ade: then and now

ADE: Then and NowAuthor(s): John C. GerberSource: Profession, (1983), pp. 7-12Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25595344 .

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ADE: THEN AND NOW

ADE got its start in Russia. That is to say, we can trace

its origin to 4 October 1957, the day the original sput nik flared into the sky. The reaction in this country was

first horror that the Russians should have so dramati

cally eclipsed us in rocketry and second great embar

rassment that our educational system was apparently

so inferior to that of the Russians. In the following year

Congress passed the initial National Defense Education

Act, which allocated what by the standards of those days were vast sums for improving the teaching of science,

mathematics, and foreign languages. The omission of

English stirred all but the most somnolent of our col

leagues. Earlier, to be sure, there had been concern

among those teaching freshman English about why

Johnnie could not read or write. Such concern had led

in 1950 to the formation of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. But it took the shock

of sputnik to stir the profession as a whole into action.

Six events followed in rather rapid order.

1958. The Basic Issues Conference. Organized by

George Winchester Stone, Executive Secretary of the

MLA, and funded by Clarence Faust and the Ford

Foundation, this conference brought together twenty

eight selected leaders from the various levels of the pro

fession for four weekends at the Gould mansion, high

above the Hudson River. Their task was to identify what

they considered the fundamental issues confronting the

profession. They came up with thirty-five, beginning

with the thorniest, "What is English?" At first, the views of the participants were so diverse that Albert

Markwardt, the chairman, found it difficult to main

tain even the appearance of order. But in time those

present worked toward agreement, and in the end many even came to like one another. This conference was

remarkable for several reasons: it was lengthy enough to push beyond off-the-cuff discussion; it was

ecumenical in the sense that it brought together represen

tatives of organizations such as the MLA, NCTE, and

CEA that had been notable more for their feuding than for their cooperation; it was professional in the sense

that it concentrated exclusively on the ends and means

of teaching English; and it was astonishingly influen

tial. The proceedings were published by the MLA and sent to members of Congress. Subsequently, leaders of

national, state, and local organizations of English teachers scheduled discussions of one or more of the

basic issues for their own conventions.

1961. The National Interest and the Teaching of English. This was a booklet sponsored by the NCTE but contributed to by members of all the major organizations of English teachers. It too was widely disseminated. It made such an impression in Congress

John C. Gerber

that the entire text was reprinted in the Congressional Record.

1961. Project English. Responding in large part to the publications of the MLA and the NCTE and to the

lobbying in Washington by officers of the two organiza tions, Sterling McMurrin, commissioner of the United

States Office of Education, created Project English as an agency within his Cooperative Research Division. The head of the division was Francis Ianni, an an

thropologist who turned out to be one of the warmest friends English ever had in Washington. Activities of

Project English quickly ballooned. During its four short years, it supported a score of curriculum centers at ma

jor universities; fifty or more research projects in

English; a small number of demonstration centers on

such campuses as Berkeley, New York University,

Western Reserve, and Syracuse; and a series of con

ferences, one of which led directly to the formation of ADE. The project even helped to finance the American Dialect Dictionary and authoritative editions of Her man Melville and Mark Twain. To coordinate the work

of Project English, Francis Ianni selected English pro fessors, not government bureaucrats. Nick Hook of the

NCTE was the first to be selected, Erwin Steinberg of

Carnegie Tech was the second, I was the third, and

Lewis Leary of Columbia was the fourth. I well

remember traveling from sea to shining sea, bearing the

happy message that the federal government stood ready to fund imaginative developments in the teaching of

English and that our problem was only to see that the

money was spent wisely. It was a message, I might say, that was well received. Old Washington hands, however, saw sooner than I that the days of the project were

numbered. In the winter of 1964-65 I spent a month

at the University of Iowa, a month in Washington, a

month in Iowa, and so on. During my first two stays in Washington I had an outside window and a rug on

the floor, on my third trip I discovered that the rug was

missing, and on the fourth I had an inside office. Lewis Leary, who followed me, also had an inside office, and

before he finished his term the project folded. Its loss, however, was not catastrophic, because in 1964 Con

The author is Professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany. In a slightly different form this essay was

the keynote address at the 1983 ADE Summer Seminar at

Southwest Texas State University at San Marcos, Texas.

