Despite its educational centrality, teaching cannot be as positive and effective a force as it might and should be unless a number of conditions prevail. Foremost is that teachers be given greater voice in curricular decisions. Teaching must receive stronger financial support and greater respect from the public if the profession is to attract and hold academically competent teachers. The industrial model of education, which fails to accommodate either individual differences among learners or the continuing revolution in telecommunications, must also be altered. The Back-to-Basics movement and minimum competency testing, which have reduced English from a rich and complex subject to one concerned with promoting low-level skills of reading and editing, must be tempered. Evidence also suggests that teachers have done little in English classes to help students exert dominion over nonprint media. As computers play an increasing role in education, programs to enlist the aid of national, state, and local governments and private business in coordinating information develop, but it is time to ask about the computer's particular significance to English instruction. The potential for better software programs exists, but even if high quality programs were available, there is no guarantee that schools would have equal access to them. There remains the problem of how best to educate teachers to operate microcomputers and use them effectively in classrooms. Rather than replacing teachers, the computer could liberate them to do the teaching that they alone can do. (HTH)