Curriculum Study Commission Highlights
From the long list of Commission involvement in
professional concerns, the following is a selection of the significant
activities and projects undertaken:
1951: Role in Establishing CCCTE Regional Conferences
As each conference attracted an increasing number of
participants, the Commission realized, after the third year, that attendance
would have to be curtailed -- for two reasons. One was that the number of spaces
allocated at the conference grounds was limited; another was that the integrity
of the small group discussions that were becoming so popular had be to
protected. Seeking to make other provisions, the Commission and the CCCTE Board
of Directors devised a plan to hold four one-day regional conferences in
different parts of central California during the spring of each year. Although
geographical distribution was a consideration in the selection of locations for
such meetings, they were often held in those places where English teachers
expressed interest in organizing one. Regional meetings also offered an
opportunity to capitalize on the leadership emerging from Asilomar conferences,
providing new venues for the talents of teachers who had developed skills in
group discussion and other leadership techniques at Asilomar. In turn, regional
conferences became places for the discovery of talented teachers with potential
for the Asilomar conference and Commission membership.
1959-60: Role in the Founding of CATE
In 1959 there existed statewide only a loose confederation of
affiliate organizations called the California Association of English Councils (CAEC).
One of these was the Central California Council of Teachers of English, which
had originated in the 1930s as the California Association of Teachers of
English, Central Section. The so-called state level organization consisted only
of a group of officers nominated and elected by the various affiliates. They had
no unified membership behind them, no authority to act for the state as a whole,
and no financial resources to tackle problems. Richard Worthen, a member of the
Commission, was President of CAEC in 1959, and he spearheaded a move toward the
consolidation of Councils. When the new California Association of Teachers of
English (CATE) was created at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on Friday,
February 12, 1960, by delegates from affiliates of the old CAEC, Dick Worthen
was its founding president. The Commission even underwrote part of the cost of
the constitutional convention. Henry Meckel and a representative from Southern
California co-chaired the drafting of the original CATE constitution. One year
after the adoption of the new constitution, each person joining or renewing
membership in a regional affiliate automatically became a member of the new CATE.
Thus, CATE became a truly statewide organization, giving a unified voice to the
profession for the first time.
1958-2000: Spring Asilomar Conferences
The invitational Spring Asilomar for a limited number of
participants was conceived by the Commission as a means of providing leaders in
English in central California with up-to-date knowledge in a particular field.
These conferences have focused on diverse areas of new scholarship or on
professional issues. Complete coverage of a given field in a single weekend has
never been the goal; rather, the Commission hopes that intensive exposure to the
dimensions of problems and to important new scholarship might reduce the lag
time between what is known and what could be used in classrooms. The general
structure of these conferences consists of small discussion groups working from
the same information provided through three or four general session
presentations.
1960s: Special Sub-Conferences
As important issues arose on the professional horizon, the
Commission provided opportunities for their consideration in special meetings
separate but adjunct to the fall Asilomar conference. Participants followed
their own sequence of group meetings and general sessions. In 1961, the
Commission met with five members of the Commission on English of the College
Entrance Examination Board and their Executive Secretary in consideration of its
recently published Freedom and Discipline in English. In 1966, the
Commission presented a sub-conference on Developing Better English Departments.
A condition of attending required the participating English department chair to
bring along an administrator from the same school. Then in 1967, the Commission
sponsored a major invitational sub-conference on the preparation of teachers of
English for California elementary and secondary schools, co-sponsored with the
California Association of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers
of English, and the Association of Departments of English, the national
organization that represents college departments of English. Albert H.
Marquardt, President of NCTE, Michael F. Shugrue, Assistant Secretary for
English of the Modern Language Association, and Robert W. Daniel, Chairman of
ADE, made presentations for an audience comprised of about 100 representatives
from college and university departments of English and Education.
Responses to State Mandates
In the mid-1960s, in an “Open Letter” to the editor of the
California English Journal, Dick Worthen described the tenor of the times as
he saw it:
English teaching in California stands
especially vulnerable to the creeping force of public
figures outside the schools. Decisions inimical to our
subject, to the students who study it,
and to those who teach it are multiplying at an alarming rate
As we look around us we witness
decision making that by-passes the profession and profoundly
affects local control over the
building of curriculum, the professional training of
teachers, and our autonomy as teachers.
When one reviews the nature of the discourse leading to these
changes, he cannot help being
discouraged over the prospects of our achieving truly
professional status in this culture. What
truly bothers me, though, is that these matters have not been
and are not being
communicated to the English teachers of the state. We deserve
to be made aware of our
diminishing prospects in California.
From time to time Commission members have given testimony
before legislative committees, State Curriculum Commission hearings, and State
Board meetings, and they have written letters in opposition to or in favor of
particular legislative measures. Many Commission members have served on State
Department of Education task forces and curriculum committees. One member, Kate
Blickhahn, was chief writer for the English Language Framework for California
Public Schools (1968). Other members played prominent roles in the
development of the widely acclaimed and forward-looking English Language Arts
Framework for Grades K-12 (1987). Still other Commission members made
significant contributions to the development of the California Assessment
Program (CAP Tests) in the 1970s and 1980s, and later to the innovative
California Learning Assessment System (CLAS Tests). Throughout most of its
50-year history, the Commission enjoyed a good working relationship with the
California State Board of Education, but this relationship no longer exists.
Today, federal and state mandates have increasingly replaced practitioner
knowledge and educational research as the main forces guiding school program
development, and the current climate harkens back to the Worthen statement in
the mid-sixties.
Commission Influences and Notable Connections of Members
A striking number of Commission members have moved on to assume national
leadership roles in the profession of English language arts. In fact, for nearly
half of its fifty year history, Commission members have held the position of
Executive Director/Secretary of the National Council of Teachers of English. As
members fanned out into the professional world beyond Central California, they
often attempted to introduce elements of the Asilomar model at their new
jurisdictions. When interviewed at Asilomar in 1987, James Squire described how
he attempted to establish Asilomar-type conferences at the National Council
through its pre-convention institutes and spring conferences: “I kept wishing
that there was something like this [Asilomar conference] everywhere. I still do
for all English teachers.” Jesse Perry, while President -Elect of NCTE in the
early 1990s, succeeded in having an Asilomar-like strand at two national
conferences.
Another long-time member of the Commission, James Gray, was
instrumental in developing the two Training Sessions of the English Teacher
Specialist Program in 1968 and 1969 along with George Nemetz, Consultant in
English for the California State Department of Education. These were weekend
Asilomar conferences built upon the familiar small-group discussion model. James
Gray also convened the first Bay Area Writing Project teacher consultant
training program in the summer of 1974. A program designed to enable teachers to
teach teachers, BAWP was the beginning of what was to become the world-renowned
National Writing Project.
Many Commission members have distinguished themselves and strengthened the
profession through their service as CATE presidents, CCCTE presidents, and in
other leadership roles, often while continuing as active members of the
Commission and as classroom teachers. Space limitations permit listing below
only a sampling of those who served in NCTE offices.
Executive Secretary/Director of NCTE
James Squire
Robert Hogan
Miles Myers
Associate Executive Secretary
Edmund Farrell
Director of the Two-Year College English Program for NCTE
Richard Worthen
President of NCTE
Virginia Reid
Jesse Perry
Vice-President of NCTE
Robert Shafer
Editor of NCTE journals
Iris Tiedt, Elementary English
(later titled Language Arts)
Mary K. Healy, English Education
Local Chairman, NCTE Convention
Leo Ruth, San Francisco, 1963