7



gress broadened the NDEA to include English and reading and in 1965 it created the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is worth emphasizing that the federal government fifteen years ago supported English and reading as part of a defense act. Caspar Weinberger,

please note.

1962. Summer institutes sponsored by the College En

trance Examination Board. Directed by Floyd Rinker and financed by five private foundations, twenty in

stitutes for high school teachers were held on major university campuses and taught by senior professors of

English. Each institute enrolled forty-five teachers, and

all of them offered courses in literature, language, and

composition topped by a workshop in which the par ticipants devised curricular changes for their own schools or school systems. A year later the heads of the

workshops visited most of the teachers to see how the

changes were taking hold. Project English paid to have the history of these institutes written, and in the next four years the NDEA picked up the tab for 440 similar institutes serving eighteen thousand participants. These

institutes were in addition to seminars sponsored by the

NCTE and by individual departments of English. Neither before nor since has the high school and col

lege teaching of English received such a shot of adrenaline. Nor has any other project brought high school and college teachers together in a manner so

useful to both groups.

Late 1950s and early 1960s. Meetings of Big Ten departmental administrators. Warner Rice, Chairman

of the Department of English at the University of Michigan, was responsible for these annual get-togethers of administrators of departments of English in the Big Ten universities. The sessions were enormously valuable,

especially for those of us who were new at the game. It was no accident that the participants in these meetings

were especially active in pushing for a national organiza tion. Warner Rice must be credited for organizing the

ur-ADE and thus pointing the way for the national

body. 2-4 December 1962. The Allerton Park Conference.

Although the University of Illinois sponsored this con ference and housed it at the university's center at Aller

ton House, the funds for it came from?what else??

Project English. The speakers as well as the

participants?some eighty of them?represented all our

major professional societies; the person immediately

responsible was Robert W. Rogers, then chairman of

the department at Illinois. As he said in his opening remarks, the conference was intended as "one of the

many responses of the profession to a series of demands

for better English instruction in our schools and col

leges. "

Two of the resolutions agreed on at Allerton

House have special relevance for this paper. One called

for an organization of department heads to formulate

policy for departments of English, to disseminate in formation about the teaching of English through con

ferences and publications, and to undertake concerted

action to ensure that views of English departments were

made known to leaders of education and public affairs. The second called for this new organization to be

autonomous and independent but to work closely with

existing organizations such as the MLA, NCTE, CEA,

CLA, CCCC, and ASA. Interested persons were invited

to a follow-up meeting three weeks later at the MLA

convention in Washington to agree on the necessary

preliminary steps. At that meeting, which over three

hundred attended, Warner Rice offered a tentative plan of organization and suggested that a committee be

formed to review his plan and present the results for

mally at a similar meeting to be held at the next MLA convention. All that he suggested came to pass, and so

it was that in New York in December 1963 the National Association of Chairmen of Departments of English came into being, complete with a constitution, officers, an administrative committee, and, of course, dues.

Before the year was out, however, the Administrative

Committee (now called the Executive Committee) changed the name to the Association of Departments of English. Partly the change was for the sake of

simplicity, but more important it was to emphasize that

ADE was an organization of departments rather than

of individuals. As a consequence, members found it

easier to extract dues and travel funds from their deans.

As finally agreed on, the purposes of the organization were to disseminate information, to serve as a forum

for advancing the interests of departments of English, and to provide a means of making effective in academic

affairs and in matters of public interest the opinion and

aims of the profession.

Briefly, then, these were the specific circumstances

that led to formation of ADE. Let me stress three of

the underlying conditions that made these circumstances

possible: (1) the sympathetic attitude of the federal government, (2) the teamwork of the major organiza tions of college English teachers, and (3) the widespread concern among English faculties throughout the coun

try about the quality of English programs. I shall return to these conditions in examining the present situation.

