Some Reelings and Writhings

Once a year the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) bursts the seams of some large hotel to discuss what the Mock Turtle called Reeling and Writhing. This year’s convention at New Orleans was characteristically crowded. Not only do these meetings dwarf any other conglomeration of English teachers, including the MLA (which of course includes other languages), they are far more heterogeneous in level and locale than anything similar. Wandering into one of these ballrooms, and wondering what balls could have taken place there, you are as likely to watch a spokesperson from Diablo Valley College as from Tuskegee Institute, from Le- Moyne-Owen College as from the South Dakota School of Mines, pouring some coruscating oratory into a lamp in the evident belief it is a mike. For this is the nitty-gritty of English teaching: no Ivy around at all, mostly high school, community college, some state universities, and the service academies. And if Mrs. Front Porch wants to know why Johnny can’t read or write today she could do worse than harken to the march toward mindlessness NCTE has been taking of late.

The plurality of the meeting was its pleasure. Where else could you come across a symposium made up from the ranks of Spachenkill Union Free School, the Miami-Dade Junior College South (a strong contingent), and the U.S. Air Force Academy? There is genuine concern about every aspect of English teaching, from hiring to firing, from techniques of classroom management to how to cross disciplines and survive. But the age of permissiveness has hit NCTE hard and it has swallowed hook, line, and sinker all the cult cant: e.g., a “workshop” in “How Can We Incorporate Women’s Studies into the Freshman-Sophomore Curriculum?”; a discussion of Conrad’s The Secret Agent as sexist (two Mss. in stern tandem here); the reiterated affirmation of students’ rights (“Helping Students Evaluate Each Other’s Papers”); problems of open classrooms, of various ghettos, and of remediation (now called compensation). Genuinely interested as a linguist in some enlightenment about “Indian Ways of Communicating,” I wandered into one emptyish hall where we were addressed by a sort of Bella Abzug in a headband and a real Indian Ms. and Princess who told us what slaves we were to mercantile culture.

GW

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Geoffrey Wagner

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Once a year the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) bursts the seams of some large hotel to discuss what the Mock Turtle called Reeling and Writhing. This year’s convention at New Orleans was characteristically crowded. Not only do these meetings dwarf any other conglomeration of English teachers, including the MLA (which of course includes other languages), they are far more heterogeneous in level and locale than anything similar. Wandering into one of these ballrooms, and wondering what balls could have taken place there, you are as likely to watch a spokesperson from Diablo Valley College as from Tuskegee Institute, from Le- Moyne-Owen College as from the South Dakota School of Mines, pouring some coruscating oratory into a lamp in the evident belief it is a mike. For this is the nitty-gritty of English teaching: no Ivy around at all, mostly high school, community college, some state universities, and the service academies. And if Mrs. Front Porch wants to know why Johnny can’t read or write today she could do worse than harken to the march toward mindlessness NCTE has been taking of late.

The plurality of the meeting was its pleasure. Where else could you come across a symposium made up from the ranks of Spachenkill Union Free School, the Miami-Dade Junior College South (a strong contingent), and the U.S. Air Force Academy? There is genuine concern about every aspect of English teaching, from hiring to firing, from techniques of classroom management to how to cross disciplines and survive. But the age of permissiveness has hit NCTE hard and it has swallowed hook, line, and sinker all the cult cant: e.g., a “workshop” in “How Can We Incorporate Women’s Studies into the Freshman-Sophomore Curriculum?”; a discussion of Conrad’s The Secret Agent as sexist (two Mss. in stern tandem here); the reiterated affirmation of students’ rights (“Helping Students Evaluate Each Other’s Papers”); problems of open classrooms, of various ghettos, and of remediation (now called compensation). Genuinely interested as a linguist in some enlightenment about “Indian Ways of Communicating,” I wandered into one emptyish hall where we were addressed by a sort of Bella Abzug in a headband and a real Indian Ms. and Princess who told us what slaves we were to mercantile culture.