5. For fifty years the school population has been increasing. The demand for English teachers has increased faster than the number adequately trained-and the 1960's will increase the demand. Because all More students require more English teachers students study English, the rise in school population dur ing the past fifty years has inevitably affected the teaching of English more directly than the teaching of any other subject. From 1910 to 1959, the proportion of the school age population (ages 5 to 17) attending public elementary and secondary schools increased from 74.2 per cent to 83.6 per cent, even while the size of the school age population exploded from about 24 million to 37 million. During this same period, the number enrolled in elementary classrooms (grades 1 to 8) increased from about 17 million to 24 million, while the number enrolled in high schools increased eleven-fold, (from 915,000 to 11,251,000). Despite vigorous efforts to recruit adequately trained teachers in all fields, the gulf between supply and demand continues to widen. Today one-fourth of all elementary school teachers-those responsible for teaching fundamental skills in reading, writing, and language-are not college graduates.10 The number of high school teachers graduated to teach English by the nation's colleges in 1960 was 12 per cent below the number graduated in 1950, despite an increase of about five million in total high school enrollments. And in the number of graduates prepared to teach high school English, 1960 was the best year since 1950!11 One sampling indicates that during 1958-1959 alone, the demand for trained high school teachers of English outran the supply by 27 per cent.1 Moreover, expanding enrollments are expected to continue for some time to come. The population of the United States has risen 23.7 per cent since 1946, but the school age population has risen 46.3 per cent. A similar rate of growth should continue in the years ahead.13 During the past decade, enrollments in public schools have been increasing at an annual average increase of more than one million pupils. These increases are derived largely from children born between 1943 and 1953 at an annual rate ranging from 3,104,000 (1943) to 3,965,000 (1953). Yet beginning in 1954, the annual birth rate has exceeded four million each year. As recent research of the National Education Association Statistical Summary of Education 1955-56, Biennial Survey of Education in the United States, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Chapter 1, 1959, pp. 24-25. Statistics for 1959 are reported in Fall, 1959, Enrollment, Teachers and School Housing, U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. 10 Teacher Supply and Demand in Public Schools, 1960, Research Division, National Education Association of the United States, April, 1960, p. 12. "Ibid., p. 11. See the discussion of these findings on page 34. 13 Research Bulletin, National Education Association, Vol. 36, No. + (December, 1959), p. 124. indicates, in September, 1960, for the first time, the elementary schools of this country felt the full impact of four million births six years earlier, and then in only the first of the six grades. But in September, 1965, all six grades of the elementary schools will be serving children born at the rate of four to four and one-half million per year! By September, 1969, our high schools will be deluged with 50 to 70 per cent more students than they can now accommodate." In other words, the demand for adequately prepared elementary and secondary teachers not only continues unabated but will grow even more pressing in the years to come. The total enrollment in elementary schools is expected to increase 13.4 per cent from 1958 to 1965; the enrollment in secondary schools is expected to increase 47 per cent; and college enrollments are expected to increase 40.9 per cent over the 1958 levels.15 Almost all of these students will be studying English. These figures we are beginning to get used to. They meet us weekly in sober statements in the press. What we fail to realize is that the expansion has been in process for over thirty years. Figures from a recent U. S. Office of Education report are instructive.16 They contrast two generations of fifth graders. Of 1,000 pupils who entered the fifth grade in 1924, 612 entered high school, 302 graduated, and 118 went to college. Of 1,000 fifth graders in 1949, 863 entered high school, 581 graduated, and 301 went to college. Note that those entering college represented 30.1 per cent of the original fifth graders and 51.9 per cent of the high school graduates. The so-called "college bound minority" of high school graduates (since about 1953) has in reality been a "majority," and the percentage of high school graduates seeking higher education continues to rise. Preparation of these students by well-educated English teachers is of vital educational importance. In desperate attempts to cope with the population explosion over the years, thousands of people of good will, but innocent of sound training, have been employed to fill classrooms and teach "English." Who are these teachers? What books have they read? What books are they having their pupils read? Some with only minors in English, many with still less preparation, have managed to hold their pupils' attention in class with all sorts of interesting discussions and materials-but not with English. The "The Pursuit of Excellence-Education and the Future of America, Special Studies Report V, Rockefeller Brothers Fund (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958), p. 21. Teacher Supply and Demand, p. 13. 10 School Retention Rate Rises," School Life, U. S. Office of Education, Vol. 42, No. 5 (January, 1960), pp. 20-21. content of English accordingly has become increasingly confused and has lost definition. The national waste in time and money reflected in low scores in College Board Examinations and in expenditures upon college programs of "remedial English" is a matter for serious concern. The drift into the present state of chaos has been subtle and complex; the causes run deep. We must now become aware of the critical problem and muster a national effort to solve it. Assessment of blame is no longer to the point. Explanation, however, is helpful, and alertness to the magnitude of the task that lies before us is imperative. 6. The old and essential obligations of the English teacher have not changed, but new obligations make his task increasingly difficult. These new demands have resulted primarily from changes in society, in the composition of the school population, and in the role of communication in the world today. One hundred years ago, many of the people of our country were barred from achieving a full life because they were unable to read and Different kinds of students write. Public schools were established to enable-even to require-every person to become literate. From 1870 to 1945 came the task of erecting 30,000 high schools, 100,000 elementary schools, and a thousand colleges; and with this construction came the task of finding a million teachers for thirty million youth from every level of society and every hamlet and crossroads. Those who were teaching English learned to cope, as teachers of English still must learn to cope, with the linguistically privileged and linguistically underprivileged, with the special problems of the bilingual child, with dialectal differences, with the interplay of many accents and vocabularies as children from all segments of life came together in the classroom. The goal of total literacy practically has been reached, and it is no accident that the achievement of literacy has resulted in valuable economic, cultural, and political by-products: the most productive economy in the world, leadership in the sciences and arts, and an increasing extension of democratic rights and responsibilities to most of our citizens. In recent years, we have tended to be satisfied with mere literacy. Well aware that the scientific, political, and industrial practices of a century The need for skills ago are too rudimentary for today, we have not faced the ! English. Businesses are employing the graduates of liberal arts colleges in order to secure executives who can bring a sense of human values to the transactions of the market place. Educators in law and medicine decry the frequent ineptness in reading, writing, and speaking of the young people entering their professions. Colleges are spending too much time and energy on remedial English, working to bring moderately literate students up to the level of skill in communication required for satisfactory college performance. When large numbers of the professionals of our nation are handicapped by ignorance of their mother tongue and unawareness of our humanistic writings, it is obvious that a sizable number of potential professionals and other leaders are lost in the crowd, living beneath their capacities, prevented from fulfilling their potentialities as individuals and from making their contribution to society. In addition, the past quarter century has witnessed steadily |