Since 1963 the accomplishments of ADE have been considerable. In the first ten years, for example, it

helped departments deal with the problems of expan

sion, in the second with problems of contraction. It

started with a rush, publishing vacancy lists and the Bulletin. With the help of federal funds, it brought leaders of the profession together at Tempe and

Washington, D.C., to discuss the most basic of the basic

issues. Early on, too, it helped support a national survey

of undergraduate English programs. In 1967 it began sponsoring summer seminars, and in 1977 it published the first of the popular annual collections entitled Pro

fession. All along, moreover, it has sponsored meetings at MLA and NCTE conventions. Its activities have been

diverse and useful. They have also been expensive. Not

8



surprisingly, almost before ADE was formally organized its officers surrendered much of their hoped-for in

dependence in order to obtain the economic stability of fered by John H. Fisher, executive director of the MLA. A telling argument was that the CCCC had prospered under the wing of the NCTE and that ADE would

similarly prosper as an adjunct of the MLA. Thus ADE became the chief but not the only responsibility of the director of the MLA's English Program. To these direc tors ADE is especially indebted: Mike Shugrue, Elizabeth Wooten Cowan, Jasper Neel, Dexter Fisher, and Phyllis Franklin. It is also deeply indebted to the executive directors of the MLA, who since 1963 have

generously supported its activities: John H. Fisher, William D. Schaefer, and Joel Conarroe. Without their help ADE would certainly have floundered and quite possibly have foundered.

As we turn from the past of the organization to its

present and future, we are immediately struck by the

fact that a strong, responsible professional organiza tion is needed far more in 1983 than it was in 1963. In the early sixties, June, so to speak, was busting out all

over. Enrollments were climbing, there were jobs and

grants to be had, our major scholarly and pedagogical societies were actively cooperating with one another, and

all amazingly, as Henry James would say, there was ex

tra money to be had. The future of English seemed pro scribed only by the limits of our imaginations. In a

period of such relative ebullience, chairing a department could be an exhilarating experience. ADE helped to set our sights, but, if the truth be known, most of us could have prospered without the help of a new professional organization.

But consider the present situation. When did you last see a group of ebullient department heads? All depress

ingly, there is no extra money. Budgets decline, full

time positions melt into part-time jobs, working con

ditions become more austere, and pressures from ad

ministrative officers, colleagues, and even students

steadily increase. All this is taking place just at a time,

ironically, when the nation is again upset about the

quality of education because of competition from the outside, especially from Russia and Japan. Such objec tive measures as we have seem to indicate that our

students are less well trained than they were a decade

or two ago. Recall a paragraph from the recent report of the National Commission on Education:

While we can take justifiable pride in what our schools

and colleges have historically accomplished and con

tributed to the United States and the well-being of its peo

ple, the educational foundations of our society are pres

ently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people. What

was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur?

others are matching and surpassing our educational at

tainments. . . . We have even squandered the gains in

student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik

challenge.

The charges in that paragraph are echoed on every side:

by editorial writers, legislators, university presidents, the Carnegie Foundation, a newly appointed commit

tee of business and educational leaders, and even the

head of the teachers' union. The clamor is likely to grow rather than to recede. At the moment the chief anxiety is over mediocrity in mathematics and the sciences, but it is beginning to spill over into a concern for reading and writing. Where in our own field can we find the

leadership to translate this concern into action? Who will galvanize our profession into a reexamination of

our curriculum and our teaching? Who, in short, will

ignite the engines? Twenty years ago it was the federal government

through its Office of Education and its National Defense Education Acts that provided much of the fire we needed. This time we have no such leadership in

Washington. Since 1933 five Democratic presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter?

and three Republican presidents?Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford?took the position that the federal govern ment must share responsibility for the education of our

youth. Now we have a president who clearly believes

that the production of missiles is more important to the nation's welfare than the production of rigorously trained high school and college graduates. Even if we were to elect a more sympathetic president in 1984 the federal government because of its preposterous debt could not support education so generously as it has in the past. So we cannot look to the federal government for extraordinary aid in the foreseeable future. Nor to state or local governments, saddled as they are with their

own debts and already swollen tax structures.

