5. President Richard M, Nixon, Education Message of 1970. Cited byLeon Lessinger in "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Accounting for OurStewardship of Public Education," Educational Technology (January1971), p. 14.

6. Charles E. Silberman. Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of.4merican Education (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 201.034

7. James B. Conant, Slums and Suburbs (New York: Signet Books.1961). p. 24. On the earlier book, see "A Crisis of Confidence" in ChapterVII.

8. Shugrue calls the education of the disadvantaged "the major edu-cational issue in the United States." Michael F. Shugrue, English in aDecade of Change (New York: Pegasus, 1968), p. 142.

9. Corbin and Crosby, Language Progrmas for the Disadvantaged.There had been sporadic attention to such problems earlier. Morris Finder,"Teaching English to Slum-Dwelling Pupils," English Journal 44;4 (April1955): 199 -204 +; Herbert F. Ostrach, "English and the Lower-ClassStudent," English Journal 52:3 (March 1963): 196.99; and "Riposte,"English Journal 52:7 (October 1963): 542-46.

10. For further discussion of these programs, see Shugrue, English in aDecade of Change, and Corbin and Crosby, Language Programs for theDi..advantaged. Progress reports were also included in the curriculumstudy center reports. See footnote 43 in Chapter VII.

11. Corbin and Crosby, Language Programs for the Disadvantaged,pp. 112-13. These texts were eventually published by the Macmillan Co.

12. There have been three reports on the program. The first presentedit as it had developed at the W. J. Maxey Boys Training School. Thesecond presented a slightly fuller discussion together with the results ofstudies of its effectiveness. The third recounts the evolution of the pro-gram after it was introduced into the Garnet - Patterson Junior High Schoolin Washington, D.C. The reports are, respectively, Daniel N. Fader andMorton H, Shaevitz, Hooked on Books (New York: Berkley PublishingCo., 1966); Daniel N. Fader and Elton B. McNeil, Hooked on Rooks:Program and Proof (New York; Berkley Publishing Co., 1968); and DanielN. Fader. The Naked Children (New York: Macmillan Co., 1971. Thefigures on the spread of the program are from Fader and McNeil, p. 21.

WINDS OF CHANGE 241

13. 'Fader's program resembles most of the other products of thecurriculum study centers. in that it is impossible to untangle its variousportions to decide which were most important: The "proof" of successoffered in the second volume is weak; most of the results can he explainedin terms of the excitement and dedication of the teachers involved.14. The conference was reported by James R. Squire as A CommonPurpose: The Teaching of English in Great Britain, Canada, and theUnited States (Urbana, Ill.; NCTE. 1966). The background is recounted inthe introduction. pp. i-iii.

15. The seminar has been widely discussed and written about.. Twoofficial reports were prepared: John Dixon, Growth through English(Reading: National Association for the 'reaching of English, 1967); Her-bert el.' Muller. The Uses of English (New York: Holt,' Rinehart, andWinston. 19671, In addition. a series of NCTE pamphlet publicationsreprinted selections from seminar discussion papers.

Di. James It. Squire and Roger K. Applebee, Teaching English in theUnited Kingdom lUrbana, NCTE, 1969). Jerry Walker of the Univer-sky of Illinois summed up his reactions in a convention address thefollowing November. Ile had gone to England confident that the Britishapproaches were wrong; be came back to say, "Maybe they are right." Hisconversion was typical. "Bach, Rembrandt, Milton, and ThoSe OtherCats," English Journal 57:5 (May 19681: 63146.

17. Dixon. Growth through English, p. 9. The fullest statement of thispoint of view is James Britton's Language and Learning (London: AllenLane, The Penguin Press, 1970).18. Over 30 percent of the class time observed was devoted to speech ordramatic activities, compared to at most 12 percent in American schools.On drama. see Dixon, Growth through English, pp. 37 ff. i Muller, Uses ofEnglish. pp. 129 ff.: Squire and Applebee, Teaching English in the UnitedKingdom, pp. 197 ff.; and Douglas Barnes, ed., Drama in the EnglishClassmom, Papers Relating to the Anglo-American Seminar on the Teach-ing of English lUrbana. NCTE, 1968).19. James Britton; "Response to Literature," in Squire. Response toLiterature.20. There is much evidence of this shift within the teaching of Englishand within the teaching profession as a whole. The NCTE Commission onLiterature issued a statement in 1967 which directly challenged the conmaim of English as a discipline and once again talked of its importanceas a "generator of values and insightS" and as a part of a process ofdiscovery (see the quotation at the opening of this chapter). More general.ly, Charles E. Silberman (Crisis in the Classroom' has urged a return tomore humane values for American education us a whole.21. Personally as well as historically, the British experience led manyto a reassertion of concerns important earlier in their careers. Squire forone had begun with an emphasis on response. In his first English Journalarticle he bad recommended finger-painting and charcoal sketching aslegitimate approaches in teaching poetry. though such activities fell out offavor (luring the period of academic concern. James It. Squire and MerrittBeckerman. The Release of Expression," English Journal 39:3 (March19501: 145-49.

242 TRADITION AND REFORM

22. See Daniel J. Dieterich, "Performance Contracts," English Journal61:4 (April 1972): 606-14: "For the Members." English Journal 61:4 (April1972): unpuginated insert.

23.. Committee for Economic Development. Education for the UrbanDisadvantaged. A Statement on National Policy by the Research andPolicy Committee (New York: CED, March 1971), p. 60: Sue M. Brett,The Federal View of Behavioral Objectives," in On Writing Behavioral

Objectives for English, ed. John Maxwell and Anthony Tovatt (Urbana,Ill.; NC'I'E, 1970). See the quotation introducing this chapter.

24. Robert F. Mager, Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruc-tion (San Francisco: Fearon Publishers. 1961): Preparing InstructionalObjectives (San Francisco: Fearon Publishers, 1962). See especially pp.xii, 13.

25. For a brief, lucid, and sympathetic discussion of the evolution ofprogramming approach. see W.. Lee Garner, Programmed Instruction(New York: Center for Applied Research in Education, 1966).

26. J. N. Hook; "The Tri-University ROE Project: A Progress Re-port," in On Writing Behavioral Objectives, ed. Maxwell and Tovatt.See p. 76.

27. James Hoetlter, "Limitations and Advantages of Behavioral Objec-tives in the Arts and Humanities," in On Writing Behavioral Objectives.ed. Maxwell and Tovatt. For a preliminary list of objectives from theTriniversity Project, see Arnold Lazarus. "Performance Objectives inReading and Responding to Literature." English Journal 6111 (January1972): 52-58, For a thorough attempt to repudiate objections to behavioralobjectives, see W. James Popham. "Probing 'the Validity of ArgumentsAgainst Behavioral Goals," in Behavioral Objectives and Instruction.Robert J. Kibler, Larry L. Barker. and David T. Miles (Boston; Allyn andBacon. 19701..

28. Maxwell and Tovatt, On Writing Behavioral Objectives. p. ix. Inthe spring of 1971, the commission adopted a "Statement on Accountabil-ity" which similarly urged a broad perspective on goals for Englishinstruction, while at the same time accepting "the broad principle ofaccountability." Both sides of the debate are presented in further detail inAccountability and the Teaching of English, ed. Henry B. Maloney(Urbana, III.: NCTE. 1972): and Goal Making for English Teaching, ed.Henry IL Maloney (Urbana, III,: NCTE. 1973).

29. Silberman, Crisis in the Classroom.30. For examples of some of these innovations, see Saralee Amsden,

"Have You. Ever Tried Contracting for Grades?" English Journal 59:9(December 1970): 1279.82; Kenneth R. McCormic and C. Louis Kaupp,An Elective English Program for the Non-College Bound," English

Journal 61:2 (February 1972): 277-80; Gary Cavanaugh. "Sanity and Bal-ance in a High School English Program." English Journal 61:2 (February1972); 270-276+; and Deborah W. Manaster; "An Experiment in Student-Run Seminars." English Journal 61:1 'January 1972): 113-16. For acomprehensive review of recent interest in drama and dramatics, seeJames Hoetker, Dramatics and the Teaching of English (Urbana,WEE. 1969).

31. T-groups, deriving from the methods of Cdr.! Rogers. are advocatedby Thomas D. Klein in "Personal Growth in the Classroom," English

WINDS OF CHANGE 243

Journal 59:2 (February 1970): 235-43. On gaming, see James M. Brew -baker, "Simulation Games and the English Teacher," English Journal61:1 (January 1972): 104,09 ; Sarane S. Boocock, Simulation Games inLearning (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. 19681; and Elliott Carlson,"Games in the Classroom," Saturday Review, April 15, 1067.

32. These and other early experiments with the form of the Englishcurriculum are discussed by James It. Squire and Roger K. Applebee,High School English Instruction Thday (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968), pp. 204.36, On team teaching, see James I,. Stafford, AnExploration into Team Teaching in English and the Humanities. Spon-sored by the Southern California Council of Teachers of English (Cham-paign, Ill.; NCTE, 1063).

33. The plan was presented by Paul B. Diederich, "The Rutgers Planfor Cutting Class Size in Two," English Journal 49:4 (April 1960): 229-36-4-, For a negative reaction, see Lawrence Nib lett, "The Rutgers Plan: NotEnough or the Right Kind of Help," English Journal 49:7 (October 1960):481-82. For a recent review of the use of paraprofessionals, see Howard G,Getz, Paraprofessionals in the English Department (Urbana. NOTE;ERIC, 19721.

:14. George Hillocks, Jr., has presented a lengthy appraisal of theelective movement, including details of many different courses. Alterna-tives in English: A Critical Appraisal of Elective Programs (Urbana. 111.:NCTK, 1972)-

35. G. Robert Carlson defends the nongraded elective systempio-neered at the University of Iowa laboratory school in 1960 as providing"alternatives for students who are different minded." "Some RandomObservationsAbout the English Curriculum," English Journal 61:7 (Oc-tober 1972): 1004-09. See also B. Frank Brown, The Non-Graded HighSchool (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1964); DonaldWeise, "Nong,rading, Electing, and Phasing: Basics of Revolution forRelevance." English Journal 50:1 (January 1970): 122-36; and Ann NI,Juelde, "Spontaneity with a Purpose: Elective English Programs," En-glish Journal 61:4 (April 1972): 529-35.

36, See for example Adele H. Stern, "Sorry, Dr. Silberman! Mini-Courses in the High School," English Journal 61:4 (April 1972): 550-54; andSister Mary Sylvia, "Individualized Education and/or the Mod Squad,"English Journal 61:1 (January 1972): 78-80.

37. See John Rishen. "The Changing Face of EnglishOne School'sNew Program," English Journal 59:3 (March 1970): 524.271 and VivianGeddes, "1 ndividuaiized Self- Paced English," English Journal 61:3 (Match19721; 413 ff.

38, See the criticisms offered by Robert J. Fitzgerald after visiting anumber of popular programs. Fitzgerald was an early supporter of elec-tives but became disillusioned by what he found. "The New Supermarket:A 'Dystopiani View of English Electives," 'English Journal 61:4 (April1972): 536-49.

This chapter is a summary of a number of continuing problems in theteaching of English. It is a personal statement, not an historical one, but itarises out of the long immersion in historical questions that preparing thisbook required. In a sense, it is a statement of the lessons of history, as oneperson learned them.

Chapter IX

Afterword:The Problems Remaining

Teachers of literature have never successfully resisted the pressureto formulate their subject as a body of knowledge to be imparted.

The teaching of literature has from the beginning been underconsiderable pressure to formulate itself as a body of knowledge, arecognized content to be acquired by the student. In the delibera-tions of the Committee of Ten and its Vassar Conference such aconceptualization was overt, a necessary precondition if the subjectwere to take its place beside the other subjects as a true disciplin-ary study. In later years it was more often covert, emerging not inthe philosophy of the subject matter. but in the way in which thatphilosophy was operaLi. ialized in the classroom. Thus the progres-sives of the late thirties, who provided the most complete rationalefor English as a series of experiences rather than a specific set ofcontent, in the end structured their curriculum around a series of"enabling objectives" which continued to stress knowledge; the"primary objectives" derived from the experience approach hadlittle direct influence on the classroom.

This stress on content has been in part responsible for theuneasiness which teachers of English have traditionally felt aboutthe definition of their subject matter. The Committee of Ten ineffect brought together a number of disparate subjects, each withits own body of rules and formal subject matter, and called them"English." Beyond the cliche that each of these studies deals withlanguage, they have no real unity as subject matter; attempts tointerrelate them have been artificial and, for the most part, short-lived. Whether the model for the educational process has beengrowth in language, the four basic skills (reading, writing, listen-ing. speaking), or the three basic disciplines.(language, literature,and composition), some aspect of what teachers considered to be

245

246 TRADITION AND REEOHNI

important has been lost, reemerging to assert its own values andundercut the basis of the reconciliation. Inevitably, the edges of thesubject have blurred and wavered, creating for the teacher ofEnglish a perpetual crisis of identity.

The acknowledged goals of the teaching of literature. are in conflictwith the emphasis on specific knowledge or content.

Part of the uneasiness which teachers have felt with attempts todefine their subject matter as a body of knowledge results from anawareness, often unarticulated, that the goals which they seek toaccomplish through the teaching, of literature are ultimately notdefined by such knowledge, but rather are questions of values andperspectivethe kinds of goals usually summed up as those of a"liberal" or "humanistic" education. At all stages of our history,including those in which the primary goals of education would seemmost antithetical to such emphases, teachers have paid at leastpassing tribute to the broadening aspects of literature. Only rarelyhave they considered, however, the implications of such an empha-sis for the way their subject should be taught, being for the mostpart content to assume that the humanistic benefits would follownaturally from exposure to the proper content; the repeated obser-vation that the teaching of literature was failing to achieve thosebroader ends with any significant number of students has usuallybeen mustered during the course of an attempt to substitute onebody of content for another, rather than to suggest that it is thestress on content itself that is at fault.

Teachers of English need to make the distinction between knowl-edge which informs their teaching, and that which should beimparted to the student.

Virtually every development in scholarship in English studieshas been seen as offering the inevitably proper definition of thecontent of the secondary school class. Grammar and rhetoric in theeighteenth century, philology in the nineteenth, sociology duringthe thirties, semantics in the forties, and the New Criticism in thesixties have been taken up and transplanted by enthusiastic teach-ers; and each has been supplanted in its turn by equally enthusi-astic proponents of a newer critical perspective, or, in periods ofextreme disorientation, by those who claim that everything is valid(and necessary) if we are to give students a all experience ofliterature.

Yet without questioning the value of scholarship, it is legitimateto ask whether such developments in critical theory should be sodirectly generalized to the presumably less sophisticated studies ofthe secondary school classroom. There must be some level of

Tio: l'imailims Itch :Ammo 247

response to (or knowledge about) literature that intervenes betweenthat of the novice and that of the scholar, and it is presumably withthose intervening levels khat a secondary school teacher should beconcerned. The generalizations of scholarship and criticism willcertainly be of importance in providing teachers with a frame ofreference to order and direct their teaching, but a frame of referencefor the teacher and a body of knowledge for the student aredifferent things.

This over-responsiveness to scholarly emphases has led propo-nents of virtually all points of view to ask that the secondaryprogram in literature achieve a goal or series of goals which in facthave not been realized at any level of scholarship. The attempts atdefining a curriculum which fall into this category are endless: thesurvey course designed to give an historical view of literature, whena comprehensive history of literature has yet to be written: the corecurriculum designed to unify the various fields of knowledge, whenphilosophers and scholars alike have struggled to achieve such asynthesis even for themselves; the spiral curriculum which seeks tobuild a sequence and scope on the basis of the structure of thediscipline, when scholarly views of the "discipline- of English arethemselves only beginning to emerge and are often in conflict; theattempt to prescribe critical standards for motion pictures beforethe medium had evolved or critical theory had built up around it.The quarrel in all of these cases is not with the vision of the teacheras coequal in the struggle to solve complex professional and schol-arly problems; it is with the parochial presupposition (so evident inmany, discussions) that the solutions are ready at hand, waitingonly for the teacher to have the courage to abandon his outmodedways and, finally, bring the light and power of knowledge to hisstudents.

There is a need to reconceptualize the "literary heritage" and itsimplications for patterns of teaching.

The proposition that a meaningful literary heritage may besomething other than knowledge of the Great Books has too rarelybeen entertained. The teaching of literature began as an attempt tointroduce students to the best authors and writings of the Englishtradition, with instruction at times concentrating wholly on bio-graphical and historical data. Such studies were thought to haveseveral justifications: they would provide a common set of referencepoints for the culture at large; they would teach the student torespect that culture by giving him a sense of his "heritage"; andthey would improve his personal system of values. Only graduallydid the implicit faith in the power of these books begin to bereplaced by an awareness that they do not automatically exert theirbenevolent influence,

248 TaAertION AND it EFORM

Any definition of a literary heritage in terms of specific books orauthors distorts the cultural significance of a literary tradition byfailing to recognize that what the Great Books offer is a continuingdialogue 'on the moral and philosophical questions central to theculture itself. The usefulness of the heritage lies in the confronta-tion with these issues which it provides: any acquaintanceshipwhich avoids the confrontation is both trivial and irrelevant, anobservation often subsumed in the comment that each generationtakes from the past what it needs, reconstructing the literaryhierarchy on contemporary terms.

