“Better” People, Better Teaching: The Vision of the National Teacher Corps, 1965–1968

Abstract

“What is our image going to be—conventional educators or innovators, milque-toasts or activists?” In posing this question, federal staff members responsible for developing the National Teacher Corps (NTC), a Great Society teacher reform initiative, articulated both their assumptions about and aspirations for teaching in the 1960s. According to the reformers’ thinking, existing teachers lacked the qualities of innovation, dedication, and social and political engagement required to teach students in America's low-income communities. In response, they called for a new breed of teacher, with attributes and characteristics distinct from those of conventional educators, as well as a new approach to teacher training. The Corps’ strategy for producing this new breed of educator involved recruiting bright, liberal arts graduates to be teaching interns in underserved classrooms and engaging them in an alternative preparation that emphasized familiarizing candidates with their prospective students’ communities and the culture of poverty. In attracting “better” people and devising more effective training for the challenges of teaching in low-income schools, the Corps exploited both the Zeitgeist of the times and a deeply entrenched historical critique of teachers and teacher education, seeking nothing less than the rehabilitation of the teaching profession itself.