Curiously enough, the greatest achievement of the new comprehensive school was not in conventional English communication teaching, nor even in the library's conventional academic role, but in General English, a program of English specifically designed for students who were bound for neither university nor technical college. Dealing with stronger academic students is the first responsibility of mainstream public education, however mixed the record, but there remains a significant part of the student body who will still need a legitimate English course based on a clear perception of their needs and capacities.

The Comprehensive philosophy saw the school as offering a wide window on the world for all its students, not merely for the most gifted. This is notoriously the platitude offered by Mafias to rationalize a system where the appearance of change is of fundamental concern since real change can be a threat to individual autonomy. If change is to be more than poorly coordinated and chaotic thrusts in assorted directions, it must have a central focus, and the Compact exists precisely to gut change by making its interpretation and implementation dependent on the extent that autonomous individuals are willing to modify existing procedures. Just as opponents of free trade invariably argue that they favour free trade, but not this particular version of it, so educators all profess the religion of change, provided the test of professional freedom is met, which, by making change comfortable, merely undoes it.

But the arrival of Norman Sydney Wood at our school would take change out of the realm of platitude. His genius made Trade English a legitimate subject in its own right, not the universal hand-me-down, or poor man's, version of academic English so characteristic of public education. And it gave the library resource person a role in the education of students who are normally academic foreigners, beyond the reach of the conventional library service. It was conceived: not as a "special" education offering for the learning disadvantaged, but as legitimate English training for the lower-average student, who at best might qualify for technical schools, but who likely would not move much beyond Grade Twelve.

In 1970, three years after the opening of the school, several staff members, including the librarian, got together to consider what could be done for the non-academic or trade students with respect to literature and language instruction. It seemed only right that a new Comprehensive high school should try to do something specifically designed for students who had no intention of going on to university, but who had still a need for a viable form of literacy. The problem with teaching such students, however, is that academic teachers can expect little of the intellectual feedback which can make working with better students so rewarding. An exclusive diet of slower students is a classic case of all work and no play.

There was general agreement that the traditional method of watering down academic courses for these students was unsatisfactory on several counts. Since the learning environment with slower students can be so unsatisfactory, teaching such students is commonly regarded by Mafias as a trial period to screen green teachers, the veterans having already paid their dues by suffering through a period of years in General purgatory. General courses can even become a convenient burden for unwanted teachers who are to be pressured out of a school system. The standard approaches, therefore, effectively led to teaching down to students too lazy or too stupid to do anything else.

Given the handicap of inadequate or inexperienced teachers, courses for slower learners usually result in trial and error efforts to cobble together course material by guessing at anything which might conceivably appeal to slower students: often the beginning teacher's first introduction to the magic wand syndrome. General programs, therefore, are typically constructed by cutting down on the crude number of facts required of better students, grasping at the latest manipulative techniques, and by the forlorn pursuit of literature titles combining irresistible young adult interest couched in infantile language with print the size of a horse's leg. The myth that out there somewhere exists a subject matter which, if only our funny-bone leads us aright, will guarantee success, is the last, best magic wand. The beginner shortly realizes the resulting fiasco, and vows to escape it as soon as seniority permits.

Understandably, parents and students also learn to detest the General label, and the movement to slot all students in unstreamed classes owes much to this neglect of slower students. Such a move is a profound disservice to people who are best served by an approach to their needs which is structured and taught properly. We were looking for a General program which required the ablest teachers and, while we knew that most teachers could not take an exclusive diet of General students, we did see the course as administered by long-term, trained incumbents, who could at least expect the perk of relatively small classes, and a match between content and student needs which would forestall the evolution of Trade English into a dumping-ground for the unwanted.

Norman Sydney Wood, a friend of mine since boyhood, had been developing such a course in British Columbia, and he agreed to move to Saskatchewan on condition that his project be given full support, and that he not be required to teach regular academic classes. Wood, a former military man (8) with an honours degree in education, had done extensive research in Miller, Nichols and Schramm (9), studying listening and communications applications in industry. Given all this, he could boast a scholarship in literature, history and economics that made him an imposing beginning teacher at age 32.

Wood liked to quote Miller's paper, "Magic number seven, plus or minus three", which argued that the difference between the concepts (or "chunks", as Wood put it) a student brings to a learning situation, and the concepts required for the communication to be successful, must not exceed ten at a maximum, or four at a minimum. The teachability of material determined how an English course for non-academic students could be put together. The problem was to pattern literature and writing for these students so that the sequence of discrete concepts could be kept within the required range. Selections which required a greater range would have to be dropped, or postponed until a necessary base had been built up.

