The authors of the new Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy believe that college and career-ready students who meet the standards in that document exhibit a number of "capacities of the literate individual." One of these is the capacity "to understand other perspectives and cultures" through reading classic and…

This author arrived at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1981 kind of by accident, a DC public high school English teacher on hiatus from the classroom due to burying parents and birthing children. She was on her way back to that classroom, but the opportunity to work in the land of all things Shakespeare was too good to pass up, even though there…

The beauty of American public education is that the potential of every individual is acknowledged with the clear expectation that each person should receive a high-quality, academically focused education. The challenge, then, is how to achieve that goal when students come with a variety of backgrounds, talents, interests, limitations, and…

When people dive into the varied texts of culture, print and non-print, and explore and critique them, they are doing much more than showing various persuasive appeals or advertising gimmicks to sway their audience; they are examining the purposes and values of capitalism, the economic system that produces a consumerocracy. People might even turn…

Reflects on experiences attending a recent conference for the National Association for the Teaching of English. (EL)

A defense of the study of the humanities in light of the back-to-basics movement. (DD)

A mock interview with the coach of a fictitious football team about the reasons for and effects of using process orientation as a coaching technique. (CRH)

Explores what the phrase "back to basics" means in terms of the English curriculum. (JL)

Four teachers and educators discuss the implications for English teachers of Neil Postman's "Teaching as a Conserving Activity." (RL)

Argues that high-school writing teachers should not write, contrary to current composition pedagogy. Argues that for the full-time high-school English teacher, writing is neither a realistic nor a professionally advantageous avocation. (RS)

Points out the shortcomings of education in the 1950s--the "good old days." (EL)

Imaginative account of an encounter between a modern English teacher and John Dewey, applying Dewey's insights to contemporary issues in English education. (DF)

Discusses the effects one teacher experienced when her students asked for silent time in the classroom to read ahead in the assigned adolescent novel. Suggests that a key goal of literature instruction should be getting students to read with interest and engagement, without the interference of the instructor. (HB)

Recounts how contact with Kant convinced a teacher that while he thought in objectivist terms he taught in subjectivist ones. (JL)