Do English Teachers Still Care about Teaching English?

T he National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) held its annual conference last week, and it’s no wonder our national reading-proficiency rate sits at 32 percent. The influential professional association has 25,000 paid members, and its policy papers, position statements, books, and journals influence countless more, acting as the assumed authority on all things in literacy education. Its mission statement declares its devotion to “improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education,” but a look at its conference reveals the group is focused far more on progressive pieties than on instruction.

The sessions are a veritable checklist of political neuroses. One entitled “Critical Race Theory as a Literary Lens” promises to help teachers show their students how to read all books using CRT as a framework. Other offerings include “Queerness and Graphic Novels,” “Decolonizing the Department,” and “Learning for Critical Consciousness.”

The framing of traditional academic practices likewise betrays a preoccupation with progressive politics. A session on biographies promises “Non-Fiction Books to Inspire Activism.” Another about close reading, the bread and butter of an English classroom, suggests that educators should utilize it as a “vehicle for social justice” to inspire “social change.”

Throughout, it’s clear that the conference sees education not so much as formal academic training but as an effort at to construct a leftist worldview. English teachers are not to guide students through the best that has been thought and said, but to inculcate the proper opinions, to build what one session calls “critical consciousness,” a term coined by Marxist educator Paulo Freire that means a heightened sociopolitical awareness, always of a progressive bent.

Where the conference forgoes outright politicized ideas, it endorses mediocrity in the classroom. “TikTok as an Agent of Literacy” explains how educators can use the Chinese-run app to teach literacy. “What Do You Meme?” will help teachers replace those stuffy academic essays with something a little more modern — and utterly useless for academic growth.

None of this should surprise any reader. The NCTE is the same organization that caught flack last year for proclaiming it was time to “decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education” and instead focus on videos, GIFs, memes, and other media. Its other influential curricular offerings, policy reports, and teacher-prep materials are replete with such ideas.

Perhaps most controversially, prior to the conference, the NCTE’s Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English released a statement on the war between Israel and Hamas. They stand for “Palestinian’s right to self-determination” and are “against genocide” — in this case, Israel’s supposed genocide of Gazans. One wishes that education-conference organizers would focus on bringing the country’s literacy rate up to 50 percent before tackling international affairs.

What’s more, this statement also provides a “land acknowledgement” that its authors encourage every conference presenter to use. It connects the alleged occupation of “Palestine” with “colonial violence” in America and pressures teachers to use the curricula they design and the lessons they teach to educate students about anti-colonial narratives. Basic arithmetic or literacy be damned.

In response, NCTE’s leadership issued a statement distancing itself from the proclamations of its anti-bias committee. But in no way do the leaders denounce the initial “Statement on Palestinian Genocide.” They merely remind concerned members of the organization that the original statement did not come from leadership, and that the NCTE “deeply respects the varied opinions of our members.”

This conference is at once disheartening and alarming. Alarming insofar as its organizers and session leaders have said the quiet part out loud: After years of denials from the media and educational leaders about the presence of CRT, gender ideology, and other progressive obsessions in schools, the NCTE has openly and resolutely endorsed the promotion of radical politics in K–12 schools.

It’s disheartening because the problem here is so much more fundamental and basic. Students need good teachers to inspire them, educate them, and prepare them for the world. They need exposure to great literature to form their characters, hone their thinking, and stir their hearts and minds. A leading professional organization in American education instead offers students TikTok dances and placards.

Conservatives have a substantial challenge before them. School choice is probably the most important education policy under debate today. But it cannot be the end goal. When all of the institutions bolstering American schools — from professional organizations such as the NCTE to curriculum developers, teacher-prep programs, credentialing bodies, publications, standardized tests, and more — ascribe to mediocrity at best and radical politics at worst, we get a nation of students full of zealotry but lacking even basic academic skills. We’re seeing the results of this educational state of affairs on campuses right now: passion without knowledge, anger without direction, hatred without cause.

But conservatives have remade the judiciary. They beat back communism. They have won essential victories for life and the right to self-protection. They can do so again in education, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it may very well determine the future of our country: either revitalization or necrosis.