The result was a literature program beginning with short stories and leading into novels, short and long dramas, and cross-media studies in motion pictures, all arranged initially in sequence according to basic plot conflict patterns, but filled out by continuity in universal cultural and moral concepts.

The conflict patterns identified were the single conflict pattern typical of the short story, the series conflict pattern found in shorter novels and dramas, and the complex conflict patterns in longer fiction works. A selection which required too many patterns or concepts for one stage might be teachable later once gaps in the sequence were filled.

The basic conflict pattern of antagonist and protagonist came first, and the resolution of the story defined in terms of setting, turning points, climax and anti-climax. Literature teaching for non-academics will focus here, with only incidental attention to the normal academic pre-occupation with nuances in theme, characterization. and mood. Wood used a principle of redundancy here, in line with Nichol's dictum, "The more you know about a communication before you receive it, the easier it is to receive, understand and remember". There is a need to repeat simple common elements, beginning with the short story, until the student is entirely comfortable with them

The principle of redundancy is continued into a cultural dimension. There are several themes which dominate most of twentieth century literature, and a central one is that of the English Gentleman. A central work such as Bridge on the River Kwai.

Kwai cannot be understood without an appreciation of Colonel Nicholson, a typical "Indian Army officer". There are racial and class overtones here, however, which need to be prefaced by shorter works such as Somerset Maugham's The Outstation, a dramatic short story based on conflict between an upper-class English patrician and a working-class Australian, and set in colonial Borneo. Kipling's short story, The Man Who Was, had been used to set up this sequence.

The theme of the English gentleman is more pervasive than most literature teachers might appreciate. The gentleman's dueling code, for example, found its way into the American West through the southern gentleman, whose moral values had been intimately shaped by the English connection. The theme reappears in innumerable characters, such as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, and in the protagonist of Shane. English authors have naturally mined this vein, with a heroic common man rising above self-interest ("muddling through", to use a World War II analogue) in many selections from Grade Ten to Twelve: Neville Shute's Trustee from the Toolroom, Hammond Innes's The Wreck of the Mary Deare and The Land God Gave to Cain, and Alastair MacLean's Night without End.

A related theme of a hero battling injustice was addressed in a series of cross-media studies using movies: Joe Hill. Spartacus and Jesus Christ Superstar, whose conflict patterns placed them in this order through to Grade Twelve. Some non-fiction selections, such as Lord's Night to Remember complement this theme. Still other themes share elements with English gentlemen and heroic struggle: survival against odds will enter repeatedly in works like Shute's No Highway and On the Beach, Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, and Golding's Lord of the Flies, allowing earlier themes to meld into later ones while avoiding abrupt transitions. General themes are meant to function largely as background, since making them explicit subject matters might invite over-teaching.

It was customary, in cross-media work, to schedule all sections of the same General English grade simultaneously, which allowed Wood to conduct large group showings and teaching, with other instructors following up with individual class discussion, exercises and evaluation. The result put to shame the typical practices this category of student had been subjected to. Wood's practice was to deal with a film in logical divisions, making sure that students had grasped the essential elements (antagonist and protagonist, main conflict, turning points, climax and anti-climax, and setting) before preceding. Nuances of characterization and symbolism are to be avoided, or at least dealt with incidentally, lest the teacher slip into "academizing" the program.

It should not come as a surprise to find that the typical academic English teacher was not necessarily the best source of teaching talent in General English. We had rather more success overall with teachers with science and technical backgrounds who were willing to learn a new system and accept direction until they did. With this prior condition, Wood could teach even willing jocks to function effectively. Wood had, in fact, a mock test to identify a potentially successful General English teacher. I have since lost my copy, but I recall that Question One involved a selection from John Master's Ravi Lancers, which required recognizing an Indian Army unit from a description of their leggings as glimpsed by a casualty lying in No-man’s Land. Questions Two and Three asked the candidate to define robotics and identify Kim Philby. There were two other questions that I cannot now recall, but it is safe to say that the test would have separated men from boys by determining how much a teacher was in touch with some central themes in modern literature. I may have had the distinction of being the only person ever to write the test, and the only person to pass it, which may have had some significance for my later success in adapting the teaching of history through AV to the same kind of student.