So where can we turn? Two decades ago, as I pointed out, a consortium of our scholarly and pedagogical societies provided broad and vibrant leadership for a nationwide attempt to reexamine the work in English. I am not aware of any such broad concerted efforts to

day. The most notable event in recent months has been

the MLA document entitled "Report of the Commis sion on the Future of the Profession." A thoughtful work, its recommendations deserve careful reading and

prompt action. But coming from a single organization those recommendations are not likely to stir up the pro fession as a whole. How much greater their impact if they had been the joint effort of ADE, ASA, CCCC, CEA, CLA, MLA, and NCTE, along with specialists from reading, psychology, philosophy, and secondary education. Such a consortium, I am convinced, could

ignite the engines, but at the moment none exists. So where do we turn?

9



Twenty years ago our faculties were deeply concerned

about the quality of the training we offered. Will our

faculties in 1983 similarly demand a major reevaluation of our standards and our curricula? I would not bet on

it. As a student, teacher, department chairman, and now

again a teacher, I have been associated with college

English for fifty-eight years, and I think I have seldom or never seen college English teachers as a whole less

interested in grappling with the fundamental issues of education. I am tempted to say that departments of English as a whole are lying dead in the water. But that would not be true, for there is God's plenty of splashing going on. The trouble is that everyone is preoccupied with his or her own splash, whether it be composition, Shakespeare, reader-response criticism, textual editing, women's studies, rhetoric, semiotics, creative writing,

deconstruction, structuralism, poststructuralism,

postpoststructuralism, or whatever. Look at any pro

gram of a recent MLA convention and note the incred

ible number of interests that parade under the name of

English. It is no longer a question as to whether the center is holding; the question is whether we any longer have a center. As Warner Rice put it recently, "Historical research and teaching have lost much of their appeal, and criticism and linguistics are

evaporating into the intense inane." So, we may add, are composition and rhetorical theory. We talk among

ourselves, not to our compatriots. We expend our

energies on our own intellectual enthusiasm, leaving much too little energy for a study of how we may best serve the first generation of students to live permanently under the threat of an apocalypse. For such students

the tired old curricula and the tired old courses are not

enough. But where can we turn? My answer is?and you must

have anticipated it?to our professional organization.

By the nature of their job, departmental executives do

worry about the quality of the training offered not only

by their own departments but by. the profession general

ly. Many would eagerly join in a national effort to raise

that quality. What they lack is strong, organized leader

ship. That is what ADE must supply. It is up to ADE to ignite the engines.

I say this despite the handicaps under which ADE labors. The basic handicap is that it lacks a stable

membership. Although a college may continue its

membership indefinitely, the person representing that

college may rotate as often as every third year. Even

the officers are frequently lame ducks. At least three

members of the 1983 Executive Committee, for exam

ple, are no longer chairing departments and presumably,

therefore, no longer members of ADE. A somewhat

lesser handicap is that as a subsidiary of a large

organization ADE exists in the shadow of the MLA. It is not nearly so well known as it should be. Probably all heads of departments of English know it, but not

all their colleagues do, not even all their colleagues who

are members of the MLA. At a recent meeting in New

York several members of an MLA committee did not

know that ADE stood for anything other than the

Association of Documentary Editing.

Despite such handicaps, however, ADE is still poten

tially the most authoritative voice for the profession, for in representing the elected or selected heads of

departments it speaks as authoritatively as any organiza tion can for all college and university teachers of

English. Furthermore, because it is the only strictly pro

fessional organization in the field?in contrast to the

many scholarly and pedagogical societies?it occupies an especially advantageous position for creating, when

necessary, the kind of consortium that worked so ef

fectively in the 1960s. To realize its potential for leader ship, however, ADE must develop a more stable

membership by finding a place for ex-chairs as well as

for those currently chairing departments, by imitating the CCCC in becoming more independent of its parent body, and, most important, by becoming better known

through an expansion of its services. In the remainder

of this paper I should like to suggest some of the ser vices ADE might appropriately add to the ones it now

provides.

