ABSTRACT
Merely teaching men to read and write does not work miracles; if there are not enough jobs for men able to work, teaching more men to read and write will not create them. If an important task of English teachers is to develop intelligent 'critical readers', basic training of pupils in communications methodologies must become an essential part of the primary curriculum. The need to construct a developmental model which begins with the 'personal'—reading, writing and talk examining feelings, values, beliefs—and moves on to consider the 'non-personal'—the construction of different texts for diverse audiences, mechanical and technological communications systems and their methodologies—will finally become inescapable. If the inevitable pressures upon young people will continue to accelerate their premature desires for the imagined worlds of adolescence and maturity, it will be all the more important that the formal education they receive should seek to directly address the 'specific conditions of their lives' from nursery to secondary schooling.