Within a year or two reading speed and comprehension emerged as a major concern for General English students, followed closely by deficiencies in writing skills. There then began a long evolutionary development of a listen-and-read approach to the teaching of literature, since there could be no appreciation or learning if the technical obstacle posed by poor comprehension was not solved.

The listen-and-read approach to literature

The listen-and-read format would be implemented by recording most of the prose selections for the courses, and using a speech compressor to create multiple versions at speeds ranging from 150 to 300 words per minute. Its impact on General English was immense, expanding the course from its previous emphasis on Listening and Speaking in Communications to the goals of reading comprehension and cultural enhancement.

Students were first tested to determine the base rate that they were reading at. If serious deficiencies were discovered, they would begin reading at their most comfortable rate, and progress steadily through 25 word-per-minute increments until they had reached an optimum of 250 words per minute. Some students would not progress quite this far, and others would actually need to have the reading time expanded by reducing some recorded selections to as little as 50 words per minute. Only a few reached the lofty height of 300 words per minute. Whatever the progress, there was repeated confirmation that comprehension and appreciation rose with a faster reading rate.

Not all students required to be placed on listen-and-read, and the object, in any event, was to wean them from it completely before they had gone very far in Grade Twelve. Given careful testing, the number of students reading at varying speeds was seldom as great as the system could accommodate, but there was in principle room for up to five groups reading at their own rates, with an additional group reading independently of listen-and-read. It was necessary to test students individually in order to allow them to move up to a higher group, and, since the more committed students completed core selections sooner, a selected library of supplementary novels, tapes and supporting notes was maintained and circulated by the library for those who were waiting for others to catch up. These additional readings, carefully selected to reinforce central concepts and themes, would receive extra credit. Never was supplementary reading allowed to become mere busywork.

The job of creating the listen and-read infrastructure was a mammoth one which absorbed the energies of all teachers concerned, and required the full-scale involvement of the library. Wood built all of the individual listening stations himself, the school and the library providing the materials, and a complement of tape recorders, junction boxes and audiotapes had to be provided for every row in every class.

The building of needed equipment and the work of recording determined how much choice could be offered to the students, but the recording and editing of a full-length novel could take some 75 hours, all of which had to be put in outside school hours, and we lacked professional recording facilities. Generally recording took place on weekend mornings, when the operation the school’s machines and lighting would not produce background hiss. Every selection had to be recorded and edited on reel-to-reel tape, and transferred to cassette masters. Preparing the classroom cassettes required a further copying, and the sound track had to be kept as pure as possible, since each reproduction would produce some increase in background noise. While no-one could match Wood's skill as a recording artist, it was up to the librarian, in the ten years following Wood's death, to record some fourteen novels and twenty or more short stories in order to keep the course alive.

The administrative and supporting materials for the courses ran to thirty-one three-inch binders, although not all of them needed to be maintained in the classrooms. In every case there would be reams of background material which the teacher had to know, even if it was to enter only selectively into student consciousness. One had always to deal with the students on their level, and much sensitivity was needed to determine just how much enrichment was possible. As a rule, the general themes were intended to carry most of the load, relying on redundancy to help students keep pace.

Teacher reference materials were carefully gathered to provide not merely insight but also a wealth of references to make literature selections meaningful. An excellent example might be the mysterious pod in Lord of the flies that landed the schoolboys on their Pacific Island. Academic teachers betray no end of confusion here, since separable pods were characteristic of helicopters rather than aircraft, and a helicopter cannot be imagined winging over the remote reaches of the Pacific. One movie fudged the matter by hinting at a conventional air accident of some sort; another had the boys coming ashore in a life raft, with an adult who dies shortly afterward. The solution is rather simple. In the early 1950s Fairchild Corp. in fact had a twin-engined transport aircraft with a separable pod making up the lower half of the airframe, and the library was even able to supply a picture of the prototype. Golding was confounded because the prototype never went into production. The fictional pilot who ejected to become the Lord of the novel flew an aircraft which was one of a kind.

Every piece of fiction will have a central theme and a context for which usable teaching references will be needed. Answering "good questions" was a typical library supporting activity in the early days, whenever Wood's fertile imagination needed supplementing. There were a number of historical misconceptions surrounding Bridge on the River Kwai which library research helped to dispel, and I was able to provide some useful background on the colonial prejudices which inspired Nicholson's quest to prove to the Japanese that a British soldier could handle the technology of railroading better Asians could, an often neglected aspect of the novel. I did do a number of background research projects for various teachers, but the practice never became popular despite its demonstrated value in General English.