First, let us remind ourselves of the services other pro fessional societies provide: (1) they offer practical aids to help their members perform their tasks as efficiently as possible, (2) they keep their members informed about what is going on in the field, (3) they provide forums where their members can get together to share problems and find solutions (4) they try to exert a measure of quality control over the practices of the membership, and (5) they promote activities that will enhance the pro fession's reputation for public service. The last of these bears directly on the relation between the profession and

the public; the others bear indirectly on it by ensuring that the profession is strong enough and purposeful

enough to merit public leadership. In each of these

categories of service, what might ADE be doing? 1. Providing practical aids for the membership. Here

I would suggest a manual for new executive officers,

though experienced ones could benefit from it too. Such

a manual should be unabashedly utilitarian. It should,

for example, describe how successful departments are

organized, provide sample committee structures, sug

gest the usefulness and limitations of departmental bylaws and offer a sample set of bylaws. It should tell what experienced administrators believe they can

satisfactorily delegate and what they cannot delegate, which issues require departmental decision and which can be resolved by an executive committee or by the ad

ministrator himself or herself. It should provide advice on bookkeeping and office management. It should in

dicate the secretarial help necessary for large, medium,

and small departments; the usefulness of an ad

ministrative assistant, of a departmental computer and

library, of a faculty lounge. (This information would

10



benefit deans, too.) Before it concludes there should be

a section on the amenities that faculty members?and

their spouses?especially appreciate. Whatever such a

manual contains, it should be written with wit as well

as wisdom. Above all, it should not be pretentious. One objection will be that an intelligent person knows

all this intuitively. That is nonsense. Experienced ad

ministrators are still learning how to run a department

after they have been at it ten years. Another objection

will be that a manual of necessity must deal in general principles and practices and cannot be specific enough for the needs of a particular department. In some in

stances this could be a valid objection. To meet it and to help with idiosyncratic difficulties, ADE should set

up a consulting service so that distraught administrators

for the modest expenses involved can request a visit from

someone in the region who is more experienced. The

manual?supplemented, if necessary, by a consultant?

should provide the kind of practical service we have a

right to expect from our professional society.

2. Keeping the membership informed. Shared infor mation is a glue that gives a profession cohesion and

leads indirectly to a unity of purpose. There are ten

tative plans, I hear, to make the ADE office a center

for the kinds of information that might be useful to

departments. Let us cheer these efforts. Let us also hope

that all but the most esoteric information will be quickly disseminated. For this purpose the Bulletin can be im

mensely useful. Originally it was called "Bulletin"

because it was intended to be just that: a bulletin that would keep the membership abreast of current happen

ings in the profession. As it grew in size, however, it

tended to become primarily a journal of opinion. Hap pily, if the last issue is an accurate indicator, it is begin ning to revert to the original intention, at least in part. I would suggest a further step, namely, that roughly the last third of each issue be converted into a chronicle on the model of the Chronicle of Higher Education. If this

were done, readers could expect to find in each issue

such useful items as a calendar of coming events, the

names of newly appointed executive officers, lists of

grants available to teachers of English, an annotated

bibliography of helpful works, reviews of the most im

portant of these works, and (as at present) news notes

and announcements. Once a year the Bulletin might pro vide an expansion of the salary list regularly?and

generously?compiled by George Worth, enrollment

trends, the names of the officers of ADE, and a com

plete roster of members (as in the Summer 1983 issue). The point is to have a section in which members can

regularly count on finding basic information about the

profession. 3. Providing forums for discussion. In this regard

ADE has consistently distinguished itself. On occasion it might sponsor seminars for special groups, such as

new chairs or chairs of both college and high school

departments. Moreover, as I shall point out shortly,

there may be times when all the summer seminars should

have a common concern. But in general ADE has done

better than most other professional organizations in pro

viding forums for its members and the public at large. 4. Exerting a measure of quality control over the work

of the membership. The Executive Committee is already

considering the feasibility of taking the first steps toward what might ultimately be a system of departmental

evaluation, even accreditation. Accreditation is a nas

ty word, one especially repugnant to humanists. But

steps in that direction may well be helpful to the pro fession as a whole. One step would be to provide

material that would make current internal and external

reviews more thorough and more uniform. Reviews as

now commissioned by deans and presidents proceed on

an ad hoc basis. Sometimes reviewers are asked to talk

with students, sometimes not. Sometimes they are pro

vided with printed criteria for their evaluations,

sometimes not. Sometimes they are asked to write long

reports; sometimes a meeting with the president seems

to suffice. ADE would serve the profession well if it extended its present Statement on the Use of Outside Reviewers to include recommendations on such matters

as procedures, criteria for evaluation, and remunera

tion. Copies of an enlarged statement should be sent

not only to departmental administrators but to deans

throughout the country along with a notice that ADE stands ready to recommend persons who are experienced in the art of reviewing departments of English. Down

the road ADE might wish to consider rating departments for the excellence of their staff, their standards, and

their total performance vis-a-vis the performances of

other departments in similar institutions. But at this

juncture, it seems to me, the organization is not strong

enough to attempt so hazardous a venture. Maybe on

its fortieth birthday the director can report with satisfac tion that ADE has effective quality controls in place and that even Yale and Berkeley are delighted with them.

