In the past half century, precisely during a period when a theory of language approaching adequacy has been developing, the primary function of the schools, to increase the user's knowledge of and about language, has been neglected. As a result, the gap between the concepts about language and linguistic belief, held by otherwise educated literary men, that there is no distinction between operational skill and theoretical knowledge, has widened. However, once having accepted the responsibility of becoming once again scholars of language as well as literature, the English-teaching profession must teach students about language in the traditional sense of linguistics scholarship in an attempt to increase their power ove r the language itself. (AB)