There was a voracious need for supporting material. The teaching of cross-media required the production of sequential notes to parallel the story line in the movie and key the teacher to relevant concepts. While everyone shared in the creation of background material on historical contexts, themes, and authors, Wood and the librarian had to prepare final copies, allot file numbers and update the master volumes. Since many of the best teachers were indifferent filers, the library took over the task of maintaining and amending the essential subject volumes, the better to encourage sharing of material. Normal maintenance of equipment and software had to be done, and this eventually became a special contribution by the school's stationary engineer, especially after the retirements of the librarian and his wife.

In short, every effort was made to allow recruit teachers to ease into the system, without having to contribute to course development and change before they had gone through a few semesters and become comfortable. Change is best attempted after working within the system; teachers who do not understand what needs to be done can change things every time they open their mouths, but this won't help the student. Given the elaborate structure of the course, suggested changes had to have the co-operation and consent of the other teachers, and there had to be a willingness to do the footwork needed.

The apprenticeship for new teachers had a number of ends in view, then, including the capacity to contribute to the information pool and maintain essential equipment.

While General English did have its own budget, library resources were occasionally used to amplify resources. Since preparing each selection required so much effort, we had to ensure that a worthwhile selection would be available for some time. We wanted coordination between the high school and the previous grades, but that was generally not possible. Teachers in the earlier grades were usually reluctant to factor what we were doing into their selection of material, or even to advise us of decisions which would have repercussions on us. We could not even persuade them to allow us to do testing on their graduates in order to place the right students in General English.

It was awkward to do the testing in September, since that meant shaking up classes to the extent that placement decisions made in June by other schools proved faulty, as was likely to happen from time to time, given their relative indifference to the strict parameters of our program. Their decisions were hardly infallible; we once had a student slotted into the slow-learners stream who turned out to be functionally blind. After we recorded some of his texts and got the CNIB involved, the student was moved back into the academic stream, eventually to graduate there. The lack of co-ordination was not so problematic that we could not work around it, but it was an indication of how the Compact’s axis of ego, insecurity and turf handicapped the best efforts of all concerned to place student interests first.

The handicap is reflected in the reluctance of Department of Education officials to sanction local initiatives in the teaching of writing, perhaps to avoid the sham that so often results. Smothering local initiative has its downside, however. Not only does it threaten creativity in communication, it also allows Mafias to deflect criticism from classrooms to impersonal provincial bureaucracies by creating provincial standards and an anonymous lowest common denominator. "New" programs usually come to mean the same old content updated with titles having more recent copyright dates. (10)>

The reality is that slower students occupy a wasteland few willingly choose to accept responsibility for, particularly when there is a prospect of Blame being apportioned. The situation of General English education is an object lesson on the stigma attached to the "rubbers", as they are sometimes called, the reference being to the need to be constantly correcting mistakes. The situation can be remedied only by a structured emphasis on clear communications and cultural skills, not by using General Programs as a dumping ground for the unwanted (student or teacher), or as a sinecure for lazy students. Our students could fail to measure up if they were not prepared to work, and they rewarded their teachers over the years by consistently responding to a program which was specifically designed for them.

Writing instruction in General English

The first hurdle the beginning teacher must clear is the sloppy academic habit of assuming that the student knows more than he does, or can make even the simplest of inferences, so that at least a few steps can be taken for granted. The General English approach was meticulously detailed, beginning with the layout and spacing of title pages and the steps in planning a composition. Some time will pass before broaching the preparation of expository paragraphs following the preview, main idea and topic patterns. This is the beginning of a process continuing through Grade Twelve, and while such writing applications as description are not neglected, the end result will be expository essays built on a foundation of paragraphs written to inform and to convince. I will deal here with a glimpse at the foundation built in Grade Ten.

Wood's version of unity and coherence began with the concept of turn signals in expository writing, using the analogue of following a friend's car through traffic, and the confusion which can result if intentions to switch lanes or turn are not carefully signaled. For General students the emphasis was much more basic than the method of obtaining coherence outlined in Appendix A. Wood limited his charges to the obvious written traffic signs: e.g.,

To introduce my subject

My first point

Secondly

My next point

In addition...

For example...

However

Finally

In conclusion or To sum up

Of course, the student would have to be taught how to punctuate the above expressions before moving on, and would have to work his way through a painstaking process of sentence-building and combining, which also had to be carefully thought out rather than merely adapted from academic models. It was to prove easy to identify a graduate of Wood's programme. They all sounded like so many peas in a pod. But they were clear, and, for this kind of student, that was the point.