Yet even accepting such a need for engagement, there remaindifficult questions about what exactly is necessary to achieve thedesired goals. Does a sense of heritage require that all readers haveexperience with the same books? the same authors? some writingsfrom the same centuries? Or can it, as -the authors of the Harvardreport on general education asserted, arise simply from contempo-rary reinterpretations of the central philosophical issues? One could-argue from this point of view that the teacher should turn tocontemporary voices not as bridges to works of the past, butbecause they are themselves the living embodiment of that part ofthe literary heritage which is of most concern. This is not to denythat the perspective of the past offers important insights into thepresent, nor that it can deepen and enrich contemporary thought; itis simply to assert that it is the contemporary thought which is offoremost importance.

The teaching of literature is a political act.

From the time of its use in colonial primers, the power ofliterature to shape values and beliefs has been recognized and putto use. How it has been used has been to some extent responsive tocultural and political forces, during the nineteenth century shiftingfrom religious doctrine to secularizations of the Protestant ethic,and later still toward the social and political reform of the progres-sive era. The progressive educators recognized perhaps most fullythat literature is fundamentally a progressive force in society.'Notonly do contemporary authors tend to challenge and redefine con-ventional beliefs, but the much vaunted "broadening" of experiencethat literature offers implies that it is valuable to broaden thepersonal and social perspectives of the peer culture. To transcendboundariesgeographical, social, ethnic, historical, or moralthrough literature is a first step toward transcending them in otheraspects of one's life.

Of all of the approaches to the teaching of literature, thatassociated with providing students with a sense of their literaryheritage is most often associated with a conservative point of view,yet even it is ultimately a disruptive rather than a stabilizing

THE PROBLEMS REMAINING 249

element. It would be very difficult to argue that the values whichgive continuity and stability to a society such as ours are in factthose to be found in the literature of the past. Though we may findcontinuing attention to certain moral (and political) dilemmas, theresolutions offered by Shakespeare certainly differ radically fromthoseof Plato or Sartre, just as the conception of democracy whichone can find in the writings of the founding fathers differs in certainbasic ways from that which guides our country. today. If ourcultural traditions were those of stability rather than change, and ifour great literature arose out of and reflected those values, wemight be able to offer the literary heritage as the stabilizing force itis often thought to be. Instead, the Great Works offer the samechallenges to the parochial point of view as do contemporarywriters, though they do not deal with them in contemporary terms.The moral dilemmas, the shifting perspective, the catholicity ofviews are implicitly offered to anyone who studies literature at all.

These progressive goals of improving the individual jandthrough him, society) may be in direct opposition to the goals of ahody politic concerned primarily with stability. An implicit recogni-tion of this tension between literature and convention may be acontributing factor in the teacher's continuing search for ways todefine a circumscribed and thus safer body of knowledge. Becausethe school is locally controlled and vulnerable to community pres-sure, because the teacher is often a product of that community andthat culture, it has simply been more convenient to teach aboutliterature and thus to limit its progressive. impulses.

Language skills have been narrowly conceptualized as an indepen-dent and functional aspect of the English program.

Language skills have played a central role in justifications forthe role of English in the school curriculum. Whether educatingimmigrants at the turn of the century or defending the importanceof English to national defense during the sixties, teachers havebeen quick to cite the importance of speaking, listening, reading,and writing in day-to-day life. More often than not, such defenseshave provided the screen behind which the teaching of literaturecould continue to flourish.

Yet in spite of the continuing importance of skills to the defenseof the curriculum as a whole, there has been precious little consid-eration of the relationship between the skills of English and the"higher" goals of expression or response to literature. Almostwithout exception, skills have been treated as subjects for directteaching, sometimes within a framework of lessons, sometimes as"incidental" or "functional" instruction opportunistically insertedin the course of other work. In language the tenacity of directteaching is especially clear because of the old and well-documented

250 TRADITION AND REFORM

evidence that grammatical knowledge has no demonstrable rela-tionship to writing ability; but grammar has held its place in thecurriculum, protected by the desire of teachers to have somethingconcrete and "useful" to do in their classes. In the teaching ofliterature, the focus on skills has meant attention to reading, withany special skills involved in the reading of literature lumpedtogether as "higher" reading skills.

Yet consider the implications of asserting that the humanisticaspects of English build on skills. It is then legitimateevenwiseto assert that there is no point in teaching literature whenthe students have not "mastered" all of the skills of reading. Oneof the sad results of exactly such a conceptualization of literatureas the culmination of the readingprogram has been the nearlycomplete elimination of literary materials from elementary schoolreaders, a trend that has hegun to reverse itself somewhat inresponse to widespread criticism of the Dick and Jane stories, aswell -as the more positive examples offered by such children'sauthors as Dr. Seuss At the high school level, similar assumptionshave led to the rather pedestrian selections that fill the anthologiesfor !he lower tracks.

Considerable evidence has accumulated to suggestif commonsense is not enoughthat literary response is not the last part ofthe hierarchy of reading skills but is indeed primal and immediate.Children's love of word games and nursery rhymes is well knownand has often been cited as the first stage of literary developmentsurely preceding the development of reading skillsand the profes-sional literature is full of anecdotal accounts of non - readers who,like Fader's delinquent boys, responded immediately and withconsiderable depth to literary selections far above their "readinglevel," as well as to artistic presentations through media such asstage or film. Few indeed would assert that it is good pedagogy toprovide a tenth grader reading at a second grade level with .a secondgrade reading text; yet that is the logical conclusion to draw if oneaccepts literature as representing a set of "higher reading skills,"More progress might be expected in the teaching of literature ifteachers recognized that it involves a response to patterns ofexperience not necessarily dependent upon reading skills at all.

A focus on correcting taste has obscured the need for fosteringresponse.

The notion of "taste" in literature is another term which, like"heritage," has suffered from the attempt to define the subject as abody of content, Concentrating on adult standards of mature (or"good ") literature, teachers have conceptualized children's prefer-ences negatively, as something to be exposed in their shallownessand eliminated. This has been most evident in attitudes toward

THE 11/40III.EMS REMAINING .251

journalism and motion pictures; these were confronted at leastinitially as evils lurking just over the horizon, ready to lure theunsuspecting pupil away from his six-foot shelf. Similar attitudes,however. have led teachers of literature to spend many class hoursderiding Zane Grey, 0. Henry, or (more recently) James Bond. It isa curiously negative stance for a profession that prides itself on thebroadening and humanistic values of its subject matter, a stancethat condemns without providing a real alternative; the ready andeasy path for the student to follow is to discover the teacher'spreferences, a body of knowledge ahout acceptable responses to belearned and used during English class, and promptly set asidethereafter.

It is exactly because it produces this result that the stress ontaste is antithetical to the underlying goals of instruction. The wayto build tasteas has heen recognized by some teachers in all ofour historical periodsis to open new vistas rather than to shut offold ones. Everyone reads with pleasure at many different levels;even the sophisticated literary scholar has been known to admitthat in (daily) moments of weakness he picks up the comic strips. Itis a natural and perfectly wholesome response, and the base onwhich any more sophisticated response must build.

The stress on developing "good taste" through their classes inliter& vure has made teachers overly sensitive to the less distin-guished products of contemporary culture. Somehow students al-ways read less than they "used to"; poetry is always "neglectedcompletely"; teaching has obviously "failed" when the second-ratemovie draws the largest crowds, and Forever Amber or Love Storytops the best seller lists. Few realize the extent to which eachgeneration has had its formula authors; we are simply more awareof our own because time has dimmed the memory of those thatcame before.

If the teacher has failed. it has been a failure to recognize thatthe appeal of the second rate involves a legitimate literary responseupon which he should seek to huild. The greatest art is structuredfrom the same elements; it differs from the lesser only in thesubtlety and complexity with which those elements are put to use.It is this very structural complexity and subtlety, if we accept theone lesson the New Critics should have driven home to us all, whichgiVes the "great" literature its depth of meaning and significance,and which allows us tc return again and again for fresh insights andnew perspectives.

The educative effects of the act of reading need to be defined.

Because skills have been viewed as a separate dimension of workin English, often undertaken as a "service" to other areas of the

252 TRADITION AND REFORM

school, there has heen little attention to the extent to which theyare a natural result of other aspects of English studies. Thoughteachers have exhibited an implicit faith that the act of reading isitself educative %hen they have encouraged wide reading as anadjunct of their regular program of instruction, there have beenvirtually no attempts to formulate what exactly those effects are.Proponents of extensive study have been content with the vaguesupposition that such work in some sense "broadens" the student;supporters of intensive work have just as assuredly asserted thatresponse follows understanding.

Yet this surely is an oversimplification; a reader begins withsome sense of meaning, however incomplete, and it is this originalresponse which is refined and guided by the process of closeanalysis and explicit interpretation. But if reading does begin withsome sense of meaning, the very structural features which closereading emphasizes must exert a certain discipline over the reader'sresponse, shaping and controlling his experience perhaps to agreater extent than teachers have recognized or been willing toadmit. The patterned nature of a work of literature will bring areader up short if his own interpretation begins to wander too farfrom that which the author intended, though it may still remain atquite a distance from the scholar's perception of the work, or evenfrom a response that a scholar would accept as "correct" iin thesense of fully consistent, parsimonious, and nontrivial. Evengranting that the response of the novice will miss much of thecomplexity and subtlety of the "great works," it does not necessar-ily follow that the educative power of well-written passages is notstrong enough to develop in the student who is reading widelyexactly the same sensitivity that the advocates of close readinghave been concerned with. Since the effects of extensive reading aremore personal and less explicitly formulated, they may provoke aresponse less subject to the "distancing" and loss of involvementthat can result from the imposition of a cognitive, content-centeredframe of reference.

Goals for the study of English depend upon prior assumptionsabout the nature and purpose of education.

Much attention has always been given to the specification ofadequate goals for instruction in English. It has been taught as away to exercise the faculties of memory and reason, to teach basiclanguage skills, to provide guidance and adjustment, to introducethe student to the conceptual structure of an academic discipline.Such goals are often in conflict and can be ordered only on the basisof principles which derive from assumptions about education as awhole. If academic subject matter is to be at the top of theeducational hierarchy, goals for instruction must logically be based

THE PROBLEMS (REMAINING 253

in the discipline itself. Any discovery that the discipline is illdefined and somewhat unstable does noralter this, though it maymake the problem more difficult during the interim period ofattempting to reformulate what Frye has called the "elementaryteaching principles." Conversely, if the purpose, of education ispersonal and linguistic growth, then the goals for instruction mustbe formulated in terms of that growth rather than in the structur-ing principles of the discipline of Englisheven if those principleshave been agreed upon.

It has always been possible to provide an "inventory" of goals(behavioral or otherwise) for English, but such an inventory con-fuses rather than clarifies the instructional issues: an inventory' initself provides no way to determine which goals are central andwhich peripheral and derivative. This is the importance of theperennial question, "What is English?" To answer it is to specifyimplicitly which goals are central and which of lesser importance.If, for example, English is defined as a set of mechanical skills inlanguage use, a goal such as "good spelling'. may emerge near thetop of the hierarchy. It becomes important in itself and instructioncan be focussed directly upon it. This has in fact sometimeshappened because spelling has been defined as a mark of a goodeducation; students have been tested and drilled in spelling for itsown sake. If. however, English is defined as a way to order andunderstand the world through language, then spelling becomes asecondary goal. The focus of instruction will be on using languagein a significant exploration of the world, with spelling simply a skillwhich is useful but not central in that process. Though spellingmay still be taught directly, such teaching will have to be assessedin terms of its effect on the larger goal rather than simply in termsof improvement in spelling ability.

Sequence in the study of English must derive from psychologicalrather than logical principles.

Nineteenth century pedagogy derived from mental discipline andfaculty psychology represented theextreme opposite of this point ofview: at that time the educational value of a subject was held tostem from its logical principles, and these were taught directly. Inthe teaching of English the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and compo-sition were originally important for these reasons. Dewey and theprogressives emphasized that this was improper, that educationmust be based on the psychology of the child rather than the logicof the discipline; but their admonitions were never widely observedat the secondary school level, The prohlem was and is that psychol;ogical patterns are far more complex and less fully understood thanlogical ones; anything more than a metaphorical use of terms like"growth" and "experience" is extremely difficult.

251 TRADITION AND REFORM

This is one of the problems with behavioral objectives: theycarry with them pedagogical principles which assume that de-sired goals can be reached through the acquisition of componentbehaviors, Though this approach may seem reasonable, it repre-sents a quantum leap in our knowledge about the psychologicalprocesses underlying the teaching and learning of English. We canattempt. as the Tri-University Project has done, to list the endpoints of the program; and given the end points we can define abeginning as "where the student is." The territory between thesetwo extremes is vast and uncharted; there is no reason to assumethat the best way from one to another will be a straight lineoreven that there is one "best" route that students should follow.

The most evident examples come from the teaching of compo-Sidon. For many years the classroom emphasis in this aspect ofEnglish has been on exactly the sorts of skills that can be mosteasily formulated in terms of behavioral objectives: correct spelling,good grammar, paragraph form, and the like. All of these are seenas very direct antecedents of what has been viewed as good adultwriting. Yet when the mechanics of good writing have heen success-fully taught, good expression has not necessarily followed; the onedoes not grow steadily into the other. In a similar way, within thestudy of literature the emphasis on the skills of reading has not led,as some have, hoped, into the "higher", skills involved in response toliterature. Whether formulated inthe pedagogical terms of W. S.Gray and the/reading specialists or in the literary terms of the NewCritics, the attempt to provide the "missing elements" .of themature response has not been successfulpresumably because the'relationship between the mature response and the elements whichmake it up has a different psychological nature than those attemptshave assumed.

9I'he proponents of behavioral objectives quite rightly assert thatif we are going to teach a lesson, we had better know why we areteaching it. Yet to be able to formulate objectives for a course, andin finer grain for any given lesson, does not mean that we can'specify a sequence of component behaviors that contribute to thosegoals. Behavioral objectives are the wrong sort of objectives for theteaching of English not because they emphasize behavior, and notbecause they ask us to be precise about what we -are doing, butbecause they divert attention from the central problem of establish-ing and maintaining instructional priorities. They assume thatthere are clear and precise "steps along the way" to the goals wedesire, and that the best way to those goals is to concentrate uponthose "steps." But the teaching of literature is a more tentativeenterprise than this implies; we know too little about fostering thekind of development we seem to cherish. The very materials withwhich we are working are so complex, touching upon such differentaspects of the child's linguistic and moral development, that theymay always resist formulation in the short-term stages that behav-

THE PROBLEMS REMAINING 255

ioral objectives imply. What we seek to do in English is not to adddiscrete components of skill or knowledge, but gradually to elabo-rate the linguistic and intellectual repertoire of our students, aprocess that is more fluid than linear, more fortuitous than predict-able.

The defenders of behavioral objectives argue that such complexand humanistic objectives need not be abused but in fact can beclarified and illuminated; but this is naive. The pressures for a.hard content in English are strong, and the balance of instructionaleffort easily tipped in their favor. On the other hand, there is a clearneed for a wellformulated set of goals within a conceptual framefrom which the sequence and direction of instruction can be speci-fied. One of the failures of the progressive program in the latethirties was its inability to specify precisely its structuring princi-ples, leaving the "experience curriculum" subject to a continuingloss of focus and gradual erosion. When the principles on which thescope and sequence of instruction are to be based are not clearlyspecified, it is inevitable that irrelevant activities will claim a place;and it is just as inevitable that, if this second stratum of thecurriculum has an internal logic of its -own, that logic will seek tofill the gap in curriculum theory and establish itself in a centralrather than a secondary role. Certainly such a filling-of-the-voidhad much to do with the replacement of experience by adjustmentduring the forties and fifties, for adjustment had at least a clearlydefined end point.

The Next Chapters

English as a school subject is relatively young; its historystretches back barely a hundred years, its place of prominence muchless than that. During that time English has responded openly tochanging pedagogical and social concerns, assimilating and redefin-ing them as necessary. Though its very openness has led to manyfalse starts and temporary diversionseven a propensity for fadsand gimmicksover the long term it has shed the distortions of onepoint of view after another. Here, too, we may be dealing with theeducative effects of the subject matter: the scope of English is toobroad, its influence, on those who teach it too consuming, for it tolong remain confined within a narrow framework. Today's teachersof English are better trained than their predecessors, with a strongernational organization and a more professionally oriented body ofcolleagues than at any previous time. Though the shape of the "newEnglish" may be unclear from the perspective of the present, thenext chapters of this history, when they are written, will surelydescribe a curriculum better than any we have seen in the past.

