'Beneficial to Children'

For a professional's view of the issues involved in the current wave of teachers' strikes, TIME Correspondent Marguerite Michaels talked last week with Terry Herndon, 36, a former teacher and now executive director of the National Education Association. Some highlights of the interview:

Q. What are the common elements of teacher unrest this fall?

A. For the most part they are economically induced. Inflation has affected teachers as individuals and citizens as taxpayers. The cost of everything is up for the schools, while schools are not able to generate new revenue because citizens are hesitant to increase taxes. This causes school administrators and school boards to cut materials and supplies, to cut preparation periods, to increase the size of classes -and not to increase any salaries.

But teachers are not going to accept their situation as victims of a depressed and inflated economy. If necessary, they will strike.

Q. What about the effect of strikes on children?

A. Most strikes are beneficial to everybody -including the children. No one complains about a week out for snow, or for Christmas. Why not time out for teachers and classroom issues? Slaves cannot be teachers of free men.

Q. What do you think about court-ordered busing for desegregation?

A. Our society must be desegregated.

If busing is the only way, we support it. It looks as if the schools are the places where integration is going to have to start.

Q. Isn't it fair for school boards to ask teachers to spend more time actually teaching -to be more productive?

A. That depends. If the teacher is already handling five classes of 30 or more, the answer is no. If we're talking about four classes of 18 and an extreme financial crisis, the answer might be yes.

Q. How can teachers be more effective?

A. The ideal class size is from 18 to 22 in elementary school, but almost all classes are much larger than that. In junior high school most teachers are dealing with 150 to 200 children a day. The teacher is expected to know them, to love them, to counsel them, to know their home situations. It's impossible.

We need to achieve lower class size, to improve the quality of the teacher-student relationship and to provide more diagnostic and therapeutic services for children who need them. But this means more personnel -and more people mean more money, more federal help.

Q. What is the mood of the nation's teachers this fall?

A. As employees they are insecure.

As professionals they are uncertain. As citizens they are uptight, anxious and cynical about government.

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