The key building block in exposition to inform was the preview pattern paragraph, where the writer begins with a preview or look ahead I will rely on examples drawn from Wood's own textbook.

Sample Preview Pattern Paragraph

In Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace," Matilda Loisel, the wife of a government clerk, had two major aims: at first she yearned after a life of luxury, but later she was satisfied to pay off her debts. At the beginning of the story, Madam Loisel longed for the life of the rich. She wanted a fine home, expensively furnished. She desired the beautiful clothes and jewelry that were part of the life of the wealthy. In short, she wanted all the rich things that she did not have in her comfortable, middle-class home, and she was willing to go to any length to get them, if only for a single evening. She had her evening, but it cost her her dreams. The disastrous loss of a borrowed necklace wiped out the possessions of the Loisels and plunged them into debt. Matilda's whole life became devoted to paying back the sixteen thousand francs they had borrowed. Her servant, her home, and her youth and beauty were sacrificed to achieve this aim. It took ten years of Matilda's life to pay off the debt, but finally she achieved her second aim, only to find that the lost necklace was false and her struggle senseless.

The reader will note that the paragraph consists of detail amplifying the key of the major aims held together by a few standard turn signals, with no attempt at metaphors or other literary flourishes. My experience suggests that the teaching of writing in general will be best served by good student-written models, with a teacher-prepared model best serving as a starting point until an adequate student model is available.

The next building block was the simple topic pattern paragraph, also written to inform. The most notable feature of this form is the absence of either an introduction or a conclusion. Unity is obtained by sticking exactly to the topic, which must be stated precisely. This is a common writing pattern in encyclopedias, although in its looser form of free association it can merge into the Phoney Idea pattern referred to below. Beginning with this paragraph pattern, Wood would insist on the provision of a title page, as part of training in specifying a topic clearly, and would begin study of simple outlining. Every step, from the gathering of material to the preparation of a rough draft, will have to be anticipated for the General student if he is to learn to communicate his ideas clearly. If he could make inferences he would not be a general student.

In Clark's short story "Hook," the protagonist was Hook, the hawk. Hook had three aims: a hunger for blood which included fighting and feeding, a hunger for flight, and a hunger for a mate. Hook's antagonist can best be described as the world around him: other hawks who fought him for territory and mates; the animals that he killed and that tried to kill him; the climate with its periodic droughts and rains; and even the Japanese farmer. The aims of these opposing forces varied greatly and for some antagonists, such as the climate, did not exist. There was major turning point in 'Hook". The hawk's success grew up to the point at which his wing was crippled by the farmer's shot.. From that point on, Hook began to fail until his death, which formed the climax of the story. There was no anticlimax in the story.

Note that the paragraph was used to teach the principal concepts followed in the analysis of short stories, and is not intended to be literary. Again, the technique is to flesh out keys and tie them together with simple turn signals. The teacher can, of course, take advantage of the occasion to build student background (emphasis on enjoying the outdoors and respecting the environment) but he must begin where the students are, and avoid lecturing on issues too remote from the main focus of his teaching.

The final expository pattern will be simple main idea paragraphs. These are made up of a main idea and a key, the topic naming a thing or process and the key stating an opinion about the topic. This is the principal format General students will use in writing to convince. Thus in the sentence:

"The greatest nuisance in my life is my dog".

My dog is the topic and nuisance indicates the writer's opinion of his dog. Developing this theme became an important part of completing the General student's grasp of key elements in clear expression, for the conclusion must be a restatement of the idea in different words. Students were reminded not to fall for the childish device of introducing a contradictory idea in the conclusion: "Nevertheless, my dog is wonderful".

The ability to formulate conclusions will separate General students from academics, who can learn to state conclusions in a form which advances the topic and serves as a bridge to further elaboration. Appendix A traces that more sophisticated application.

Wood contrasted "My dog is a nuisance" (with its main idea and key) with the cardinal writing sin of the Phoney Idea paragraph: "My dog is nice" , which is a staple of composition with functional illiterates, and too often a feature of descriptive writing passed over by the inexperienced teacher. The main idea format may be the only one that she or her students are familiar with, and the problem arises when the main idea paragraph is used as part of an attempt to inform rather than to convince.