This section gathers together important secondary sources and surveys of theteaching of English; those which figured prominently in the present study arebriefly annotated. The many contemporary hooks, articles, and monographsout of which the history grew are not listed here; representative examples arereferenced in the appropriate places in the text. Dissertations dealing withany aspect of the history of English instruction are included in thebibliography, even when not directly relevant to the teaching of literature.

V 3 b

Selected Bibliography

Ackert, Walter Scott. A History of English Studies to 1883 Based on theResearch of William Riley Parker. Dissertation, New York University,1972. University Microfilms No. 72-31,057.

Adler, Richard, and Applebee, Arthur N. Annotated Humanities Programs.Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1968. Descriptive annotations of programs in allparts of the nation. No summary or evaluation provided in this report.

Aikin, Wilford NI. The Story of the Eight-Year Study. New York: Harperand Bros., 1942. Summary of the Eight-Year Study of the ProgressiveEducation Association by its areeter. Discusses background and aims.

Allen, Don Cameron. The Ph.D. in English and American Literature.'NewYork: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968. First chapter discusses devel-opment of English studies in American colleges and universities.

Anderson, Scarvia. Between the Grimms and The Group': Literature inAmerican High Schools. Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service,1904. Random survey of course requirements.

Beesley, Patricia. The Revival of the Humanities in American Education.New York: Columbia University Press, 1940. Summarizes changes incollege programs as part of general education movement.

Bell, Daniel. The Reforming of General Education. New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1966. Includes good discussion of history and cur-rent trends.

Bennett, Robert, ed. Summary Progress Report of English CurriculumStudy and Demonstration Centers. Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1966.Reports from the directors of the study centers.

Edel Ann Winje. A 1) :riptive Analysis of Anthologies for theTenth Grade as the Texts 2 Related to the Objectives for the Studyof Literature as Expressed by National Professional Groups. Disserta-tion, Indiana University, 1965. University Microfilms No. 65.14031.Traces attitudes of MLA, NCTE. CEEB. NSSE. NEA, and NASSPtoward "modern" philosophy of instruction in literature. Concludestexts follow major trends.

257

258 TRADITION AND REFORM

Bernd. John Muth. Approaches to the Teaching of Literature in SecondarySchool, 1900-1956. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1957. Uni-versity Microfilms No. 24,264. Good discussion of justifications forthe various approaches in successive periods: classics, historical/chronological, types. themes, problems, individual reading, correlation.

Bernhardt, Norma Woosley. Trends in the Teaching of English WrittenComposition in the Secondary Schools of the United States: 1900.1960.Dissertation, University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), 1963. Uni-versity Microfilms No. 64-1834.

Hessy. Mabel A. Report of a Committee of the NCTE on the Use of theMagazine in the High School English Classroom. Chicago: NCTE,1935. 1934 survey of magazine use in classrooms of 600 teachers.

1311 h, Evelyn Rezek. Anthologies of American Literature, 1787-1964. Dis-sertation, Columbia University, 1965. University Microfilms No.66-1728. Traces evolution of commerical as well as school anthology.Best available discussion of early forms of these books.

Billett. Ray 0. Provisions for Individual Differences, Marking, and Pro-motion. LISOE Bulletin 1932, no. 17 (National-Survey of SecondaryEducation Report no. 131. Washington, D.C.: Government Print-ing Office, 1933. Survey of practice in 3,594 secondary schools; dis-cusses Dalton, Morrison. project, problem, contract, and other

methods.Boring, Edwin G. A History of Experimental Psychology. New York:

Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1929. Discusses changes in psychologyduring early twentieth century.

Botts, Roderic Chellis. Influences on the Teaching of English, 1917-35: AnIllusion of Progress. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1970. Uni-versity Microfilms No. 71-1799.

Bowers, C. A. The Progressive Educator and the Depression. New York:Random House, 1969. Background on social movements and educa-tional reform during the 1930s, especially on the social reconstructionists.

Braddock, Richard, et al. Research in Written Composition. Urbana, Ill.:NCTE, 1963. Critical review and summary of research.

Broome, Edwin C. A Historical and Critical Discussion of College Admis-sion Requirements. Contributions to Philosophy, Psychology, andEducation, nos. 3-4. New York: Columbia University Press, 1903.Traces requirements from their origin in colonial colleges.

Burd, Henry A. "English Literature Courses in the Small College," EnglishJournal 3:2 (February 1914), 99-108. Report of an NCTE survey.

Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States. Washing-ton, D.C.: Government. Printing Office, 1960. Summarizes census andBureau of Education statistics on the growth of the schools; includesestimates of students enrolled in English after 1900.

I3urress, Lee A., Jr. How Censorship Affects the School. Special Bulletinno. 8. Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English, 1963. Survey of cen-sorship in Wisconsin schools.

Butler, Donna, and O'Donnell, Bernard. A Guide to Available ProjectEnglish Materials, Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1969. Abstracts and bibli-ographical information for available materials.

Callahan. Raymond E. Education and the Cult of Efficiency. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1962. Major sourcc on the efficiencymovement in education in early twentieth century.

SF:LECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 259

Carpenter, George Baker, Franklin 1'.; and Scott, Fred N. The Teaching

of English in the Elementary and the Secondary School. New York:Longinans, Green, and Co., 1903. Extensive discussions of trends inthe teaching of -English up to 1900. Thorough bibliographies on allaspects of instruction.

Clapp. John Mantle. The Place of English in American Life. Report of anInvestigation by a CoMmittee of the National Council of Teachers ofEnglish. Chicago: NCTE, 1926. Survey of the uses of English in var-ious occupations and social classes.

Clapp. John Mantle. "Report of Committee on Place and Function of English in American Life." English Journal 15:2 (February 1926), 110-34.Suntmary of committee report.

Cmnmager, Henry Steele, ed. hicauffey's .Fifth Eclectic Reader. NewYork: New American Library, 1962. Commuger's introduction to thisreprint edition outlines the history and influence of the series of readers.

Commission on English. Examining the Examination in English. HarvardStudies in English, vol. 17. Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress. 193. Reviews the history and forth of the examinations set by

the College Board.Commission on English. Freedom and Discipline in English. New York:

College Entrance Examination Board, 1965. Reviews the work of theCommission on English established in 1959.

Committee of the Faculty of Harvard College and of the Graduate Schoolof Education. The Training of Secondary School Teachers Especiallywith Reference to English. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1942. Reviews effect of the expansion of public education uponteacher education; comments on the influence of NCTE.

Committee of the Massachusetti Teachers Association. "English in Secon-dary Schools" The Academy 3 (January 1889), 593-609. Survey ofMassachusetts schools- and of 50 "important" high schools in otherstates: spread and characteristics of course, methods of study.

Committee of the Northern Illinois High School Teachers' Association."English in the High School," The Academy 4 (May 1889), 179-200.Report of 1888 survey of national sample of 135 schools.

Committee of Ten of the NEA. Report of the Committee of Ten on Secon-dary School Studies, with the Reports of the Conferences Arranged bythe Committee. New York: American Book Co. for the NEA, 1894.Contains the report of the Vassar Conference on English held in 1893.

Committee bn College Entrance Requirements in English. "The Influenceof the Ur iform Entrance Requirements in English," English Journal1:2 (February 1912), 95-121. Survey carried out by NEA committeechaired by Hosic.

Committee on English Equipment. "Report of the Committee," EnglishJournal 2:3 (March 1913), 178-84-Early NCTE survey.

Committee on General Education. General Edncation in a Free Society.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1945. Reviews changes

in the high schools in relation to general education.Committee on the High School Course in English. "Types of Organization

of High-School English," English Journal 2:8 (November 1913h575-96. Questionnaire survey of national sample of 307 schools; classsize, organization, emphases, and titles.

2(10 TRADITION AND REFORM

Committee on National Interest. 77w National Interest and the Continu-ing Education of Teachers of English: A Report on the State of theProfession, 1964. Urbana, Ill.; NCTE, 1964. Second survey on teach-ing conditions and teacher preparation.

Committee on National Interest. The National Interest and the Teachingof English: A Report on the Status of the Profession. Urbana, III.;NCTE, 1961. Extensive description of professional conditions, includ-ing some new data from questionnaire surveys.

Committee on Plays in Schools and Colleges. "Report of the Committee,"English Journal 4:1 (January 1915). 34-40. NCTE survey.

Committee on Preparation of High School Teachers of English. "Report ofthe Committee," English Journal 4:5 (May 1915), 323.32. NCTE ques-tionnaire survey: summarizes 450 responses from 1,500 forms distri-buted.

Conant, James B. The American High School 'Today: A First Report toInterested Citizens. New York: Signet Books, 1964. First edition byMcGraw IIM Book Co., 1959. Report of school visits with recommen-dations on the comprehensive high school.

Conant, James B. Slums and Suburbs. New York: Signet Books, 1961.Second report, contrasting urban and suburhan education.

Conrad, Erna B., and Hickok, Katherine. "Placement of Literary Selec-tions for Junior and Senior High Schools," English Journal 19:5 (M'ay1930), 377-84. Summarizes grade placement of literary works in 44courses of study published since 1920; 22 of these were state courses.Cook, Albert S. A Brief Summary of the Proceedings of the Conference wtUniform Entrance Reunite:nem:: in English. New York: The Confer-ence, 1899. Official account of the background and early history of 'theconference.

Corbin, .Jonathan. Annotated Humanities Programs. Champaign,1967. Descriptive summaries of programs from all parts of the

nation. No summary or evaluation provided in this report.Corbin, Richard, and Crosby, Muriel. LanguagePrograms for the Disad-

vantaged. The Report of the NCTE Task Force on Teaching Englishto the Disadvantaged. Urbana, NCTE, 19651 Summary of obser-vations of programs at all age levels by a team 22 observers; des-criptive rather than statistical report.

Counts. George S. "Approved High Schools of the NOrlh Central Associa-tion of Colleges and Secondary Schools," in A Study of the Collegesand High Schools in the North Central Area. Bureau of EducationBulletin 1915 no. 6. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office,1015. Reports enrollments and subjects offered.

Counts. George S. The Senior High School Curriculum. SupplementaryEducational Monographs no. 29. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1926. Discusses English programs in 15 "progressive" cities.

Cremin, Lawrence A. The Transformation of the School: Progressivism inAmerican Education. New York: Vintage Books, 1961. Essential back-ground on all aspects of the progressive movement.

Davis. Calvin 0. A History of the North Central Association. Ann Arbor,Mich.: NCA, 1945.

Dexter, Edwin C. "Ten Years' Influence of the Report of the Committee ofTen," School Review 14 (April 1906). 254-69. Contrasts courses ofstudy in 1905 and 1895, nationwide.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 261

Donlan, Daniel Mahaney. Dilemma of Choice: Revolution in English Cur-ricula, 10513-1000. Dissertation. Stanford University, 1972. UniversityMicrofilms No. 72-16,712.

Douglas, Harl It. and Fi lk, Anna M. "The Classroom Practices of Minne-sota Teachers of High-School English," English Journal 27:3 (March1938). 252-57. Briefly reported checklist study of methods.

Khrenpreis. Irvin. The "Types Approach" to Literature. New York: King'sCrown Press, 1945. Most thorough discussion of the evolution of thetypes approach and its emergence in the high school curriculum.

Elson. Ruth Miller. Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of theNineteenth Century. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1964.Extensive discussion of school readers.

Emerson, Oliver Farrar. "English in Preparatory Schools," The Academy5 (February 1890), 104-08. Survey report.

Evans, Mae J. "How Much Work Is Done in American Literature in theHigh Schools?" School Review II (October 1903), 647-54, Surveyreport.

Fay. Robert Sargent. The Reorganization Movement in English Teaching,1910-1917. Dissertation, Harvard University, 1968. University Micro-films No: 68-12,068. Traces goals and influence of the movement, as acase study in educational reform.

Finch. Hardy R. "Film Production in the SchoolA Survey," EnglishJournal 28:5 (May 1939), 365-71.

Ford, Paul Leicester. ed. The New England Primer. New York: TeachersCollege. Columbia University. 1962. Reprint edition with Ford's classicintroduction.

Garner, W. Lee. Programmed Instruction. New York: Center for AppliedResearch in Education, 1966. Sympathetic description of the evolutionof this approach.

Gerber. John C. "Il'he 1962 Summer Institutes of the Commission onEnglish. PIVILA 78 (September 19631, 9-25. Report from the chair-man of the team of evaluators.

Getz, Iloward G. Paraprofessionals in the English Department. Urbana,NCTE/ERIC, 1972. Review and questionnaire survey 'of schools

in Illinois. Indiana, and Michigan.Gibson, James Chester. An Examination of Speech Teaching in Selected

Georgia Educational Institutions. 1722-1900. Dissertation, Universityof Georgia, 1971. University Microfilms No. 72-2485.

Giles. II. H.; McCutchen, S. P.; and Zechiel, Exploring the Curricu-lum: The Work of the -Thirty Schools from the Viewpoint of the Cur-riculum Consultants. ishiw York: Harper and Bros.. 1942. Describesthe evolution of the core curriculum.

Graham. Patricia A. Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe.New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1967. History ofthe PEA.

Grandgent. Charles H. "The Modern Languages." in The Development ofIlartyird University Since the Inauguration of President Eliot. 1869-1929, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. Cambridge. Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1930. Briefly describes the beginnings of English in-struction at Harvard.

262 TRADITION AND RK$ORM

Grimes. Mildred I,. "These Latter Years,:' English Leaflet 50 (Whole num-ber 442: February 1951), 17-36. Recent history of New England Asso-ciation of Teachers of English.

Grommon, Alfred H. "A History of the Preparation of Teachers of Eng.lish." English Journal 57;4 (April 1968), 484-527. Detailed and useful,

Gruen. Ferdinand B. English Grammar in American High Schools Since1900. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1934.

Guder, Darrell 1.. The History of Belles-Lettres at Princeton: An Invest),-gation of the Expansion and Secularization of Curricula at the Collegeof New Jersey with Special Reference to tlw Curricula of English Lan-guage and Letters. Unpublished dissertation, University of Hamburg.1965.

Hanson. Charles Lane. "The Early_ years of Our Association," EnglishLeaflet 48 (Whole number 427: March 1949): 33.47. History of firstyears of New England Association of Teachers of English.

Harvard University, Twenty Years of School and College English. 'Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1896. Details the changingentrance requirements.

Hatfield. W. Wilhur. "Farewell!" English Journal 44:5 (May 1955), 288-89.Brief reflections on retiring from the editorship.

Hatfield. W. Wilbur. "General and Specialized Literary Clubs," EnglishJournal 15:6 (June 1926). 450-56. Survey report; descriptive rather thanstatistical.

Hays, Edna. College Entrance Requirements in English: Their Effects onthe High Schools. Contributions to Education, no. 675. New York:Teachers College, Columhia University, 1936. Detailed history of therequirements and their effects.

Hickman. Lucian G. ''The Teaching of Composition and Literature in theHigh Schools of Indiana," English Journal 10:3 (March 1921), 142-59.Useful survey report.

I lillocks, George, Jr. Alternatives in English: A Critical Appraisal of Eke-tire Programs. Urbana. NCTE, 1972. Review of movement andanalysis of 76 program guides.

Hoetker, James. Dramatics and the Teaching of Literature. Urbana, 111.1NCTE, 1969. Critical review of current approaches and historical back-ground.

Holman; Alfred, Jr. The Teaching of Literature in American SecondarySchools: An Historical Study of the Theories of Literature Instruction.Sitter 1900. Unpublished dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 1945.

Hook, J. N. "Characteristics of Award-Winning High Schools," EnglishJournal 50:1 (January 1961), 9-15. Survey of schools producing NCTEAchievement Award winners.

Hooper, Cyrus L. "Existing Conditions, in the Teaching of English,"School Review 15 (April 1907), 261-74. Survey report on 70 schools.

Hopkins, E. M. Report on the Cost and Labor of English Teaching, ForMLA and NC'rE. Lawrence, Kansas:. Journalism Press, University ofKansas, 1913. Focusses on composition.

Horner, Robert W., and Lagios. Socrates A. "An Overview of HumanitiesPrograms throughout the Country," English Leaflet 63 (Fall 19641,39-57. Survey report.

Hosic. James Fleming. "The National Council. of Teachers of English,"English Journal 10:1 (January 1921), 1-10. Reviews early history.

SEI.ECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 263

!resit. James Fleming. "The National Council after Twenty Years," Eng-lish Journal 21:2 (February 1932). 107-13. Reviews early history.

1106it. James Fleming, comp. Reorganization of English in SecondarySchools, Bureau of Education Bulletin 1917, no. 2. Washington, D.C.:Government Printing Office. 1917. Report of the Joint Committee onEnglish; reviews history and present status of the teaching of English.

Ilotopf, W. H. N. Language. Thought and Comprehension: A Case Studyof the Writings of I. A. Richards, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,1965. Background on Richards's thought and influence.

Iludelson. Earl. "English Composition, Its Aims, Methods, and Measure-ment," in National Society for the Study of Education, Twenty-Second Yearbook. Bloomington. III.: Public School Publishing Co.,1923. Surveys aims and methods in 240 high schools.

