The origins of modern English teaching can be found in the Uniform Lists provided by eastern colleges, beginning in 1874, for college entrance examinations. The study of literature was informed by the arguments of Matthew Arnold, who maintained that the purpose of literature study was initiation into, and maintenance of, "high culture"--the best thoughts and words of western civilization. This idea corresponds closely with recent calls for a "cultural literacy" based on the reading of specific great works of literature or, in some cases, just being aware of great literature. The founding of the National Council of Teachers of English in 1911 marked a movement toward "functional" reading, or reading for "real life." The purpose of such an approach is still "cultural literacy" but it is a somewhat more democratic notion of culture. One aspect of this argument went beyond social maintenance and into social reconstruction--the attempt to educate the populace to improve society. The psycholinguistic and language experience approaches acknowledge the cultural and societal aspects of schooling and reading, but emphases are on the linguistic experience of the reader, the development of communicative competence, and the holistic understanding of texts, rather than on a skills approach. A hybrid of these approaches might be appropriate for the literature curriculum in a secondary school, but each approach has a different purpose, which must be understood to be effectively implemented and evaluated. A three-page bibliography concludes the document. (SRT)