5. Promoting activities that will enhance the profes sion's reputation for public service. Up to this point we

have been considering how ADE might help with inter nal departmental affairs. Now we turn to how it might more directly aid and encourage administrators to be

the educational leaders that are so sorely needed. What

direct attack or attacks can ADE make on the problems of illiteracy, of reading and writing? (In "reading," I include the reading of literature.) A modest attack would be to sponsor a basic issues conference for departmen tal officers on the objectives and quality of our

undergraduate programs, with the participants selected

from the various regions and the various types of col

leges. The undergraduate program, it seems to me, is

an especially appropriate subject because it is a concern

of all ADE members and also because it is the program in the greatest disarray. It is at the undergraduate level

that we find the most striking disagreements over pur

poses, curricula, and standards of excellence?and the

11



most bitter squabbles over priorities of subject matter.

In these internecine battles about turf as much as prin

ciple even the most astute among us can often do no

more than adjudicate arguments on an ad hoc basis,

grabbing any solution that promises to avoid bloodshed.

Recommendations from a national conference could

help move the dialogue in even the testiest departments

away from personalities and toward the needs of

students.

But no matter how widely the recommendations of

such a conference were disseminated, they would have

a limited impact because so few were involved in the discussions. A much more promising plan would require two levels of discussion, a series of state or regional seminars followed by a national conference attended by

representatives from the regional seminars. This was the

plan followed by the MLA in the 1960s when it was try ing to rev up the production of Ph.D.'s and by libraries

in attempting to win congressional and White House support for a nationwide system of information

retrieval. It has been tried with success by other pro fessions also. ADE is in an advantageous position to

put such a program in place. Next summer, for exam

ple, it could double the number of seminars and

schedule them all to deal, at least in part, with the sub

ject of the undergraduate program. Each seminar would

then send its recommendations and its delegates to a

national conference where the participants would ham

mer out professionwide recommendations. Assuming that these were widely advertised, they would stand to

make a much stronger impact than the recommenda

tions of a single conference.

Even this plan, however, is not comprehensive enough to be wholly satisfying. As administrators and college teachers we would still be talking to ourselves. The

public has a right to expect more: a massive attack by the profession as a whole on the total program in

reading and writing from the early grades through at

least the four college years. To make this possible ADE

would have to constitute a consortium of college,

secondary school, and elementary school organizations that would jointly participate in the project from the first planning stage to the last stage of evaluation. Again

there would have to be regional meetings followed by a national conclave and the broadest possible dissemina

tion of the recommendations. It might well be easier to obtain supporting funds for such a giant undertak

ing than it would be for a modest one. Recently I heard from an authoritative source that major foundations

are willing to fund a truly cooperative venture whereas

they look with disfavor on a project in which college teachers simply talk to themselves?and almost in

evitably load much of the blame for poor training in

reading and writing onto the elementary and high school teachers. Such a giant undertaking could be a historic event, one best calculated to let the public know that we care about their sons and daughters. It could, if I

may use my tired old metaphor once more, really fire

the engines. It could establish the identity and the value of ADE as no other professional service could.

I am sure that there are readers who wonder what

I have been smoking. Dreams? Of course these have

been dreams. But there were skeptics in 1963 who be

lieved that the idea of an association of departments of English was only a dream. It is time to dream

again?and to work hard to make the new dreams

realities. The agenda for ADE is far from complete because our programs in English are far from ideal.

What hang in the balance?to put it simply?are the

destinies of our students. These young people face a

future containing not only economic uncertainty and

social unrest but also, God help them, a possible holocaust. Anything that ADE can do, directly or in

directly, to sharpen their minds and strengthen their

humanity is well worth the try.

12



ade: then and now

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