Hodelson. Earl. "Our. Course of Study in Literature," English Journal 12:7(September 1923), 481-87. Summarizes required and recommendedreading in 38 state courses of study.

Huston, Jon Reckard. An Analysis of English Grammar Textbooks Usedin American Schools Before 1850, Dissertation, University of Pitts-

burgh. 1954. University Microfilms No. 8896.Jewett. Arno. English Language Arts in American High Schools. U.S.

Office of Education Bulletin 1958, no. 13. Washington, D.C.: Govern-ment Printing Office, 1959. Survey of 258 courses of study in currentuse: examines organization, goals, content.

Jewett, Ida A. English in State Teachers Colleges: A Catalogue Study.Contributions to Education no. 286. New York: Teachers College,Columbia University, 1927. Studies offerings in all phases of English in1900 and 1925.

Johnson, Clifton. Old-Time Schools and School-Books. New York: DoverPublications. 1963. First edition 1904. Antiquarian view of early texts,copiously illustrated.

Katz. Michael. The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovationin Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts. Cambridge. Mass.; Har-vard University Press. 1968. Discusses motivation behind mid-centuryextension bf education; high school as instrument of social control,

Kelly. Louis G. 25 Centuries of Language Teaching. Rowley, Mass.: New-bury House, 1969. Traces methods and approaches in language teach-ing to their origins in classical civilizations.

Krouse, Harry B. History and Evaluation of the Critical Trends, Exclusiveof Fiction, in the Atlantic Monthly, 1857 to 1898. Dissertation. Uni-versity of Wisconsin, 1972. University Microfilms No. 72-22,101.Attitudes toward literature in later nineteenth century: not directlyconcerned with educational issues.

Krug, Edward A. Charles W. Eliot and Popular Education. New York:Teachers College, Columbia University, 1961. Good introduction tothe struggle between the "ancient" and "modern" subjects; reprintssome of Eliot's discussions of the teaching of English.

Krug, Edward A. The Shaping of the American High School. New York:Harper & Row, 1964. Background on the expansion of the school after1880, through the reorganization period.

Leonard, Sterling Andrus. The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage1700-1800. University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Liters.

264 TRADITION ANI) REFORM

ture no. 25. Madisnn: University of Wisconsin Press, 1929. Thoroughhistory of the prescriptive tradition in grathmar and rhetoric,

Lewis, John Smith. Jr. The History of Instruction in American Literaturein Colleges and Universities of the United States. Dissertation, NewYork University. 1941. University Micmfilms No. 431. Includes dis-cussion of instruction in nineteenth century colleges',

Lull, Herbert Galen. Inherited Tendencies of Secondary Instruction in theUnited States. University of California Publications in Education vol.3, no. 3 (April 1913), 155-281 Useful illustrations of eighteenth andnineteenth century instruction. especially as it related to faculty psy-chology and mental discipline.

Lynch, James J.,- and Evans, Bertrand. High School English Textbooks:A Critical Examination. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963.Exhaustive analysis and critique of language and literature texts.

Lyon. Leverett S. "The Business-English Situation in the SecondarySchool," English Journal7;9 (November 1918), 576-87. Status survey.

McCrosky, Cecile B. "The Administration of English in the High-SchoolCurriculum." English Journal 7:2 (February 1918), 108-17. Summarizesreplies from 33 Ohio schools on conditions and equipment,

McDavid, Raven 1., J r. 'An Examination of the Attitudes of the WYEtoward Language. Research Report no 4. Urbana, NCTE, 1965.Chronicles changing attitudes in journal discussions; little analysis.

Macgowan, Kenneth. Footlights Across America. New York: Harcourt,Brace and Co., 1929. Discusses background of the little theater move-ment.

Madsen. Harold Stanley. An Historical Study of the Forces That HaveShaped English Instruction in Utah's Secondary Schools. Dissertation, University of Colorado, 1965. University Microfilms No. 66-3256.

Malone. Kemp. "The Rise of Modern Philology,- Bulletin of the ModernHumanities Research Association 30 (November 1958), 19-31. Tracesroots of modern-philology back to ancient Greece; useful background.

Maloney. Henry B.. ed. Accountability and the TSching of English. Ur-bana, NOTE, 1972. Continues. in further detail the argtiments proand con presented in On Writing Behavioral Objectives for English.

Maloney.11enry, B.. ed. Goal Making for English Teaching. Urbana, 111.:NCTE, 1973. A collection of varied personal opinion on uses and lim-itations of performance objectives for English.

Mainney.11enry B.1.1Stepsisters to Print:ThePublicArts in the iligh Sch.English ('lass." English Journal 49:8 (November 1960), 570-79. In-cludes brief chmniele of changing journal attitudes.

Mason, 3 -Tr-mvt !locker. The National Council of Teachers of English-1911-192u: Unpublished dissertation, George Peabody College forTeachers, 1902, University Microfilms No. 62-5681. Detailed chronicleof fintt, years of NC: based on interviews with early leaders and onmaterials later destroyed by a fire at Council headquarters..

:11axtvell. Joan. and Myatt. Anthony. eds. On Writing Behaviorist Objee-tires for English. Urbana, 111.; NCTE, 1970. Spectrum of opinion prevuiling during the height of this controversy.

Meade. Richard A. -Organization of Literature for Juniors and Seniors,"English Journal 36:7 (September 1947). 366-70. Summarizes organiza-tion and aims of 15 stilts courses of study published between 1936 and1910: very brief.

SELECTED 13MLIOGRAPHY 265

Meikle, Henry W. "The Chair of Rhetoric and Be lies Lettres," Universityof Edinburgh Journal 13 (Autumn 1945), 89-103. Prime source on theScottish rhetoricians and the events at Edinburgh: Stevenson, Smith,.and Blair.

Nlersand, Joseph. ''The Teaching of Literature in American 1:11igh Schools:1865. 1900," in Perspectives on English. edited by Robert C. Pooley. NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960. Useful discussion of early devel-opments.

Michael. lan.English Grammatical Categories and the Tradition to 1800.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Thorough analysis ofthe content of early grammars, in relation to those of the classicallanguages.

Morris. Charles R. "From the Age of Confidence to Roosevelt's FitutitTerm," English Leaflet 50 (Whole Number 441: January 1951), 1-1,4History of New England Association fmm 1910 onward.

Mott. John II.. Reading interests of Adolescents: A Critical Study of FiftyYears of Research. Dissertation, University of Northern Colorado,1971. University Microfilms No. 71-4203.

Moulton. Dorothy Evelyn. The Teaching of Literature in the Senior HighSchool: An Historical. and Critical Study of Recent Trends Basedupon an Analysis of Selected Professional Publications, 1911-55. Dis-sertation. University of Michigan, 1959. University Microfilms No.59-4966.

'Die National Council, 1011-367 English Journal 25:10 (December1936k805-36. Lengthy review of early history: useful for perspectivebut inaccurate in its detail.

Ned, Helen McDonnell. An Analysis of History of English LiteratureTextbooks Usectin American Secondary Schools Before WOO. Dis-sertation, University of Pittshurgh, 1954. University Microfilms No.8907.

Nelson. Jack, and Roberts. Gene. Jr. The Censors and the Schools. Bos-ton: Little, Brown and Co., 1963. Good discussion and historical over -view,

Olson, James Warren. The Nature of Literature Anthologies Used in theTeaching of High School English 1917-1957, Dissertation, Universityof Wisconsin, 1969. University Microfilms No. 69- 22.454. Excellentdiscussion of general trends in the teaching of literature as well asdetailed analysis of the anthologies.

O'Neal, Robert. "World Literature in the High School.' English Journal5212 (February 1963). 94-96. Chain letter survey by NCTE committee.with responses from 167 schools; lists titles used in these courses.

Paliner. 1). J. The Rise of English Studies. London: Oxford UniversityPress. 1965. Describes the evolution of English studies in Britain, es-pecially at The university level.

Parker. Williath Riley. "Where Do English Departments Come From?"College English 28:5 (February 1967). 330-51. Fascinating but looselydocumented account of early teaching of English in American colleges.

Payne. William Morton. English in American Universities. Boston: D.C.Heath and Co.. 1895. Reprint of 1894 series in The Dial. Describes pro-grams, emphases at 20 institutions.

266 TRADITION AND REFORM

Pitt', Gene Laurence. .Revision and Reform in the Secondary School En-glish Curriculum, 1870-1900. Dissertation, University of Minnesota,1067. University Microfilms No. 68-1559.

Pierson, George Wilson. Yale College: An Educational History 1871-1921.New Haven: Yale University Press, .1952. Includes brief account ofearly teaching of English at Yale.

l'urves, Alan C., and Beach, Richard. Literature and the Reader: Reiearthin Response to Literature, Reading Interests, and the Teaching ofLiterature, Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1972. Summary of research.

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. A History of the American Drama from the CivilWar to the Present. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,. 1936.Focusses on plays and playwrights.

Radner, Sanford. Fifty Years of English Teaching: A Historical Analysisof the Presidential Addresses of NCTE. Champaign, 1114NCTE, 1960.Brief summaries of all the presidential addresses.

Reeder, Rudolph R. The Historical Development. of School Readers and ofMethods in Teaching Reading. New York: Macmillan Co., 1900: Use-ful account of early readers.

Rogers, Rose Marie. The Development of American Textbooks in BusinessEnglish and Correspondence in the Secondary Schools. Dissertation,University of Pittsburgh, 1958. University Microfilms No. 58-2035.1900-1950.

Rosewell, Paul Truman. A Historical Survey of Recommendations andProposals for the Literature Curricula of American Secondary Schoolssince 1892. Dissertation,' University of Nebraska Teachers College.1965. University Microfilms No. 66-2081. Useful summaries of themajor curriculum statements and proposals; extensive quotations.

Rudolph. Frederick. The American College and University: A History.New York: Vintage Books. 1962. Background on all aspects of collegeeducation from colonial times; includes full discussion of the extra-curriculum.

Rugg, Harold. "Three Decades of Mental Discipline: Curriculum MakingVia National Committees," in Curriculum Making Past and Present.Twenty-Sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Edu-cation, Part One. Bloomington. In.: Public School Publishing Co.. 1926.Reviews the work of the major committees. including those of the re-organization period,

Rusk. Elizabeth Hartley. The Treatment of 167 English Usages in Twelfth-Grade Language Textbooks, 7931-1951. Dissertation, University ofIllinois. 1953. University Microfilms No. 6007.

Ryan. Thomas Kevin. Mass media and the Secondary School: An Exam-ination of the Attitudes of the National Council of Teachers of English.1911-1960. Thwart!' Five Selected Mass Media as Expressed in TheEnglish Journal. Dissertation, Ball State University, 19Th UniversityMicrofilms No. 72.7517.

Salter, Thomas 1. A Study of the Trends in the Teaching of English in.

Texas High Schools Since 1884. Dissertation, University of Houston,1955. University Microfilms. No. 13,824.

Searles. John Rexford. Some Trends in the Teaching of Literature Since1900 in American High Schools. Unpublished dissertation. Universityof Wisconsin. 1942, Contains the most thorough discussion of earlytexts on English and the teaching of English.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 267

Shayer. David. The Teaching of English in Schizo's: 1900-1970. Londonand Boston: Rout ledge and Kegan Paul, 1972. History of Englishinstruction in British schools; very little of relevance to Americanpattern,

Sherwin, J. Stephen. Four Problems in Teaching English: A Critique ofResearch. Scranton, Pennsylvania: International Textbook Co. for theNCTE. 1969. Definitive summary of research, with some historicalperspective, in spelling, writing, diagramming, and the relationshipbetween English and Latin instruction.

Shugrue, Michael F. English in a. Decade of Change. New York: Pegasus,1968. Useful account of developments since 1958.

Shugrue, Michael F. "New Materials for the Teaching of English from theEnglish Program of the USOE." PMLA 81 (September 1966), 1-36.Summaries from the curriculum study centers of work in progress,

Silberman. Charles E. Crisis in the Classroom: The Remaking of AmericanEducation. New York: Random House, 1970. Critique and survey ofcurrent trends, for Carnegie Corporation.

Sizer, Theodore R., ed. The Age of the Academies. New York: TeachersCollege, Columbia University, 1964. Good background on patternspreceding high school movement; reprints a number of interestingearly documents.

Sizer, Theodore R. Secondary Schools at the Turn of the Century. NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1964. Committee of Ten, its back-ground and influence.

Smith, Adam. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Edited with anintroduction and notes by John M. Lothian. Camden, N.J.: ThomasNelson Sons, 1963. An expanded version of the original Edinburgh lec-tures, from a student's notes. Includes useful background on thetransition from formal rhetoric to the Belles Lettres, and the generalcultural shift of which it was a part.

Smith, Dora V. Evaluating Instruction in Secondary School English. AReport of a Division of the New York Regents' Inquiry into theCharacter and Cost of Public Education in New York State. Chicago:NCTE, 1941. Thorough study of New York schools, hased on question-naires, testing, and school visits.

Smith. Dora V. Instruction in English. Bureau of Education Bulletin1932, no. 17. National Survey of Secondary Education Monograph no.20. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1933. Based onsurvey of 156 courses of study issued since 1925, and visits to 90schools selected for interesting features of their programs. Detailedanalyses of goals, methods, content in all areas of English nationally.

Smith, Nila Banton. American Reading Instruction. New York: Silver,Burdett and Co., 1934. Explores early history: texts, methods, phi-losophy.

Squire. James It., ed. A Common Purpose: The Teaching of English inGreat Britain, Canada, and the United States. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE,1966. Report of special conference in 1965: contains brief review ofinitial contacts with British programs.

Squire. ,lames R. Eight Year Report of the Executive Secretary 1960-1967. Champaign, Ill.: NCTE, 1967. Retrospective review of develop-ments in English and the NCTE during Squire's term of office.

268 TRADITION AND REFORM

Squire, James It. "English Literature, in Encyclopedia of EducationalResearch. Edited by Robert L. Ethel. New York: Macmillian Co., 1969..Review of research.

Squire, James R., ed. A New Look at Progressive Education. -1972 Year-book of the ASCD. Washington, D.C.: ASCII), 1972. Reviews majoraspects of progressivism in relation to current thought.

Squire, James fl. and Applebee, Roger K. High School English Instruction!fluky: The National Study of High School English Programs, NewYork: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968. Study-in-depth of English in-Struction in 158 leading high schools of the early 1960s.

Squire, James R.. and. Applebee, Roger K. Teaching English in the UnitedKingdom. Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1969. Extension of the National Studyto 42 British schools offering alternatives to typical American patternsof inst ruction.

Stahl. Donald E. The Development of the English Curriculum in ChicagoPublic Schools from 1856 to 1958. Dissertation. Northwestern Univer-si4, 1960. University Microfilms No. 60-4798.

StahL,Donald E. A History of the English Curriculum in American High. Schools. Chicago: Lyceum Press, 1965,. Published version of his thesis.

Steinberg, Erwin R. "Research on the Teaching of English," MLA 79(September 1964), 50-76. Project English status reports.

Stoddard, Francis FL "Conference on Uniform Entrance Requirements inEnglish," Educational Review (19051, 375-83. History of the earlyyears of the conference.

Stone. George Winchester, Jr. Issues, Problems. and Approaches in theTeaching of English. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964.(Copyright 1961 by the MLA.) Reprints a number of early statementson the teaching of English, including reports of the School and College

.:Conference nn English.Stout. John Elbert. The Development of High-School Curricula in the

6.1vrth Central States from 1860 to 1918. Supplementary EducationalMonographs vol. 3, tin. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921.ExlAisive summary of course offerings in *North Central schools.Considerable background on trends in English.

Tanner, George W. :'Report of the Committee Appointed by the EnglishConference to Inquire Into the 'reaching of English in the High Schoolsof the Middle West," School Review 15 (January 1907). 37-45. Surveys67 schools. with spechA attention to influence of Uniform Lists.

Thirty &limas Tell 'Their Story. New York: Harper and Bros.. 1942.Descriptions by the thik, schools of the E;ght-Year Study, of theevolution of their courses of study. Much attention to English as partof core curriculum.

Thwaite, NI. F. From Pruner to Pleasure. London: The Library Associa-tion, 1963. Recounts history of children's literature as well as of schooltexts.

Veilh, Donald P- An Historical Analysis of the Relations Between 'English''and "Speech° Since 1910. Unpublished dissertation. Teachers College,Columbia University. 1952. Concentrates on relations between SpeechAssociation of America and NCTE.

lkVeitek. Rene. "Literary Scholarship, in American Scholarship in theTwentieth Century, edited by Merle Curti, Cambridge, Mass.: Ilar-'

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 269/3, 10

yard University Press, 1953. Good discussion of trends in scholarship,including nineteenth century background.

White, Helen C, Changing Styles in Literary Studies. Presidential Ad-dress of the Modern Humanities Research Association. London: Cam-bridge University Press for the MHRA, 1963. Interesting retrospectiveaccount of trends during twentieth century.

Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. London: Chatto andWindus, 1958. Background on changing definitions of culture and thearts during the Romantic period.

Witt, Peter D. The Beginnings of the Teaching of the Vernacular Litera-ture in the Secondary Schools of Massachusetts, Dissertation, HarvardUniversity, 1968. University Microfilms No. 69-11,507. Fullest accountof instruction in the early years; concentrates on limited geographicregion, but one that was central in shaping patterns of instruction.

Wright, Grace S. Core Curriculum in Public High Schools: An Inquiryinto Practice, 1949. U.S. Office of Education Bulletin 1950, no. 5.Washington, D.C,: Government Printing Office, 1950. Results fromquestionnaire to 13,816 high schools; discusses patterns and geo-graphic distribution.

Zielonka, Alfred. Walter. The Modern Language Association of America1683-1960: An Historical Account of Selected Activities. Dissertation,State University of New York at Buffalo, 1964. University Mierofilmsno. 64-13,673.

Appendices

Appendix I: Some Important Dates in the Teaching of English

c. 1690 The New England Primer issued by Benjamin Harris.

1755 Ebenezer Kinnersley appointed professor of the English tongueand oratory, College of Pennsylvania.

1759-8r Hugh Blair lectures at Edinburgh, continuing an earlier series byAdam Smith; publishes Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres(1783).

1783-95 Noah Webster publishes his Grammatical Institute of the EnglishLanguage.

1819 The College of New Jersey sets an entrance requirement in Englishgrammar.

1836 The first volume of McGuffey's Readers appears.

1848 Thomas Budge Shaw's Outlines of English Literature published inLondon; American edition follows in 1849.

1857 Francis Andrew March appointed protestor of English languageand comparative philology, Lafayette College.

1867 Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy.

1867 William James Rolfe, principal at Cambridge High School, 'Mas-sachusetts, publishes an annotated Julius Caesar.

1874 Harvard requires the reading of standard authors as part of itsentrance requirement in English composition.

1876 Francis James Child appointed professor of English at Harvard', hisstudent, Robert Grant, earns the first American Phi). [n 13Kglishliterature.

1893.94 Vassar Conference on English called by Ste Cortuntetee of 'fen;Yale sets an entrance requirement in English literature separatefrom composition; National COference on liform EntranceRequirements in English organized.

1895 Hiram..0Orson publishesihis Aims of Literary Study.

1899 John aewey's School and Society published; NEA Committee onCollege Entrance Requirements makes its report.

1901 First regional association of teachers of English organized, in NewEngland,

271

272 TRADITION AND REFORM

1902.03 Textbooks on the teaching of English published by Percival Chubband by George R. Carpenter, Franklin T. Baker, and Fred N. Scott.

1910-11 New York State protests about the entrance requirements inEnglish lead to the founding of the National Council of Teachersof English, in Chicago, December 1, 1911.

1916 College Board decides to offer two examinations in English, one ofwhich will not require the study of a set list of books.

1917 National Joint Committee on English, cosponsored by NCTE andNEA, publishes its report, Reorganization of English in SecondarySchools.

1918 William II. Kilpatrick describes the project method; CardinalPrinciples of Secondary Education published.

1922-24 Scott, Foresman Literature and Life series sets the pattern forschool anthologies.

1926 NCTE committee report on "The_Place and Function of English inAmerican Life" justifies English as a functional study, but ignoresliterature.

1927 Nancy Cory-ell completes the first major experimental study in theteaching of literature.

1929 I. A. Richards publishes Practical CriticiSTh.

1931 College Board Commission on English recommends abolishing ofentrance examination based on list of texts; the recommendationis accepted and leads to the dissolution of the National Conferenceon Uniform Entrance Requirements in English.

1932 Eight-Year Study of the Progressive Education Association begins.

1935 NOTE Curriculum Commission presents its major report, AnExperience Curriculum in English.

1938 Louise Rosenblatt publishes Literature as Exploration for thePEA; Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren publish Under-standing Poetry.

1940 Mortiner Adler attacks the progressives in Itow to Read a Boole.

1945 NCTE Commission on the English Curriculum organized; its reporton the secondary school not published till 1956.

1950.52 National Science Foundation established; Ford Fund for theAdvancement of Education begins experiments with early admis-sions and advanced placement.

1957 Sputnik launched; educators focus on the academically talented.

1958 National Defense Education Act omits funds for English; NOTEcosponsors a series of Basic Issues Conferences with MLA andother interested organizations.

APPENDICES 273

1959 woods Dole Conference held, leading to Bruner's report, TheProcess of Education (1960). College Board Commission onEnglish liegins formulation of an academic curriculum in English.

1962 First summer institutes in the teaching of English, under CollegeBoard sponsorship; Project English and curriculum study centersbegin.

1963 National Study of high School English Programs begins.1966 Anglo-American Seminar on the Teaching of English held at

Dartmouth.

1967 National Study extended to British schools.

1968-70 Disillusionment with academic reform leads to reassertion ofprogressive principles in the teaching of English; reports fromDartmouth and the study of British schools suggest new models;electives adopted by many secondary schools.

274 TRADITION AND REFORM

Appendix II: Offerings in English in the North Central Area, 1860-1900.

Percent of Schools Offering*

Course Title 1860- 1866. 1871- 1876- 1881- 1886- 1891- 1896-65 70 75 80 85 90 95 1900

First Year English 26 32.5 42.5

Second Year English 26 22.5 35 0

Third Year English 23 15.0 27.5

Fourth Year English 3 7.5 15.0

English - 4

English Literature 30 65 90 70 72 70 52.5 37.5

American Literature 10 10 15 12 20 22.5 15.0

Literature 5 - - 16 20 32.5 35.0

History of EnglishLiterature 5 5 5 10 4

Classics 5 - - 32 3 25.0 15.0

Elements of Criticism 20 - 5

Reading 30 35 5 10 24 30 2.5 10.0

English Language 5 5 10

Composition 55 40 60 60 36 42 52.5 42.0

Rhetoric 90 75 85 85 84 83 67.5 62.5

Grammar 60 4t 40 30 52 66 35.0 35.0

Analysis 55 40 35 271 24 25 2.5 2.5

Word Analysis 20 - 5 12 17 10.0 12.0

Orthography - - 3 - 5.0

Elocution 5 10 10 5 16 6

(Latin 80 85 90 75 92 83 95 97.5)

*The schools for the various periods overlap but are not strictly identical.After 1900, "literature" and "composition" were offered in 100 percent ofthe schools. This is an excerpt from John E. Stout, The Development of HighSchool Curricula in the North Central Staten from 1860-1918, SupplementaryEducational Monographs vol. 3, no. 3. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,June 1921), Table X, pp. 7144.

APPENDICES 275

Appendix III: College Entrance Requirements in English Literature, 18744900

Authors and Titles in Order of Their First Appearance on the Entrance Lists.*Shakespeare 1874: The Tempest

Julius CaesarThe Merchant of Venice

1878: MacbethCoriolarnisAs You Like It

1879: Richard IIA Midsummer Night's Dream

1880: King LearMuch Ado about Nothing

1881: Romeo and JulietHamlet

1882: OthelloKing John

1893: Twelfth NightGobssmith 1874: The Vicar of Wakefield

1881: She Stoops to Conquer1882: The Deserted Village

Scott 1874: IvanhoeThe Lay of the Last Minstrel

1877: WaverleyMonition

1878: KenilworthThe Lady of the Lake

1879: Guy Mannering1880; Quentin Durward1881: The Abbot1882: The Bride of Lammermoor1889: Rob Roy1891: Old Mortality1892: The Talisman1896: Woodstock

Irving 1878: The Sketch BookLife of Goldsmith1881:

*This is a rearrangement of an appendix provided by Edna Hays, CollegeEntrance Requirements in English: Their Effects on the High Schools (NewYork: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1936), pp. 133-35.

276 TRADITION AND REFORM

1887: Bracebridge Hall1891: The Alitanzbra1896: Tales of e Traveler

Byron 1879: The Prisoner of Chilton

Thackeray 1879: Henry Esmond1888: The English Humorists

Macaulay 1879: Essay on Addison1880: Life of Johnson1887: Essays on Milton and Dryden1888: The Lays of Ancient Rome1890: Essays on Lord Clive1892: Second Essay on the Earl of Chatham

Southey 1898: Life of Nelson

DeQuincey 1898: The Flight of a Tartar Tribe

Cooper 1899: The Last of the Mohicans

Addison 1879: Sir Roger de Coverley PapersGray 1880: An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Johnson 1880: Six Chief Lives of the Poets1887: Lives of Milton and Addison1888: Lives of Addison and Pope1889: Lives of Swift and Gray

Dickens 1880: A Tale of Two Cities1893: David Copperfield

Carlyle 1880: Essay on Johnson1882: Essay on Scott1884: Essay on Burns

Milton 1881: Paradise Lost (Books I and II)1895: L'Allegro

Il PenserosoComasLycidas

Hawthorne 1881: Our Old Home1890: The House of the Seven Gables1897: Twice-Told Tales

Eliot 1881: Silas Marner1882: The Mill on the Floss1892: Scenes of Clerical Life

Burns 1884: The Cotter's Saturday Night

Emerson 1885: Essay on Eloquence1893: The American Scholar

Pope 1886: The Rape of the Lock1888: An Essay on Criticism1898: Iliad (Books I and XXII)

Lowell 1886: The Vision of Sir Launfal

APPENDICES 277

Dryden 1887: Alexander's Feast1899: Pa Eamon and Arcite

Dobson 1888: Eighteenth Century EssaysAusten 1888: Pride and PrejudiceSwift 1889: Gulliver's TravelsColeridge 1890: The Rime of the Ancient MarinerLongfellow 1890: Evangeline

1892: The Courtship of Miles StandishWebster 1890: First Bunker Hill OrationArnold 1894: Sohrab and Rust=Defoe 1896: A Journal of the Plague YearBurke 1897: Speech on Conciliation with the ColoniesTennyson 1898: The Princess

278 TRADITION AND REFORM

Appendix IV: Most Frequently Anthologized Works, 1917 -1957'

Twenty most popular selections in each period, ranked by order offrequency.*

1917-34

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (excerpts) ByronThe Princess (excerpts) TennysonHome Thoughts, from Abroad BrowningIn Memoriam (excerpts) TennysonThe Vision of Sir Leunfal LowellHistory of England (excerpts) Macaulay

Walden (excerpts) ThoreauIdylls of the King (excerpts) TennysonHow They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix BrowningTo a Waterfowl BryantThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner ColeridgeEach and All EmersonThe Last Leaf HolmesThe Chambered Nautilus HolmesThe Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (excerpts) HolmesGettysburg Address LincolnAnnabel Lee PoeThe World Is Too Much With Us WordsworthSohrab and Rust= ArnoldLife of Johnson (excerpts) Boswell

1935.45

The Princess (excerpts) TennysonAutobiography (excerpts) FranklinIdylls of the King (excerpts) TennysonWalden (excerpts) ThoreauInuictus HenleyOde on a Grecian Urn Keats

Annabel Lee Poe

Beowulf (excerpts) Anon.On His Blindness Milton

*Excerpted from Tables VIII, IX, and. X, James Warren Olson, The Nature ofLiterature Anthologies Used in the Teaching of High School English1917-1957 (Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1969; University MicrofilmNo. 69.22,454), pp. 316-18.

APPENDICES 279

Home Thoughts. from Abroad BrowningThe Rime of the Ancient Mariner ColeridgeLife of Johnson (excerpts) BoswellRuble Khan ColeridgeOde to the West Wind SkelleyDiary (excerpts) Prepys// Penseroso MiltonL'Allegro MiltonThe Man with the Hoe MarkhamHistory of England (excerpts) MacaulayOn First Looking into Chapman's Homer Keats

1946-57

She Dwelt among Untrodden Ways WordsworthThe People, Yes (excerpts) SandburgWalden (excerpts) ThoreauHome Thoughts, from Abroad BrowningThe Soldier BrookeMy Last Duchess BrowningAutobiography (excerpts) FranklinAn Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard GrayLoveliest of Trees HousemanAnnabel Lee PoeMacbeth ShakespeareIn Memoriam (excerpts) TennysonThe Princess (excerpts) TennysonMending Wall FrostTo the Virgins, to Make Much of Thne HerrickSpeech in the Virginia Convention HenryOn First Looking into Chapman's Homer KeatsI Hear America Singing WhitmanTo a Waterfowl BryantJohn Anderson, My Jo Burns

280 TRADITION AND REFORM

Appendix. V: The Growth of English, 1900-1949

Year Number of High SchoolStudents

Percent of Students Enrolled in*English Latin

1900 519,251 38.5 50.61910 739,143 57.1 49.01915 1,165,495 58.4 37.31922 2,155,460 76.7 2751928 2,896,630 93,1 22.0

1934 4,496,514 90.5 16.01949 5,399,452 92.9 7.8

*Estimates and percentages based on enrollments in the four senior high school

years. The data derive from surveys carried out for the U,S. Commissioner ofEducation; summarized in Bureau of the Census Historical Statistics of theUnited States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), p. 210.

APPENDICES 281

Appendix VI: Major Officers of the National Council of Teachers of English,1912.1974

NCTE Presidents

Year NameAffiliation

While Holding Office

1912 Fred Newton Scott University of Michigan1913 Fred Newton Scott University of Michigan1914 Franklin T. Baker Teachers College

Columbia University1915 E. H. Kemper McComb Manual Training High School

Indianapolis, Indiana1916 Edwin M. Hopkins University of Kansas1917 Allan Abbott Teachers College

Columbia University1918 Edwin L. Miller Northwestern High School

Detroit, Michigan1919 Joseph M. Thomas University of Minnesota1920 James Fleming Hosic Chicago Normal College

1921 H. G. Paul University of Illinois1922 Charles Robert Gaston Richmond Hill High School

New York City1923 J. W. Searson University of Nebraska1924 Thomas C. Blaisdell Slippery Rock State Normal

College, Pennsylvania1925 T. W. Gosling Madison Public Schools

Wisconsin1926 Sterling Andrus Leonard University of Wisconsin1927 Dudley Miles Evander Childs High School

New York' City1928 Charles Carpenter Fries University of Michigan1929 Rewey Belle Inglis University of Minnesota1930 Ruth Mary Weeks Pasco High School

Kansas City, Missouri1931 R. L. Lyman University of Chicago

282 TRADITION AND REFORM

1932 Stella S. Center John Adams High SchoolNew York City

1933 Walter Barnes New York University

1934 Oscar J. Campbell University of Michigan

1935 Charles Swain Thomas Harvard University

1936 Dora V. Smith University of Minnesota

1937 Holland D. Roberts Stanford University

1938 Marquis E. Shattuck Detroit Public Schools

1939 Essie Chamberlain Oak Park High School, Illinois

1940 E. A. Cross Colorado State College of EducationGreeley

1941 Robert C. Poo ley University of Wisconsin

1942 John J. Defloer Chicago Teachers College

1943 Max J. Herzberg Weequahic High School,Newark, New Jersey

1944 Angela M. Broening Baltimore Public Schools

1945 Harold A. Anderson University of Chicago

1946 Helene W. Hartley Syracuse University

1947 Porter G. Perrin University of Washington

1948 Thomas Clark Pollock New York University

1949 Marion C. Sheridan New Haven. High SchoolConnecticut

1950 Mark Neville John Burroughs SchoolSt. Louis, Missouri

1951 Paul Farmer Henry W. Grady High SchoolAtlanta, Georgia

1952 Lennox Grey Teachers CollegeColumbia University

1953 Harlen M. Adams Chicago State College

1954 Lou L. La Brant Atlanta University

1955 John C. Gerber State University of IowaIowa City

1956 Luella B. Cook Minneapolis Public Schools

1957 Helen K. Mackintosh U.S. Office of Education

1958 Brice Harris Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park

1959 Joseph Mersand Jamaica High SchoolJamaica, New York

1960 Ruth G. Strickland School of EducationIndiana University

APPENDICES 283

1961 Harold B. Allen University of MinnesotaMinneapolis

1962 George Robert Cruise') State University of IowaIowa City

1963 David H. Russell University of California1964 Albert R. Kitzhaber University of Oregon1965 Richard Corbin Hunter College High School

New York City1966 Muriel Crosby Wilmington'Public Schools

Delaware

1967 Albert H. Marckwardt Princeton University1968 Alfred H. Grothinon Stanford University1969 William A. Jenkins University of WisconsinMilwaukee1970 James E. Miller, Jr. University of Chicagoi171 Robert A. Bennett San Diego Unified School District1972 Virginia M. Reid Oakland Public Schools1973 Walker Gibson University of Massachusetts1974 Margaret J. Earl: Syracuse University

NCTE Secretary- Treasurer

1912-1919 James Fleming Hosic Chicago Normal College1920-1953 W. Wilbur Hatfield Chicago Normal College

NCTE Executive Secretary

1954-19591960-19671968-

J. N. HookJames R. SquireRobert F. Hogan

Editor of English Journal

1912-1921 James Fleming Hosic Chicago Normal College1922-1955 W. Wilbur Hatfield Chicago Normal College1956-1964 Dwight E. Burton Florida State University1965-1973 Richard S. Alm University of Hawaii1973- Stephen N. Judy Michigan State University

Index

Abbott, Allan, 56, 57, 63, 90Ability grouping. 82, 9192; advo.

calm! by Conant 11959), 189Academie:111v talented; programs for,

189 91, 191. SIT also Ability gnmp-lag

Avniunt ability, 232 34. See also Per-formance Clint rams

Accreditation of high schools: spreadof. 50

, novement Awards (NrrEL 199Aehie . ut. andards of.See Mini-. mum esseiiliaixt Mental discipline:SATAdams. John Quincy, 10Adams, Loonie, $65Adapt at ions or classic texts. Sec

School edit ionsAddants..lane. 41, 47. 49Adler. Mortimer. 114, 184, 186, 209Adodnernee 11904), 56, 62Adolescent literature. See 1.itera-

to re, adolescentAdolescent needs. See Needs mid

interests of studentsAdvanced placement ..190. 217Aesop's Fabter, 228Aiken. Conrad, 165Aikin, Wilford M., 141. 145Aims of Literary Study, The 11885),

61Allen, Dwight, 221Allen, Harold 11,. 229Allerton House ('onference, 219Alm, Richard, 156

284

A me'rican Associat ion of Colleges,140

Anurican Association of TeachersColleges. 118

American Assoeiat ion of Teachers ofJournalism. 52

"American Aut hors of Today" series,Ill

American City, 143American Council on Education, 148American Dictionary, 7'he 11828). 3American English Grammar (1941).

