IMPROVEMENT OF INSTRUCTION

Education is in the midst of a revolution-both in the content areas and in methodology. There are new curriculum developments in the major disciplines which are based on widespread change in curriculum materials. With the curriculum explosion facing us in every area and at every level in public education, close examination of all types and kinds of materials is a necessity if change is to occur at the practical level of classroom application. At best this is a difficult and complex enough problem. We feel that the current suggested revisions of the copyright statutes will impose yet another level of complication. There is little to be gained in working out new curriculum developments, if in the end teachers, who would otherwise strengthen and improve their teaching through uses of new materials, are only to be frustrated because of artificial and inflexible restrictions which in the long run will not really protect the rights of originators or producers, but will be a severe detriment to improving instruction. NEA has a deep interest in the widespread use of many materials of instruction to strengthen and enrich the efforts of classroom teachers in all subject areas. The teacher must be free to teach and must have access to materials to do his job.

RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF TEACHERS

Teachers are both authors and users of materials. They want a law which will be fair and just to all concerned. We wish to see proper protection of the interests of those persons whose creative. abilities produce fine instructional materials so as to stimulate the continued flow of such materials. At the same time, there is an overriding public interest to be met also that of flexible availability of materials for instructional purposes.

Teachers and students must be able to use copyrighted materials with a minimum of time and effort devoted to making such materials available in their day-to-day classroom activities and on educational radio and television.

Once a reasonable law is obtained, the profession will itself be in a position to aid in enforcement of the law. But as long as arbitrary and impractical barriers to materials usage exist, teachers will be reluctant to use materials, particularly when there is a possibility that such use constitutes an infringement.

PROFESSIONAL PRIORITIES OF THE NEA FOR 1962-65

The following seven objectives were selected for high priority in the program of the National Education Association through a process which involved affiliated associations and individual members. The objectives were adopted by the NEA Representative Assembly on July 5, 1962.

1. Maximum learning opportunities for all: To contribute to maximum learning opportunities for each person-and to serve the national interest-by continuous assessment of curriculum content; and

the development and testing of new concepts, procedures, and facilities which will result in creative instructional programs.

2. Time to teach: To assure staff members the opportunity to devote their professional competence to professional tasks in an environment conducive to learning.

3. Professional standards with autonomy and freedom: To develop, in the public interest and with public consent, the autonomy of the organized teaching profession in the determination of standards of competence and professional conduct.

4. Financial support: To achieve the enactment of Federal educational legislation which will produce funds required to meet the Nation's educational needs.

5. Public understanding: To achieve public understanding of the role and needs of education and a reaffirmation of faith in public education.

6. Professional negotiation: To establish formal procedures by which professional organizations and governing agencies can reach agreement on conditions of work.

7. Strong professional association: To promote maximum development of dynamic, independent, professional associations at local, State, and National levels and to achieve unified membership.

At least three of these priority objectives are directly served by NEA's position on the copyright situation and the others are tangentally related. The association speaks for the national interest in asking for a law which contributes to maximum learning opportunities for each person and which contributes to creative instructional programs. The association is concerned that teachers have time to teach and time to devote their professional competencies to professional tasks. For this reason it feels that teachers must be free from the encumbrances of involved clearance procedures which hamper, rather than foster, the immediate use of materials for that teachable moment when the learner is ready to learn. One of the association's tasks, as you will note, is to achieve public understanding of the needs of education. This is another reason we are appearing before you today. We are concerned that education's needs be met in any revision of the copyright law.

NEA'S POSITION ON COPYRIGHT LAW REVISION

The National Education Association supports the enactment of new copyright legislation. In fact, we have a resolution on this now before our delegate assembly. It feels, however, that educational needs would be better served and educational uses clarified by a number of important changes in H.R. 4347 now being considered by this committee. In short, the NEA endorses the position and recommendations which have been proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee (of Educational Institutions and Organizations) on Copyright Law Revision. The NEA feels that the ad hoc committee's proposals are essential and it strongly urges that Congress not undercut its own great achievements in educational legislation by enacting a copyright bill which in its present form is not in harmony with the best interests of education and which would, in fact, inhibit the uses of materials which the recently passed Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 provides.

TODAY'S TEACHER

The teacher in today's schools is almost unrecognizable from the teacher in the schools which you and I attended. Whereas our teacher used the same textbook for each pupil, today's teacher uses many resources in his teaching. He has a variety of texts and supplementary materials, including trade and reference books, newspapers and magazines, educational motion pictures, filmstrips, overhead transparency projectors, opaque projectors, language laboratories, audio tape recorders, record players, slides, educational radio and television, teaching machines and programed learning materials, and he uses these in orchestration to do specific jobs.

The teacher selects resources to fit particular student needs so that certain tools are used with some students and other tools with other students. You know it was said when the textbook was introduced on a large scale that the textbook would replace the teacher. Then it was said when educational television was beginning that television would replace the teacher and the textbook. Neither one of these things has happened. Indeed, we have seen an increased amount of usage of materials, textbook materials and all sorts, with the use of television and other efforts that we are using today.