The confusion arises, according to Wood, in the following way. A student is assigned to write a main idea pattern composition, and given some such topic as Building a Picket Fence. He has to supply a key or opinion about the topic, and is allowed to chose the key fun. Now he has his idea, Building a Picket Fence can be Fun and is off on the familiar gambit of supplying the first ideas that pop into his head. In order now to support this idea, he must expatiate on the joys of digging post holes and the delight of getting stringers lined up straight. The whole effort becomes nonsensical. What the student really wanted to do was to inform his readers how to build a picket fence, not to convince them that building fences is fun.

The writer may now abandon the fun key and go on to inform, but this does not solve the problem, since the introduction promises one thing and the body delivers another. The real solution is obvious: use patterns which inform (either preview or topic pattern paragraphs will do). There are times when a main idea pattern can do the job, but a clear writer will chose a pattern which best suits her purposes, and this will be all the more important if some essential writing skills are lacking.

Related to the Phoney Idea are the Vague Preview Pattern (There are many kinds of tractors) and the Glittering Generalities Pattern which forms the essence of advertising and propaganda. This latter form tries to expand My dog is a nuisance by including items all of which fail to be more specific:

He is a pest,

He annoys mother.

He is useless.

He causes damage,

The writer here succeeds only in producing additional generalities, but no facts which can be arranged in logical order. If it is not used to deliberately mislead a reader, the Glittering Generality betrays a simple lack of knowledge about a subject, unfortunate in a writer, and unforgivable in a teacher.

This will have to be enough by way of outlining Wood's General English approach to the teaching of literacy to slower students. There is not time here to deal with a host of subsidiary topics: developing paragraphs by comparison or double keys; using mixed patterns; common word and sentence errors; the proper way to approach description; the use of a thesaurus; sentence structure and combining, to skim through a few.

From time to time grinders in other locations would catch a whiff of what Wood was doing and would send out feelers. Unfortunately, the feelers had Magic Wand written all over them. The prospective visitors invariably wanted to spend all or part of a school day with us with the object of becoming acquainted with the General English program. It was painfully clear that they were at the old trick of looking for some easily adaptable gimmicks which could be slipped into their own practice without changing anything which mattered. Wood's response each time was to make a counter-proposal: a three day seminar including a weekend in order to absorb his approach in detail and perhaps establish the basis for future cooperative arrangements. We never heard from them again.

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Why is it necessary to stress techniques of formal writing even for society's rubbers? I should not have thought that the question could ever arise. After all, if nearly a third of university students cannot use language effectively to convey information, what does this imply about the general population? Some current estimates go as high as a 50% rate of functional illiteracy. In the Information Age, the inability to convey information would seem to be an obvious and critical handicap, likely to condemn the victim to a lifetime among the working poor, at best. It is not surprising that the expression "General Education" has an offensive odour. What is surprising is that courses of General English are not attractive to academic teachers either, and that teachers tend to view general program students as an unavoidable evil rather than as a challenge.

It is interesting that one hears so often that libraries, books and writing will be so fundamentally altered by Information Technology as to be rendered obsolescent. It must be accepted that there may be at least an undercurrent among educators which calls into question the status of expository prose in an age of computers. Small wonder that the writing skills of Rubbers attract so little public concern.

The extent of the problem will probably emerge only after the better part of a generation has passed. The earlier media revolution also promised earth-shaking change, and it needed about two decades for the television set to evolve merely into a cheaper and more efficient replacement for the l6mm projector. The promised school media revolution fizzled out. Textbooks remained triumphant, and all the more critical given a perceptible and gradual decline in student writing skills and work ethic.

Television has certainly had profound implications for modern culture, although there seems to no consensus as to what these are. In schools, however, the more things have changed the more they have remained the same. I can see no good reason to expect the computer revolution to differ. In the course of this book I hope to support my view. What the old media revolution did offer was a glitzy diversion from the school's problems in teaching literacy, offering an alternate way for educators to justify their existence, and deferring serious professional accountability for the problem indefinitely. As we shall see, television was not alone in its convenience as a magic wand, I expect the outcome of the computer revolution in schools to be roughly parallel. Nonetheless, the crisis in literacy will have its day.

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Wood's death in 1982 did not spell the end of General English, partly because the momentum established ensured that the immediate successors would have at least a minimum grounding. Long term viability is another matter.

The achievement of General English, and the role that I was able to play developing it, was the high point of my career, and made my twenty-years in that school worthwhile. Moreover, I was able to expand my experience with General English to the search for literacy through the use of AV in teaching history, and this will be my next concern.