85American Girl, 172American High School Today, The

11959). 189, 226American Historical Society. Com-

mission on the Social Studies in theSehOols. 116

Americanism. 3-5, 24, 48, 57, 67.68.See also American literature: Cili-renship

American Library Asstwiation, 205American literat ore: achieves place

in high school curriculum, 68, 126;anthologies and. 130: introduced incolleges, 27, 41

American Medical Association. '2.04American Pageant Association, 63American Psychological Association,

81"American Scholar" address

(Emerson). 26A menean Sciretion of Lessons in

Rending and Speaking, An11795),

American Studies Association, 193Amherst College. 10Analysis as mode of literary study: by

New Critics. 197; by Scottishrhetoricians, 910; in 19th century,31. :37, 55: in 1933, 125; in 1900s,212

A tudomy of ('riticism, The 119571, 203dad Madly Teach 119491, 188A udre Carnegie's Own Story. 121Angell. James II., 32Anglo American Conference btr

Seminar] on the Teaching ofEnglish 119601. Sec DartmoothSeminar

Annotated tests. 34.55, 128. See alsoSchool editions

Anthologies; criticism of, 207. 221:emergence in school programs,120, 128 30: evaluations of. 170 74;influence of, 126. 129. 170; previastirs of. 128; progressives and. 128.20, 137

Appletwe. Roger R., 211Appreciation. as approach to litera-

ture, I I 13. 28. 31, 41, 43, 55Army testing program, 81 82Arnold, Matthew IS, 20, 23, 39. 114"Articulate(' English Programs: An

Hypothesis to Test, An" 11459)193, 191

Association of American Colleges,186

Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle Statesand Maryland. :31

Association of I lepartments orEnglish. 219

As Ian !At (I, 36, 125Atlantic Monthly. The. 24, 40, 172,

201Auden, W. II., 165Audios isual aids. Sec Teaching aidsAugustans. 4, :15

Iabbilt. Irving, 113-14Ion, Joan, 207faker. Franklin T., 45, 55, 57, 60, 61!Ayr, George Pierce, 61taker. Harry 'I'., 110Laker, James 11.. :12;ale. Bishop John. 5laws. Walter, 128

-Basil. Aims for English Inst met km inAmerican Schools," 159

Hasa. Issues Conferences. 193 95,196. 201 02, 213, 238

INDEX 285

"llama. Issues in the Teaching ofEnglish, Thy" 119591, 193

Basic Wading Skill,- for High SchoolUM'. 161

Hassell. Henry Kendall, 52Hates, Arlo, 20Hates, Herbert, 53Behavioral objeetives, 234435, 25:3 55:

NCIE stance on, 235. See alsoObjectives, specification of

Hell, Bernard hiding, 118Ilent ley, Richard, 7Hestor, Arthur. 184, 188Hotter Speech Week, 58, 74Ilible....tudy of the, 57Ilinet scales, 81Hingham. Caleb, 4, 713lair, Hugh. 7, 8 9, 17Blur - Harked Speller. xii. 3 -1llobbitt Franklin: advocates value of

"experience." 108; attacks Correfated Curnedurn. 123; influence of,85, 86, 88, 101, 119, 166, 232;specifies educational objectivesbased on behavioral units, 82-84;Taba's reaction against, 147

Hogan, Louise, 165Hollingen Foundation. 105llollingen Prize, 165Ilona. James, 251"Hook of Hours," I

Wayne. '206Boynton. Percy, IIIBoy's Lift'. 172Bradley, C.13,, 20British Ministry of Education, 229British teaching of English: drama in.

76, 231131: infltince of, 228 82,241; study of. 229, 241

Brimming, Angela M., 121. 167Brooks, Clanth. 162 III, 1118, 192Ilrou 0, Claude. 207Week, Emma L. 52'Ironer. Jerome, 195, 202, 211, 218Bunker Hill onition. :16, 120Burch, Mary C., 91, 97Mirky, Edmund, 55, 89Horton, Dwight, 150 51, 155Business English, 66. Set 01411 Pura

lional edueat ionHaswell. Hie. 90

Caesar's Offilmentunes, 35Calverton, V. F., 115Cambridge High School, Massachu-

setts, 28Campbell. °sear J., 117Conturbury Tides, The. 205

286 TRADITION AND REFORM

Cardinal Principles of SecondaryEdumtion 119181, 64, 65

('arlsen, G. Robert. 202Carnegie Corporation. 229, 236Carnegie Foundation, 141Carpenter, George H 45, 55, 60, 61Catcher in the Rye, The, 156, 205. 206CEEB: and advanced placement, 190,

209; and college entrance examinations in English, 54, 128-130; Com-mission on English (1929), 95-96.104, 218( Commission on English(1959). 19098,'200-201: founding.31. 42; institutes. 213

Censorship: Lenrow's argumentsagainst 119401. 152-53: problems of11940slies4 149, 204-07, 212, 220-21; rare in British schools, 231;Shakespeare and, 22, 62

Center, Stella, 117, 161Central Midwest Regional Educa-

tional Laboratory. 235Chamberlain, Essie, 85Channing, Edward Tyrrel, 10, 26"Charge of the Light Brigade." 110Charters, W. W., 78, 87Chaucer, Geoffrey, 25Chicago Evening Post, IIIChicago Normal School. 109Child. Francis James. 26.27, 40Children's literature, 180Child Study Movement, 47-48, 56.154Christian Reader, The, 4Chronological studies. See Literary

historyChubb, Percival, 45, 46, 51, 55, 61, 63Citizenship through study of English,

63-64. 68. See ulso Americanism;American literature

Civil Rights Act 11064), 226War, 2324

Clapp, John M., Sl, 65Clapp report. 85-86. 88. 166Clark, FL it- 51. 53Classical tradition as model for

English studies, I, 5-8, 10.'2425,29. 35

('lassies, English, 12-13, 24, 34-36, 66,126, 128

Classroont editions. See School edilions

Cleveland, Charles D., ID, 29. 34;explains basis of Compendiumselections, 35

('old war. 149Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 23College Board, See CEEBCollege English Association, 193

College Entrance ExaminationBoard. Ste CEEB

College entrance examinations. 49.50-51, 54, 73, 9596

College entrance requirements: andanthologies 419'20s '30s), 128-30:first in English studies, 21, 31-32:influence on high school, 6566. 125,126, 131: in 19th century, 29-32, 41.42: ea. 1900, 37: in 1930s, 89, 126:uniformity and. 49, 128

College of New Jersey, 8Collier's, 172Collingwood, It. G., 158-59Columbia University, See Teachers

College, ColumbiaCommission on English. See CEEBCommission on Human Relations

(PEA). 123, 142Commission on Life Adjustment Edu

cation for Youth (USOE), 144Commission un Literature INCTEL

224Commission on Reorganization

INFIA), 64.65Commission on the English Curricu

tutu INCTE): currtdum studiesproject, 166.69, 171, 205; establish-ed 119451, 168; stance on behavioralobjectives, 23536

Commission on the Relation of Schooland College (PEA) (previouslyCommittee on College Entranceand Secondary Schools), 141, 142

Commission on Secondary SchoolCurriculum, 1940 (PEA), 139, 142-43, 152, 157

Committee for Economic Develop«lent, 233

Committee of Ten (NEM, 21, 3233,36-36. 42. 48, 65, 84. 245; Confer-ence on English. 33.34, 43, 65, 118,245; Report of, 45,59

Committee on College Entrance andSecondary Schools (PEA, laterCommission on the ROIL 'n ofSchool and College), 141

Committee on College Entrance Re-quirements (English Round Table,NEM. 49..51, 53, 65, 71

CoMmitter on Correlation (NCTEL142. 144

ComnAttee oh Economy of Time(NCTEL 84

Committee on Economy of Time inEducation (NEA), 82, 84

Committee on English EquipmentINCTE), 60

Committee on English Programs forHigh School Students of SuperiorAbility (Nen:). 19091

Committee on Intermitional RelationsINCTEL 110. 133-34, 147, 179

Committee on International Under-standing INCTE), 117

Committee on National InterestINCTE), 184, 199-200, 205

Committee on Photon lay Apprecia-tion (NUM), 87-88

Committee on Public Relations.iNCTE). 198-99

Conunittee on Research 1NCTEI, leaCo:unlittee on the Fu net ioh of English

in General Education of Commission on Secondary School Curricu-lum (PEA), 152. 181

Committee on the Iligh School Coursein English INCTE), 65

Committee on the Place and Functionof English in American LifeINCTEL 85-80, 119

Committer on the Right to Read(NrrE). 206

Committee on the Training of Secondart' School Teachers (Harvard).186-87

(00101ittre on Types of Organizationof high School English INCTE).72

Common school: high school as. 46Communication skills; as part of

English. 156-57; World War II and,140, 150 HO

Communism, 188, 204Compendium (Cleveland). 29, 34('omposition: college entrance exam-

ination in (Harvard), 30; collegeentrance requirements (1899).literature as model for. 13; princi-ples of, 8; research in. 9899; teach-ing of. 9, 49. 70, 109, 230

Comas, 89Conant. James II., 186, 189, 217, 226Conducting Experiences in English

(1939). 121, 167Conference of New England Colleges,

31Conference on College Composition

and Communication tNCTE):established 119410, 190

Conference on English, Sec Commit-tee of Ten

Conflict in Education, The (19531, 188Contemporary literature: antholw

gized 11930s). 130; anthologized11950s), 170; and censorship Fes-sums, 22. 206.07; criticized 119231,

INDEX 287

11011; in 18th century teaching. 9;in Gateway English Program, 227-'28; Lenrow's recommendations,152; in periodicals 119131, 58-59;philological justification for read-ing, 25; progressives' influence.175; and Reorganization report, 67

Contract method in English, 92.93Cook, Albert S., 46Cook. Caldwell, 76Cooperative Research Program of

1954, 201(oping, 228Corbin. Richard, 226Core Curriculum 11940s), 142.48Correlated curriculum, 122-23, 142,

144-46, 178; humanities programsand, 209

Correlated Curriculum, A (19361, 122,123

Corson, Hiram, 28. 61, 75('oryell, Nancy, 97-98, 120Conanomditnn, 172Council for a Television Course in the

Ilumanities for Secondary Schools,209

Council of Mainz, 1Council on Basic Education, 188Counterfeiters, The, 153Counts. George S., 67. 116. 117, 148Course of study; analyzed 119331.

12528: in New York State 11936).127; in 195r. 169-70; in 1960s, 211;recommended in Freedom and Eh's-eigne, 202. See also Curriculum;Sequence; Teaching materials

Crisis in the Classroom 11970), 224Crisis in Education 119491, 188Critical thinking, 158, 169 70Croce. Benedetto: Ainslie transla

lion. IIICrow, Charles Sumner, 88('ulture; as goal for English teaching.

5, 21-24, 38.46, 59,66, 187; Roman-tic view of - in education, ?2-23

Culture and Anarchy 11867). 23Current English Usage 119321, 85Curriculum: differentiation of, 12-13,

18-19. 59. 65.66; relationship of col-lege - to high school. 5. 29, 35, 49,54415, 126. 191; college - as sourceof humanities programs, 208, 210.Sue also Core curriculum, Corry,lated curriculum. Experience cur-riculum, Ability grouping, Tracking

Curriculum Commission IN(TE):established 1929, 118; "Experience

288 TRADITION AND REFORM

Curriculum" project, 119 22, 123.For the prml /945. /963, see Coolmission on the English Curriculum

Curriculum materials, See 'reachingmaterials, selection

Curriculum study centers. See Pro-ject English

Dale, Edgar, 87, 102Dalton plan. See Contract methodDartmouth College.. ill, 229Dartmouth Seminar, 224, 229 30.

20i. 2411 tar winism, social,-17Nahreak, 207Day's Academy. 28I telloer, John J.. 95, 106, 117Defence of Purl ry. 23/known:1w and Education 119161. 64Depression. 107, 111, 118; effect on

schools. 115. 123. 127, 128. 189Dewey. Es Oyu. 92Dewey, John: influence on high

schools. 1819, 59, 107. 112, 258;and progressises social goals', (1364, 115: reaction against. 171. 1116,187. 189; revival of his ideas, 236

Diary of Anne Pnork, The. 156Dickinson, Emily, 130Dictionary of American Slung, a, 205Disadvantaged, programs for the,

225 28. 211)Discipline. English as a: advocated in

Pr,. I 110111 am! Discipline. 196198,202203; current problems, 247: in19th century. 43; in 11166s. 191 92.193115; in spiral curriculum. 195.See a/so Mental discipline

"Divided Ilorseeloth. The," 171Divinity School Address (Emerson),

12Dixon. John. 230DosPassos. John. 115Doss ning, hstelle. 117Drama: as met hod of literary study,

62 63. 230 :11; :is method of person;Oily des elopment. 62 63, 230; inBritish schools. 76. 230 31, 211; inhigh schools 1193(lid, 128: progressky: support for, 76; public Atlilodes toward. 62, 75; stage prothiclions in schools, 62 63, 711

Drama League of America. 62. 67Droiser. Theodore. 111Dynamics of Education. The 119321,

147

Early admissions. 196

Ezelman. Max. 57, 168Econ. fir Opport unit e Act. 226Edinburgh: rhetorical studies at, 8Mum, ion& Frontier. The 119:131,

115, 116Educational Policies Commission

iNEA). 14311Educational Srrents for Children

119151. 143Educational Wash.lands 119531, 184,

188EfIlleta n and Freedom 119581, 189Education for A!! American Children

(1948), 143Edam, ion Ihr American rough

11944). 1.13. 145. 150Education for the Urban Dun/ row

toyed 119711. 233Education of Teachers of English for

Attlfrielln Schools and Colleges,The 119631, 211

Efficiency in educat ion, 80-82, 84. Seealso Minimum essentials, Science

Eight Year Ityport of the ExecutiveSeen-tarn /960-67. 219

Rif/h/ rear Study !PEAL 81), 107,118, 140.43, 145, 215

Electives. 32, 169 70, 238 39. 2-13Eliot. Charles W.. 32 33, 59Eliot. T. 5.. 1112. 165Elortition, 1. SIT also Oral reading:

SpeechEmerson, Ralph Waldo. 12. 18. 26EncyCopaedia Britannira Films. 21)9RnYlish and Scot fish Ballads. 27English for Social hiving 119431. 150English Journal: Bollingen prize con

troversy reported. 165; Burtonbecomes editor, 155; Hatfieldbecomes editor. 85: leading critirsas roil Mnors, Ill; and objectivetests, 95; reports. discussions ofteacher concerns 11911-1918), 53,54, 60, 61, 63, 6, 65, 109; reports,diseussions of teacher concerns11930s1, 87, 100, 115, 117, 123, 131;reports. discus dons of teacher concents 11950s 19600, 207, 208, 211

English in Every Classroom, 228,2.10 11

English Round Table of the Secon-dary Section t NEAl. 51. 71

English Teacher Preparation St tidy.214

Enjoyment of Poetry. The, 57Esquire, 172Essay on Man, 10"Essentials of Grammar and Cornpo.

sition, The," 84Ei !Ural I radit ions: in early 20th ten

tory, 57 59. 110 11: and humanitiesprograms, 209; and literature181 h-19t h centuries), 1 6. 22; ori-

gins of, 16; reaffirmed as goal forEnglish 119.10s1, 187; Romantir tra-dition and, 22.24. See also Culture;Moral values

Evans, Bertrand, 171 74. 207Eawnsining thr Examination in

Enghsh 119311. 95Exreutive Committee (With 118krodia, 212Experience curriculum. See Experi-

011e0, literature askrperivocc Curriculum in English,

In 119311, 119 21, 122. 123, 130,136. 151, 168, 178

Experience, literature as, 83, 109 15,119 22. 123 24

Experimental- method, 116 99"Experiment in Iligh School English,

An" (19241, 56Exploration, literalism. as, 123-25,

160. SIT also Literature.as Fr-lllerntinn

Extract irricular act iv it relation tocurriculum in English, 127-28

Exl racurrinslum: in 19t h cent tar" colloges. 12-13, IN 19; in preparatoryschools, 13. 19

Forts about Current English flaw(19381, 85

Facult y psychology. 5. 46. 48. 253Fader, Daniel, 227 28. 210hal-Safr, 205Moody is n Way firer/Mo.:1. 228EarnaT's Schoobllook, The, 1Fannin°. 113FEIT:11111, ilsOD, :11FaSeiS/11. 115Faulkner. William, 212Federal support of English. 198 204.

