Royster's chapter offers a fairly detailed and
useful overview of NCTE's founding, the development
of its organizational structure, and the alliances and relationships it has
formed with other professional and educational organizations. Opening with a
brief history of NCTE's four founders--James Fleming Hosic, Fred Newton Scott,
Edwin L. Miller, and John M. Clapp--Royster argues that these men's story lay
the groundwork for what would become the "two primary frameworks within
which NCTE was able to grow beyond the charter group: the organization's constitution
and its organization into sections" (366). In addition to these two
framing concepts, throughout her chapter
Royster emphasizes NCTE's group commitment to "democratic principles,"
professional alliances, and the group's focus on advocating for "the exercising
of agency and authority by English professionals and their students"
(362).
By way of exemplifying these values, Royster
recounts the formation of NCTE's various sections and caucuses. Both
highlighting the organization's commitment to diversity, while not ignoring the
gender and racial discrimination in its past, she spends a good deal of time
tracing the history of women and African Americans within NCTE. In closing she
briefly highlights the many secondary and outside organizations which NCTE
members have helped found and with whom NCTE has formed alliances in order to
advocate for the good of educators and students.
Thoughts.
As I read Royster's chapter for a second time,
I could not help but return to the same questions and concerns I've had since
first reading it a year ago. Royster argues that NCTE's organizational
structure which favors division without complete separation has allowed it
to grow as an organization, adapt
dynamically to its members' needs, and provide a variety of outlets through which
members could address their individual needs. While I agree that such division,
"sectioning," and "caucusing" has undeniably enabled NCTE
to grow, what troubles me is whether or not all this branching, without any
effort to remember that all the branches are attached to the same tree, is
really all that good for the organization and the profession.
in
addressing NCTE's response to changing historical contexts in the twentieth
century (i.e. greater equality for women and minorities), Royster points out
that a question that has perhaps plagued the organization from its inception
is: "advocacy for whom in particular?" (377). And with this, I think
she nails on the head the trouble I see
with NCTE's constant branching. After reading these histories of the
organization, it seems that for a hundred years NCTE has been trying to
negotiate who its constituency is, never wanting to exclude anyone but always
also wanting to serve everyone’s best interest. As a result, as I see it,
several of the sections (like CCC) have grown from branches into huge limbs
with their own network of branches growing from them, and consequently seem to
have forgotten that at their roots they're attached to the NCTE tree. The
Community College Section is concerned with their issues, CCC has its own concerns, the Conference on English Education has its constituencies,
and NCTE "basic" concerns itself with secondary teachers. While each
of these groups, I think, needs a place to voice and work on its own issues and
concerns, with no real space to come
back together as a whole professional English Educators, each section seems to
sort of forget about the others. Because (at least my impression is) not many
university types attend NCTE and few if any secondary teachers attended CCCC,
and likely only a little cross over happens within TYCA and CEE, as a
profession, I think we sometimes fail to pool our resources. Because my
impression is that NCTE (the supposed
parent organization) has become the home of primary and secondary educators and
everyone else has their own sections, there's not really place for all of these
folks to get together and really discuss the profession and education holistically.
No comments:
Post a Comment