The nonfiction letter offers students an opportunity to study a dying art while also gaining insights about people, places, and eras. Teaching students the value of letters teaches community, caring, and connection. Whereas reading great works of literature can and does provide insight into life's purpose and meaning, the nonfiction text of a…

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

Describes the role of the mass media in fostering the back-to-basics movement and encourages teachers to become leaders in a return to relevant, student-centered English instruction. (DD)

English teachers, especially those in large consolidated schools, must avoid the tendency to consider students as numbers rather than people. (DD)

The methods for teaching literacy must employ joy, inquiry, openness, and appreciation of difference or the literacy achieved will be rote, mechanical and subservient to rules and order. (DD)

It is time for a reconciliation among the competing factions among English teachers, including those in favor of humanistic education and those in favor of basic skills, and for the creation of an English for all seasons, immune to changing educational climates and periodic storms of public outrage. (DD)

Reports on New Right criticism of public schools for promoting secular humanism and presents the humanist response. (MM)

Explains why humor should be studied in English classrooms and how humorous writing serves as a vehicle for making its readers more socially conscious of human values. Offers a list of books that can be used in classroom discussions of humor. (RL)

Reports on a four-year-old, team-taught secondary interdisciplinary program that combined English, social studies, biology, and geometry. The course was organized into three phases: (1) the "Paper Chase," teaching learning skills; (2) "Welcome to the Monkey House," which addressed fundamental human issues; and (3) "Phase Out," or personal…

Cites episodes from "The Bill Cosby Show,""Family Ties," and "Hill Street Blues" to suggest the humanizing potential of television. (EL)

Raises questions about the possible effects of the language of computers--which is impersonal, technical, specialized, formal, unemotional, and precise--on the naturally emotional, imprecise, informal, and inclusive language of people. (MM)

A teacher describes the changes in her life and teaching due to her involvement with confluent education" and gestalt learning theories. (SP)

Describes how having students draw both their own and a literary character's reality not only introduces students, quite painlessly and concretely, to a large number of literary terms, but also suggests that literature appreciation demands an imaginative extension into the life of another. (MM)

Explains how the literary metaphor of the quest can be used as a tool in self-explorations. (MM)