213. 220Follows of the Library of Congress in

American Let term, 165Film study, 210. Sit also Media studyFinishing schools: English in. 12-13,

16 17, 19Elyse)]. Rudolf, 188Folklore: introduced into curriculum.

25Ford. Boris, 229Ford Finindation, 193Ford Fund for the Advancement of

Education. 190, 209. 237

INDEX 289

Foreign Language Program 0.11.As.192

Fon err Am her. 251Foundotions of .1h-(hod (1925), 108,

117

Franklin, Benjamin. 10, 13, 19, 35Prating and Zoog/. 212

'110/1/ MD/ Discipline in English119651, 196 98, 202. 218

Pries. Charles C., 85Frost, Robert. 139Frye, Northrup. 184, 202.03Fund ionalism: language ins) runt ion

and, 80 87, 1.10; literature and, 83,86 149: movement tou.ard. 82 87

Pusrd 11/111,:es. SIT Core curriculum

Gale, Zona, IllCalton, Sir Franris, 60, 81Gardner, Francis, xiiGateway English. 227(ayley, C. M., 20General edneation: defined, 177General Education Board, 141, 150General Education in a Free Society

119451, 186General education movement. 139.40,

143-44, 152, 159Genre study. See Types approachGestalt psychology. 122 23, 147Gide. Andre, 153Gold, Michael, 115Goldsmith. Oliver, 110Gordon, Edward. 192Graduate study of English: first

stages in, 27-28Grammar: college entrance require-

ments in, 8: enters the curriculum,6.8, 16.17; functionalism and, 119;in high schools 11960s), 212

Grammatical lostituto of the EnglishLanguage (1783- 1, 3.4. 5, 7

Grant, Robert, 27fimprx of Wngh. The, 212Gry, William S.. 160, 161, 1118. 254Great Books: concept of, 35416, 185.

87, 216Green, Paid. 465Grey, Lennox, 138. 159 WOGrey. Zuni ,'251Growth as metaphor for education,

94, 168 169. 230, 253Guidance through English program,

114, 146.47Guild, Thatcher, 62

G. Stanley, 17 48,49, 56, 57, 62,

290 TRADITION AND REFORM

82. 89Hamlet, 22. 36Hand lin. Hertha, 151Haney. John. 89Harper's, 172Harris. Benjamin, 2Harris. William Torrey. 32Harvard Committee on Communica-

tion. 157Harvard University. 10. 12.27-28. 35,

41; Conanrs committees at, 18687;English literature introduced at.26; entrance requirements at. 30;play-writing course 119061, 81-62

Hatfield. Wilber W.: comments onfunctionalism. 85; on growththrough English. 94; on individ-ualization. 92; on languageskills. 78, 91; on Project Method.109; - on science in edueatinn. 99-11)0; -- on teaching aids. 114; On

teaching critical thinking. 117;edits antholngies, 128; edits ob-jective tests, 95

llsvighurst, Robert, 160liayakawa. S. i.. 157Hays. Edna. 37(Lazard, Patrick. 208Heath, D. C., 155Ilenrx. George IL. 149Henry, (1.. 251Heaton% Nat. 226Herndon, James. 226Her/burg. Max. 87. 88, 102. 208Higher Learning in America, The

ilchg, 186MO School English Instruction

Today, 222High School English rest hooks

119631, 171-74Hillytt Robert, 165Hinsdale. B. A., 45History of English Literature

0863), 58Hoetker, James, 235Hook. J. N., 192, 199, 201, 219. 235Thattl on Books 11966). 228Homer, 66Hoover, Herbert: creates Com-

mittee on Social Trends, 116Hopkins. L. T.. 123llorace Mann School, 56Hash, James Fleming; advocates

study of types. 112; and founding ofNCTE, 51 53, 65, 72; on litera-ture as experience. 109 -10; onminimum essentials, 84: outlines"Pntblem.Project Method," 109

House Committee on tin- AnieticanActivities. 204

Mn,' to Read a Book 11910). 184, 186Mae to Read a Page 119421. 158.59How to Teach Reading, and What to

Read in School (18861. 56Hudson, Henry. 55Hudson Review, The, 165Hull House, 47Ilumanism. 113-14. 187. 241. 246Ilmnanists, 113-14Humanities courses. 20810. 222Human relations: in I940s. 147.49.

153-55; in 1950.s. 17041Hume. David, 8Hutchins. Robert M.. 185. 188

"I Hear America Singing," 121Illinois Association of Teachers of

English. 51.'Individualization of instruction; he

ginnings in 1920s. 91-94: in 1930s,125. 127. See also Contract method;Dalton plan

Industry and education, 80-81. 23236. See also Science; Vocationaleducation

Inglis, Rewey Pelle, 99Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its

Development 11883). 60Institute for Propaganda Analysis,

157Instruction in English (19331, 12526Integrated studies. See Core curricu-

lumIntensive ;Andy of literary texts;

advocated (19141, 5758; and col-lege entrance examinations, 54;(oryell's findings. 9798; in 19thcentury. in 1930s. 127; recom-mendations Ot Commission on Eng

196-97c recommendations ofNew Critics. 164-See abm Mentaldiscipline.

Internationalism. 117. See also Com.miller on International Relations:Committee on International Under-standing

Hon, T. W. 11., 90

James, William, 47ate, (Willard II., 32Jewett, Arno, 169-70, 190. 209, 217.1tthqorifs, 226John Hay Fellows program. 209Johns Illiltinliainixersity, 27, 40

Joint Committee of Twenty Four:MLA-NCIE), 136

Jones, Howard Mumford, 114-15Jones, Lime Ilyn, 1 1 1 -12Journalism: as literature. 58, 88; in

high schools U930s), 128Judd, Charles IL, 85Julius Caesar, VA, 35, 36, 50, 60, 90,

125

Karnes, Lord. 8Kegler. Stanley, 207Keller, Charles, 209Kelly. George. 230Koppel, Francis, 218Kilpatrick, William Board: advocates

project method. 108, 109, 133:exemplifies concerns of his era,107; infIcence of, 112, 147, 148; andsocial reeonstructionists. 115, 116;and student Interest, 114

Kingsley, Clarence, 51, 64-65Kinnersley, Ebenezer. 10, 13Kittredge., George Lyman. 33. 41Kitzhahcr, Albert, 201Kohl, Ibirbert. 226Koos, Leonard V,. 94Korzybski, Alfred. 157

Jonathan, 226Kunio. Joshua, 115

LaBrot, Lot. L.. 114, 181flume Journal, 172

Lodu Chattertedh Lover, 231Lanoaget study of 11930s-'4081, 156-

160. See also Grammar: Rhetoric:f 'imposition

Language arts, 150, 15960. 229.31Language in Action 11941), 157Language in General Education

119401, 157, 159, 165language Programs for the Disud-

iTardageel 119651, 224language skills, 249.50, 252-53. Sec

also Language arts; Reading skills;Communication skills

Law of Effect, 108Leary, Bernice A., 16162Lectures an Rhetoric and Belles

tettres (17831, 9, 11, 13Leland, John. 5Lenrow, Elbert, 152.53,'205Izoonard, Sterling A., 84, 86, 106.

110, 112Lessinger, Leon, 224

INDEX .291

Lees Talk Sense about Our Schools(19531, I*

Lewin, William, 87Liberal education; criticism of pro-

gressives, 186.86; values of, 140,246

Liberal Education (1943), 188Lihraries: college, 12; literary socie-

ties, 12; NCTE and school 39,53.54; state of school - (1960s),212

Life. 205Life adjustment movement. 140.44.

146.47, 153.54; criticized (1960s).174, 185. 188-89; curriculum ma-terials for, 151-56; response ofteachers to, 144.47

Lindsay. Vachel, 111Literary canon; origins of - in the

high school, 24, 34-36, 67Literary heritage, 5, IL 59. 194, 247-

49

Literary history: drawbacks of chron-ological study, 173: introduced inAmorican colleges, 1011, 18

Literary magazines in 19th centurycolleges, 12

Literary societies in 19th century col-leges. 12; in 19th century schools.13

Literature; adolescent, 155-56, 180:in British schools (1960s), 231; deli.nition of, 43: in English, introducedin Artierican colleges, IV, 17-18, 41:first experimental study of td -'-tiing 01.97-98: goals of teaching. 113,246-47, 248; introduced into highschools, 10.11, 28.29, 37. 18. 19;place of in moral developmentstressed. 57 (See also Moral valuesthrough literature); practical valueof, 12.13, 19 (See also Needs andinterests of students; Functional.ism); response to, 202, 241, 246-47,249-50, 251 -52, 254: spread of - incolleges, 27 28; teaching of, ca.1900. 37-38. 43; titles taught in highschools (1886.19001. 66; in voca-tional education programs after1900, 59-60. See also American lit-erature; Children's literature; Con-temporary literature; Classics,English: Experience, literature as;Exploration, literature as. For dis-missions of approaches to teachingliterature, 1920.1970, see contentslistings

292 TRADITION AND REFORM

Literature and Life series 11922 24),129

Literature and Living series 119251.129

Literature ax Exploration 119381, 1'23-

25, 137, 152, 157, 160. 168"Little Red Riding Hood. .24Little theaters. 63, 75Living Literature series 11949/, 170Local associations of English

teachers: establishment of, 45.46,51. 52.53. 72: NCTE and, 5153

Logic as source of early English ,

studies, 8Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 35Look, 200Lore Story. 251Luther. Martin, xiiLynch, James, 171 74, 207Lynd, Albert. 188Lyrical Ballads,Preface to she, 20. 23

Macaulay, Thomas liabbington, 66Macbeth. 36. 50. 125, 151McCarthy. Senator Joseph, 188, 204McGuffey Readers. 45MeGliffey, William Holmes, 4Mager., Robert F., 234, 235Manchild in the Promised Lund. 207Mann, Horace, 22, 31)March, Francis Andrew, 27, 40Marckwardt. Alhen 11 85Marxist criticism, 115Mastery unit. 93-94Materials. See Teaching materials,

select ionMatthews, Brander, 61. 63Mead. George Herbert, 159-60Measurement movement: effects on

English programs, 8183Media study: before 1930, 6061, 75:

in 1930s, 8788, 102 03: in 1960s.20708. See also Popular culture

Mei:imitation as part of study ofEnglish, 6, 10-11, 29, 64

Mental discipline: classical languagesand, 5-6, 16, 48: lark in Englishstudies. 6. 34; study of literatureas. 38, 113 14; Vassar Conferenceand, :14

Merchant of Venice. The, 36, 50, 66

Metaphysics. 158

Methodology in English teaching, 21.45; in 1933, 125

Miller, Edwin, 51Miller, Newman, 52Milton, John, 35; Bent/ey's editions

of. 7; examination in 11866), 29

Minimum essentials in English, 82,94-85, 92, 236

Mina: flies; programs for. 225 28Mitchill, Theodore C 51-53MLA; cooperation with NCTE

119600, 213: cosponsors Dart-mouth Semi:mi.. 229; cosponsorsEnglish Teacher Preparation Study(19651.'214; involvement in secondory education 11950:11, 192, organi-zation of (1888). 27; participation inCommission on English 11959-19115), 196.99; Svotts presidency119071, 52; supports inclusion ofEnglish in NDEA 119(H), 200-01

Modern Language Association. SeeM1\

Modern literature. See Contempor-ary literature

Modern Poetry and the Toidition(19391, 163. 164

Modern Quarterly, 115Moral values through literature: in

18th-19th centuries, 2. 34. 21.22;E. Stanley Hall and, 57. 62; pro-gressives' views on, 108. DO, lll-12. 168. SI'f' also Ethical tradition

Morrison, Henry C., 93-94, 119, 232Motioh pictures. See Media studyMurray, Lindley. 4. 7Murray's Grammar 117951. 7Myth. study of: ailvowated. 56

Nation. The. 165,204National Academy of Science. 195National Assessmentof Educational

Progress, 233National Association of Journalism

Advisers, 118National Association of State Direc-

tors of Teacher Education andCertification. 214

National Association of Teachers ofEnglish 1NATEI, 229

National Association of Teachers ofSpeech, 118

National Conference of Christians andJews, 148

National Conference on UniformEntrance Requirements in English:fornuttion. 31, 36; influence of119301. 89: progressives' reactionagainst, 49; in reorganizationperiod. 66-67; in struggle for recognition of English, 38. 45; andUniform Lists. 53. 54

National Council of Education [NEA),32

National Council of Teachers of En-glish. See NCTE

National Defense Education Act. SeeNDEA

National Education Association. SeeNEA

A1diuttal Interest and the ContinuingEducation of Teachers of English,The 119(141. 200

Notional Interest and the Teaching ofEnglish, The 119611. 200, 219

National Interest surveys. 211National Joint Committee on English

INEAI, 44. 65, ti7, 77, 118, 126National Science Foundation, 192,200Natidnal Society for the Study of

Communication, 160National Society of College Teachers

of Education, 115National Study of high School En-

glish Programs, 210-11, 227, 229,231

National Survey of Secondary Educa-tion, 94, 125

NCTE: Achievement Awards11958- I, 199; affiliates, 53; atten-tion to independent reading lea.1917), 97; "Basic Aims for EnglishInstruction in American Schools"project 119411, 159: hegins re-assessment of English programs(ea. 19581, 192; campaign forfederal funding of English pro-grams11958,64), 199-201: campaignfor school lihraries 119131, 54; con-cern with practical reading skills(1930s). 91; Cooperation with MLA1196091. 213; cosponsors Dart.mouth Seminar 11966), 229; co-sponsors English Teacher Prepara-tion Study, 214; cosponsors re-organization study 119171. 65; criti-cized for ending monopoly ofclassics 119421, 187; criticizes Uni-form Lists 11912), 53; curriculumprojects 11930s), 118.23; early com-mittees, 53, 72; emphasis on com-munication 11940s), 15960;establishesTask Force on TeachingEnglish to the Disadvantaged11964), 226-27; favors teaching"American Ideals" 119201, 68; firstcommittee on censorship (19481,204; first committee on speech, 74;founding 11911), 50-51, 72; freedomto teach and freedom to readefforts Ica. 1960), 205-06; "IdealCourse" in English suggested

INDEX 293

119141, 60: participation in Commis-sion on English 11959-1965), 196;1913 presidential address (Fred N.Scott), 58; 191(1 presidentialaddress (Joseph M. Thomas), 113;1929 presidential address (ReweyBelle Inglis). 99; 193'2 presidentialaddress, (Stella Center), 117; 1934presidential address (Oscar J.Campbell), 117-18; 1935 presidenRai address (Charles S. Thomas1,106; 1936 presidential address(Dora V. Smith), 118; challenged,131; presidents' views on literature(1913-141, 57-58; and theprogressive movement 1920s-'30s,79, 130-31; puhlications on popularculture (19605). 208; public rela-tions efforts lea. 1958), 198 -99: re-views research in composition(191111, 98-99; resolution againstMcCarthyism 119481, 20405; stanceOn hehavioral ohjectives 11969),235; stance on high school Englishprograms 11958-65), 213; summertours (1950s), 229; supports dramain curriculum (ca, 1914), 63. Forcommissions, committees, tuskforces, see specific names

NDEA, 189, 192, 199, 01, 219; insti-tutes. 213

NBA: cosponsors peace movement,117; and Curriculum Commission,118; Department of Superinten-dence, 3: endorses social recon-struction, 116; and innovation, 141;1910 meeting, 51; 1911 meeting, 52;Project on the Academically Tal-ented Student, 191; Small'saddress to, 47, See also Commis-sion on the Relation of School andCollege; Committee on College En-trance Requirements: EducationalPolicies Commission; EnglishRound Tahle; National Council ofEducation; National Joint Commit-tee on English

Nerds and interests of students: ashasis of curriculum, 46, 59, 88-89,11315, 14243, 14647, 149.51, 179;ft Stanley MU and, - 21148, 56-57; studies or, 151. See arso Read-ing interests; Selection of materials

Neville, Mark, 145Newark Academy, 31New Criticism, 156-57, 162.66, 171New Criticism, The (1941), 163New Critics, 162.66, 171-72. 182; in-

294 TRADITION AND REFORM

fluency on high school programs,140, 164-66, 171-72, 190, 196-97,205, 206

New England: 19th century literaryculture in, 23. 39-40

New England Association of Collegesand Secondary Schools, 31

New England Association of Teachersof English, 46, 59, 69

New England Commission of Collegeson Entrance Examinations, 31

Now England Journal of Education,

New England Primer (ea. 16861, 2-3.5New Republic, The, 165Newspaper study. 58, 67-68. 88. See

also JournalismNewspaper Week, 58New Yorker, The, 172New York State Association of En-

glish Teachers, 51New York Times, The, 165Ninth Yearbook of the Department of

Supervisors and Directors ofInstrueion (NEAL 132

Nixon, Richard M.: 1970 EducationMessage to Congress, 224, 233

Norr's, Frank, 121North Central Association of Colleges

and Secondary Schools- 31, 46, 52,68. 118; English Committee, 208

Norvell. George, 154.55Noyes, Edward S., 192

Objectives, specification of. 82.83. 86-87, 232. 234-36, 252.53. See alsoBehavioral objectives

Objective testing. See Testing, ohjec-tive

Octopus, The, 121Odyssey, The, 228Ogden, C. K., 111, 157Olson, James, 170, 171Once and Future Kin';, The, 212O'Neill, Eugene, 62"Open Letter to Teachers of English,

An" Ica, 1909), 51Oratory, 3-4, 8, 10Ossian, 8Outlines Of English Literature 118481,

10

Paperback texts, 207, 210, 212Paradise Lost, 7, 9, 35, 36Parker, William Riley, 192Parkhurst. Helen. 92

Patriotism. See Americanism; Citi-zenship

Payne Fund studies, 87PEA, 7980, 107. 14043; Counts'

address to, 116. See also Com-mission on Human Relations; Com-mission on the Relation of Schooland College; Commission on Secondory School Curriculum; Educa-tional Policies Commission; Eight-Year Study

Peace movement. See International-ism

Pedagogical Seminary, 57Pendleton, Charles S., 86Performance contracts, 233Perry, Bliss, 28Personality development: drama and,

63, 230.31; literature and, 124.25,136, 141. 145.47. 178, 230-31

Persons, Gladys, 161Phelps, William Lyons, 22, 28, 31, 46Philology: schools and, 28-29, 34,

125; study of, 25.28Physical Sciences Study Committee.