Education is no longer the very simple process Mark Hopkins talked about-with the teacher on one end of the log and the learner on the other but an increasingly complex and intricate one. Even before sputnik, burgeoning enrollments and an explosion in the content areas made it imperative that the teacher enlist the power tools of educational technology to help him do his job. Never has there been so much to teach to so many in so short a time. Never has there been such an urgent need for more effective quality instruction. Time is at a premium; ideas must be communicated with dispatch.

The teacher in today's schools must provide materials for large groups, for seminars and small groups, and for individualized learning. I have seen teachers making use of all sorts of materials today for this sort of activity. I have seen teachers working through tapes with a group of youngsters in one section of the classroom, with the youngsters using headsets, and I have seen the same teacher working over here with another group or another youngster working on another problem. We must be able to do all of these sorts of things. Teachers need to be able to make transparency copies of examples and illustrations for many students to see at one time. Efficiency demands this. These illustrative materials are not available for use in projectors unless the teacher reproduces or transfers them to this form. In some cases the transparencies are discarded after use; in other instances they are kept for future classes. If the teacher is not allowed to do this, either he will have to pass the chart around the class or not use it at all.

Several teachers who are considered by supervisors as outstanding teachers have identified for us some of their practices in the use of copyrighted materials. Let me share some of these with you: 1. One English teacher writes:

I have copied excerpts or paragraphs from novels and literature books for my entire class for the purpose of showing good examples for writings in the "structured writing program.”

2. Another English teacher writes:

I dittoed some of T. S. Eliot's poems on a one-per-pupil basis for analysis in English class.

3. Another English teacher writes that she uses a piece of poetry as a model for writing in her classroom:

If a student has his own copy to mark, I feel he learns much more than from merely reading a poem.

4. A foreign language teacher writes:

I tape portions of foreign language broadcasts on the radio for playing to my classes.

5. A history teacher writes:

In preparing tests in American history, I dittoed maps and made enough for the class.

6. A social studies teacher says:

With the use of the opaque projector, I traced a map from a social studies textbook on a wall for use as a backdrop for an auditorium program.

7. A current events teacher says:

I made a transparency of a chart from a textbook showing population growth.

8. An economics teacher writes:

To study the stock market, I used graphs and charts from the New York Times.

9. A history teacher says:

To tie current events to history, I use transparencies of newspaper articles. 10. A foreign language teacher writes:

I taped a portion of a modern French poem and asked students to repeat this and then tape it so they could themselves see the improvement of their accent.

11. A social studies teacher writes:

I prepared a ditto master of a chart from a United Nations pamphlet.

12. A guidance counselor writes:

I prepared a ditto master of a college application to show students how to fill it out.

13. Another guidance counselor says:

I copied an article on study habits for distribution to 150 students.

14. A shop teacher writes:

I have made illustrations from mechanical drawing books for use on an overhead projector to clarify certain points.

15. A science teacher writes:

I ditto charts and tables such as electromagnetic spectrum, tables of valences and other values, gestation periods, etc.-the sort of things found in handbooks of chemistry and physics or in college textbooks.

16. A science teacher writes:

Charts for distribution of the stars in the heavens were taken from a text and reproduced by overhead projector.

17. Another science teacher writes:

I made a tape recording of an historic event in science from a telecast.

I'll not argue about whether teachers have a right under law to do these things. The question is not what is or isn't in the present law. The questions are instead: What are the present practices in good teaching? Does either the present law or the proposed bill fit the needs of teachers? What should teachers be doing with copyrighted materials for and with boys and girls and young people in colleges to facilitate learning?

Once we've decided what practices expedite and increase learning, then let's write a law to make these creative practices possible. Otherwise, teachers can't teach as well as they know how. Now that the law is at long last being revised, we urge that it be written to fit the practice rather than cut good teaching practices back to conform to the law. The law should support good practice rather than restrict it.

If limited copying privileges are permitted under the proposed bill either in "fair use" or in some other place, then we ask that you expressly write this into the statutes and indicate this clearly so that teachers won't be doing things which they feel are unethical or in violation as they attempt conscientiously to do their job. Let's get rid of "under the table" uses and bring things out in the open. If teachers are writing you letters, it is not because they misunderstand the law but because they are concerned lest what they consider to be good practices will become illegal practices.

Increasingly, we are running into hurdles such as the one which a teacher called to my attention this week. In the front of one of his textbooks he noticed this statement from the publisher:

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any manner or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

This shows you the dilemma we are facing. What happens to "fair use" under this statement? Whether or not it exists, teachers would be reluctant to avail themselves of "fair use," whatever it may be.

CONCLUSION

In the Register's Report on Copyright Law Revision, dated July 1961, on page 6, the following paragraph appears under the heading "Limitations on Author's Rights":

Within reasonable limits, the interests of authors coincide with those of the public. Both will usually benefit from the widest possible dissemination of the author's works. But it is often cumbersome for would-be users to seek out the copyright owner and get his permission. There are many situations in which copyright restrictions would inhibit dissemination, with little or no benefit to the author. And the interests of authors must yield to the public welfare where they conflict.

Our association feels that it will be possible to write a law incorporating the suggestions of the ad hoc committee which will give due consideration to the creativity of authors as well as to the creativity of teachers. Both have rights; both have responsibilities. What is needed is a law which seeks to maintain a fair balance between the two.