NASSP Bulletin

"Is there a 'new English' and, if so, what is its character?" The executive secretary of the National Council of Teachers of English pro vides part of the answer to his own questions by noting a series of conditions or movements that are stimulating a reappraisal of English in struction.

"The English curriculum is more than a set of skills necessary for success in other areas of endeavor. It is also more than a humanistic study." Bennett discusses the more important aspects of this enlarged contemporary view.

"The unhappy fact is that the discipline of English ... has not up to now dealt very well with the language.... It is not generally ap prehended that the language is the only unify ing element in the complex and diverse dis cipline of English."

"Language is filled with more mystery than sense, more caprice than logic, more surprise and defiance than compliance and capitula tion ... language is the most compelling mani festation we have of our humanness."

"Teachers utilizing concepts from communica tion theory... are less concerned with delivery and more concerned with the message as an element common to both speaker and listener."

"Special reading classes are being planned over night and hastily staffed with inexperienced and untrained teachers, recruited usually from the English department. In such circumstances, confusion and disappointment are inevitable, but there remains at least the hope of learning from mistakes."

"More often than not the teaching of composi tion is done negatively—after the fact.... The problem hinges on the unvoiced assumption that somehow a student knows how to write and the teacher's job is to show the student what he did wrong."

"A deeply felt conviction, however eccentric, is justification enough for a substitute assign ment for that [ sincerely objecting] student. But surely it is not justification enough for a major revision in the curriculum."

"Education for the disadvantaged means chiefly English for the disadvantaged, since our lan guage is central to all other aspects of our culture."

"Neither English teachers, administrators, nor the lay public have been uniformly satisfied with the results of secondary English instruc tion.... Better prepared teachers ... are ob viously needed to combat such justifiable dis satisfaction."

"The diversity and range of these [federal] proj ects demonstrate effectively the lack of any attempt on the part of the federal government to develop or impose a national curriculum in English."

"If there is a 'new English,' it is to be found by reexamining and reinterpreting the child's experiences in language rather than by intro ducing new content, as has been characteristic of curriculum change in certain other school subjects, notably mathematics, science, and geog raphy."

"While many changes in English are made each year, quite a number of them are mainly a return to former good practices which fell into disuse."