192l'iaget, Jean, 230Pierpont. John, 4Pisan Cantos, 165Plato, 25. 249Plays, study and production of. See

DramaPoetry magazine. 165"Poetry's New Priesthood," 165Bailey, Robert C.. 131Pope, Alexander, 9Popular culture: study of, 208. See

also Media studyPorter, Katherine Anne, 165Portrait of the Artist as u Young

Man, A, 212Pound, Ezra, 111. 165Practical Critirism (1929), 163Practice of Teaching in the Secondary

School, The 119261. 93Preparing Instructional Objectives

119621, 234Preparing Objectives for Pro-

grammed Instruction (1961). 234Prescriptive tradition, 6.8, 9, 16, 55President's Committee on Social

Trends 11929), 116Priestley. J, IL, 111Primers, 1.3, 15Princeton University, 29. See also

College of New JerseyPrinciples of Literary Cnticism

119241, 1fi0

Process of Education. The, 11960),195

Professional standards; in 1960s. 213-15

Programmed instruction, 234, 23839Progressive Education Association.

See PEAProgressive movement: academic

criticism of, 174-76, 185-89, 216-17;attitude of NCTE toward, 130.31,137. 143; contributions to literatureprograms. 174-76, 248; drama and.63-64; in 1940s-'59s, 140-41; lessonsof, 214.15; overview of, 79.80; riseof, 47.49

Project English, 201, 219-20; confer-ences. 201. 217; curriculum studycenters, 201-04, 214.15, 220, 229;Hunter College center, 22728; Uni-versity of Michigan center, 240,227.28

Project method. 106.09, 133Project on Intergroup Relat ions,148-

49Project on the Academically Talented

Student (NEM, 191I'ropaganda: advertising as, 117;

analysis, 157, 180; study of. 88, 140,157. 170

l'rosser, Charles, 144Protestant Tutor for Youth, The

116791, 2Prymer of Salisbury Use sea. 14910, 1

Quackery in the Public Schools(1953), 188

Radcliffe College: play Writing course11905), 62

Radio Committee INCTE), 88Ransom, John Crowe, 162, 103'Ransom of Red Chief, The," 152Readability indices, 10062Readers: 19th century, 35. See also

PrimersReader's Digest, 161Reader's Guide to Prose Fiction, The

(1940), 152, 205Reading, 251452; extensive - , 97.98,

127, 138, 252; free - , Wee exten-sive ; home - ); home - 39 5367, 97, 105. 125; intensive - . 185-86. See also Intensive study of litcraw texts

Reading instruction: developmentalprograms, 15862, 169; ethical tra-dition and. 1-3; secularization of 3-

INDEX 295

4, See also PrimersReading interests: curriculum and,

56, 88-89, 91, 154-55: studies of, 56,73. 88-89. 15455

Reading Interests of Young People,The 11950). 154

Reading Ladders for Human Rela-tions (1947). 153.54, 180

Reading lists., 53-54, 15354, 155.56,180. See also Reading interests:Reading. home

Reading Skill Builders, 161Reading skills; army programs, 160.

61, 181; broader definition 11940s),156.59, 161.62; measurement, 90-91; oral, 5, 16, 61,62; silent, 16, 80,103; view of NCTE Commission onthe English Curriculum, 168

Read Up on Life (1952). 170"Recommendations for the Improve

ment of American High Schools"11959), 189

Reformation, 1Regents' Inquiry into the Cost and

Character of Public Education inNew York State, 126

Regional differences in teaching ofEnglish, 37. 41.50, 59, 125

Relevance of school curriculum, 67,236. Seealso Needs and interests ofstudents

!Immunization movement, 64-67Reorganization of English in Secon-

dary Schools (1917), 65.67, 77, 105Report of the Committee of Ten . .

11894), 33. 45, 59Rhetoric; early teaching of, 810, 17,

39; in school programs, 13, n, 34Rich. Mabel Irene, 112Richards, I. A.: influenc' of, 182; as

New Critic, 162-63, 161; on seman-tics, 138, 155; writin nn systemsof meaning, 157

-Rickover, Vice-Admiral Hyman C..189

Riders to the Sea. 171

Rinker, Floyd. 209Roberts, II. D., 150Rockefeller Foundation. 192Rogers, Carl, 24243Rolfe, William James, 28-29. 34, 55Romantic: era, 21, 22, 55; ideal, 25-

26; view, 23Romantics. 22: English, 35; German,

25Randy, Sarah, 146Rosenblatt, Louise M,, 123-25, 131w

152, 157, 179

296 TRADITION AND REFORM

Round Table Committee on CollegeEntrance Requirements (NEALSIT Committee on CollegeEntrance Requirements

Rutgers Plan, 237

Sandburg, Carl, 130San Francisco State Normal College,

92Sapir, Edward, 159Sartre, Jean Paul, 249SAT ISeholastic Aptitude Test). 96Saturday Evening Post, The, 172Saturday lee eine of Literature, 165Scarlet Letter, The, 205, 212Schott/stir Muguzine; 172Scholastic Teacher, 208School and Society, The 118901, 48School editions: adaptations of .

'lassies. 54; adaptations of other litnature. 173; first published. 34-35;of popular novels, 161

School Maths Study Group, 192, 217School ffirl'itle, 49, 57Science: educational management

;md, 79-83; influence on English,84-100. 105; move to control influ-ence of, 100; in study of educa-tion. 80-81; in study of language.25, 39. SO' Obit) Minimum essen-tials; Philology

Science in General Education 119381,112, 157

Scott. Fred Newton, 45, 50, 51. 52.54, 55, 58, (10, 61, 71, 74

Scott, Sir Walter, 66Scudder. Horace E., 24Secrets of Successful Living, 161Selection of materials. See Teaching

unnerials. selectionSemantics in high schools, 140, 15660Senior Schuh/stk., 204Sequence in the English curriculum,

166, 169, 253; Basic Issues reeommendations, 193; Commission onthe English Curriculum recommen-dations 11950s). 16869; curriculumstudy renters and, 202-03; Experi-(-nee rurriculuM recommendations11935), 119; importance of, 194;New (Irides and, 16384; in 19thcentury, 5. 50; in Heading Lud.ders, 153-54; Reorganimition reportand, 6697; in spiral curriculum, 195

Seuss,.Dr., 250Seventeen. 153, 172Sex education; advocated, 57Shakford, Martha. 110, 113

Shakespeare, William; Blair's com-ments on, 9; on college entrancefists, 621 dispute shout teaching,22; enjoyment vs. analysis of, 55: inHarvard entrance requirements,30; Harvard students' interest in,12: introduced into curriculum, 4;philological study of, 25; Pierponrsselections from, 4; recognition ofmerit of, as literature, 35; WilliamJames Rolfe's editions of, 28; War-burton's editions of, 7

Shapiro, Karl, 165Shaw, Thomas Budge, 10-11, 18, 34Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 23Sheridan. Marion, 145Silas Monier, :16, 50, 67. 152,227Silberman, Charles; 224, 236Silent Reading: :1 Study of Its Vari-

ous Types (19221, 90Skinner, B. F., 234Slaughter, Eugene, 214Slums and Suburbs 11961). 226Small, Albion, 47Smiley, Marjorie, 227Smith, Adam. 8, 39Smith, Dora V 106, 118, 121, 131.32,

155, 166, 170, 180, 211; 1933 studyof high schools, 125-28

Smith, Elbridge. 29Smith, Mortimer, 188Social Frontier, The, HDSocialism, 116Socialization through English studies,

64, 124, 127. 131, 150, SW IWOEthical tradition: Moral valuesthrough literature

Social Objectives of School English,The 11924). 86

Social reconstrurtionists, 116-18, 188Social reform: English as vehicle for,

47. 115-18; loss of impetus toward,139, 144. 146, 174

Social studies: challenge to English,84-85; correlation with English,141-42, 144-46

Sound and the Fury, The, 212Southern Association of Colleges and

Secondary Schools, 118Spectator papers, 4, 9Speech Association of America', 160Speech, English and, 74, 160Spelling, 3, 4, 15, 86,253Spenrer, Herbert, 47Spenser, Edmund, 25, 27Spiral curriculum, 195, 247Sputnik, 188-89, 199,:.'01, 217Squire, James B., 199, 219Stanford Language Arts Investiga-

tion, 150

Stevenson, Prof. John, 8, 9Stevenson. Robert Louis. 68Stone. George Winchester. Jr., 192.

196Story magazine, 172Story of the EightYear Study, The

t19421, 138Stout. John E., 37, 44Stronger, The, 212Student interest. Sec Needs and

interests of students; Reading.interests

SIMI/us/ions to Teachers in the Secon-dary Schools 118941, «0

Summer institutes: CEEB, 213:Intergroup Relations, 148-49;NI3EA, 213

Supreme Court. Sec U. S. SupremeCourt

Swift, Jonathan, 9Synge, John Millington, 171Systems approach, 232-33

Tait, Hilda, 147-49, 153-54, 179, 180Paine, Hippo lyte, 55-56Tale of Two Cities, A, 212%Wks on the Study of Literature

118971, 20Tarkington, Booth, 153Task Force on Teaching English to

the Disadvantaged 1NCTEL 227Taste, efforts to improve, 58, 87, 88,

207-08. 250-51Tate, Allen, 162, 16, 165Tatter, The, 9Teacher preparation in English:

development of guidelines 11960s1,214; first model for. 27: reeommen-dations NC'l'E Commission onEnglish 119b51, 197-98: state of119031, 43; state of 11910s), 127:state of 119611, 199-200; state of11960s), 200. 211

Teachers College, Colunibia Univer.sky. 115, 123; group. 115. 116;Lincoln School at am

Teachers college Record, 108, 109Teaching aids: in literature pro.

grams, 60411. 75. 114, 212Teaching English to Speakers of

Other Languages. See TESOLTeaching materials, selection; for

curriculum based on needs. 151-55;definitions of suitable, 21. 67, 205,206. 220; fartON governing. 127.204. See also Censorship; Literarycanon

Teaching of English in the Elemem

I NDEX 297

tory and Secondary School, The((hubb. 19021, 45

Teaching of English in the Elemen-tary and the Secomhzry School, TheI Carpenter, Raker. Scott. 1903), 45

7l-aching the Language Arts i1`1961,45

Team teaching. 209. 222Teen Age Book Club. 207Tennyson, Alfred, Lord. 110Terman, Lewis M.. 81, 92TESOL. 229Testing: achievement, 9; in 186.

28-29; intelligence. Si. 94; objec-tive, 81-82. 94 -96, 104. See also Col-lege entrance examinations

Textbooks: influence on Englishcourses. 127. See also School edi-tions; Anthologies; Paperbacktexts

T groups, 242-43Thematic organization of literature

courses, 129.30, 151, 169. 170, 231;drawbacks of, 173

Theory of Litenzt art 119491, 163This Week magazine, 172Thomas. Charles Swain, 72. 95, 06,

1011. 205Thomas, Joseph Ni. 113Thornlike, Edward Lee, 47. 70.78

81, 107, 108, 147Thurber. Samuel. xii,Toni Sawyer. 152'Topical organization. Sec Thematic.

organizationTracking, 189. 212 13Training of Secondary School nach-

ers Especially with Reference foEnglish, The 119421, 186

"Treason's Strange Fruits," 165Tree Grows in Brooklyn, A, 205Trinity College. 31Tripod metaphor for English studies.

192. 196. 202, 211, 917, 218Tri-University Propet. '235,'254Tuttle, Robert, 214Tyler, Moses .Coit, 27Types approach, 55-513, 112. 126, 169

VSOE: adopts Commission on En-glish curriculum model, 198; rowfemme on English in VictoryCorps, 160: curriculum study ten-ter reports to 204; and innova-tion, 141; ,Jewett survey. 109; and"life adjustment," 144; and Na-lions) Survey of Secondary Educa-tion, 94: performance eontract ex-

298 TRADITION AND REFORM

periments. 283; supports NDEA,200-01; 220; supports Tri-Uni-yersity Project, 235S. Office of Education. See USOE

U. S. Supreme Court: desegregationderision, 226; Ulysses decision. 205

lyfy American, The. 212/ loser ease: Supreme Court

derision. 205Understanditig Druma 119461. 164Understanding Fiction 119431. 164Understanding Poetry 11938), 163-64Underwood. Francis. 24Uniform entrance requirements. See

College entrance requirementsUniform Lists. 49-51, 53. 128; ten

most popular selections on 11907),50

Unit instruction: defined by N(TTECommission on the English Cur-riculum. 168; Morrison masteryunit. 93.94rin 1933, 125; radical-progressive unit, 119

University of Illinois Committee onSchool Math, 192

University of Michigan, 50, 228University of Pennsylvania; early his-

tory, 10Untermeyer. Louis, 111Up from Slavery, 151.52U. 3. Commissioner of Education:

annual report 11889), 13; annual report 11900-19011. 37

U, S, Congress. 189, 233

Van Doren. Mark. III, 186. 188, 204Vassar College. 33Vassar Conference on English. See

Committee of TenVictory Corps: conference on English

in, 160Vietnam War. 286Vocational education. 46. 59-60. 74-

75. 144"Vocational Education in the Years

Mead- (begun 1944, 144Vygotsky. L. S.. 230

Walcott. Fred. 85Warburton, Bishop William. 7Warren. Robert Penn, 162-64, 165Watson. Robert, 8Webster. Noah. Mi. 3-4. 7Weekly Reader Children's Book Club,

207Weeks. Ruth Mary. 118Wellek, Rene, 40, 163Well Wrought Urn. The (19471, 247

Westminster Assembly. 2Whitman, Walt, 121. 130Williams College, 12Witt, Peter D., 37W. J. Maxey Boys Training School.

228Who Am il, 337370 Johnny Can't Read 11953).'283Wolf. Frederbli, 25Women in Love. 314Woodring, Paul. 188Woods Hole; conference at, 195Woodworth. Robert S., 48Wordsworth, William, 23Workload of teacher: honor roll for

schools 11962), 213-14: id 1930s,127-28; NCTE position on lea.19601. 199. 219; recommendationsof the Commission on English119651. 197

World literature. 169-71. See also In-ternationalism: Humanities courses

Worbl Neighbors, 263World War 1, 67. 81-82; effect on En

glish programs. 67-68; and GeneralSemantics Movement, 157

World War IL 140. 159. 160, 170. 186,205

Yale University: entrance require-meats 11890s), 31-32; Master ofArts in Teaehing program, 192; Report of 1828, xii. 194

Watling, The. 233