Conclusion

James Miller, longtime NCTE member and 1970 president expressed these feelings while taking part in a past-president interview project for the NCTE archives. Looking back over his career, his perspective changed following the launch of Sputnik. As we have seen repeatedly, this sentiment was the general mood of many NCTE officials during the late 1950s. Caught up in the moment of post-Sputnik reforms in education, they altered their advocacy, formed new bonds with organizations they had previously opposed, and fought to secure funding toward the research and teaching of English. However, all of this was short lived. NCTE members protested these reforms as too extreme a break from earlier periods. The 1966 Dartmouth Anglo American Conference exposed American participants to a new perspective on earlier NCTE positions over the teaching of English, ringing the death knell for the post-Sputnik revolution.