As curriculum planners are swayed more and more by the influences of technological determinism, it becomes imperative that all educators try to get a broader sense of the changing socio-cultural interactions that take place within classrooms. Digitized information manipulation, on-line communications, the incorporation of electronic files and graphics into texts, the transferring and downloading of World Wide Web data, and the inclusion of HyperCard and other interactive multimedia programs into documents are all becoming part of the regular high school English curriculum as we move toward the next millennium (see the 1996 Atlantic Canada English Language Guide). In addition, for high school English students, the experimenting with Home Page technologies (using HTML language) "to become information providers on the Internet...," the creating of a "broadcast/Home Page for their schools," and the planning of publicity campaigns in a range of media, are all part of the changing English language arts curriculum (p. 155). This essay will discuss some of the challenges these types of curriculum objectives have for the English classroom and give some insights into their pedagogical implications.

English, as a discipline, has been taught in schools for about 130 years (Applebee, 1974). Its general structure has remained the same within the university; a literary canon is studied and appropriate composition skills are used to demonstrate an understanding of various literary works. This decoding/analytic literacy is typically marked by generic concepts delivered to learners through anthologies or textbooks. In turn, students individually study the material and demonstrate the power of their textual engagements through analytical papers, tutorials, and/or examinations.

Canadian and U.S. high schools typically used this form of English instruction until the 1980s. Scholars such as Rosenblatt (1978), Iser (1980), Crossman (1982) and Sholes (1985) challenged this methodology and moved English teaching toward a transactional/critical form of literacy. In the process, individual learning succumbed to collaborative learning, preconstructed learning outcomes gave way to student constructed meaning, and the quests for the ultimate literary criticism gave ground to confirming and deconstructing personal and aesthetic readings of texts. The 1980s saw an increase in the use of nonprint texts such as music, film, television, and photojournalism in the English classroom. What is important here is that high school English instruction began to take on a very different appearance from university English instruction. An individual student's engagement with literary works became a paramount concern; historical or critic's conception of a particular work took on lesser importance.

English language arts curriculum in the 1990s has greatly expanded the kinds of texts given over to study (See for example the 1996 Foundation for the Atlantic Canada English Language Art Curriculum document and the Western Canadian Protocol- Common Curriculum Framework). CD Rom technologies, multimedia texts, Internet links, and rock videos are now among the many items to be 'read' for meaning. As the very physical nature of texts has changed so too has the student's modes and methods of recording and responding to textual engagements. Representing has been added to the traditional strands of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Students are encouraged to demonstrate their responses to various textual engagements through 3-D constructions and presentations, multimedia assemblages, models, or graphic displays. The result is that high school English as a subject, with its expanded notion of what can be 'read' and its move and acceptance of multiple ways of representing knowledge, is now markedly different from university or traditional conceptions of the discipline.

Information, media, and visual literacies are increasingly taking their place along side more traditional understandings of literacy. To be clear, information literacy is computer based and uses multiple technologies to produce and manipulate data. Media literacy is understood to be an engagement with the mass media in ways that will give insight into how it manufactures and manipulates meaning. Visual literacy is an ability to conceptualize and understand the symbolism in static and moving images, and to understand their impact as they construct meaning.

The result of this all-inclusive conception of English education is a discipline with new and greatly expanded parameters. A vocational/technical conception of education is being juxtaposed against an aesthetic/literary one; efferent readings are challenging aesthetic readings for class time. In this reconstruction, media and computer accessed information is assured a greater and greater role in the curriculum. In some quarters the discipline of English is undergoing a name change. General students will be taking "Communications" instead of English in grades 11 and 12 in Atlantic Canada (Atlantic Canada English Language Arts Curriculum Guide. Draft: July 8, 1996, pp. 31, 32, and 35). English will be for the elite--those who are university bound (p. 31). Communications courses are vying with English courses for a central place within the English high school curriculum.

What is disturbing about the direction of the new English language arts curriculum is that it is adding enormous amounts of material to an already overcrowded program of studies. The addition of a course on media studies or the inclusion of a business course on computer-based text manipulation or a computer course in advanced graphic design sounds progressive. However, the incorporation of these topics within the English language arts program, as they are in Atlantic Canada, causes pressure to be placed on limited instructional time. This is not to say that the use of new technologies is not applicable in responding to texts; rather in the literature class it is the response that is of importance as opposed to the packaging. Behind the most technologically advanced special effects Hollywood movie is a written script.

Teachers of English are now expected to engage students in a multitude of texts in a variety of mediums. With the expansion of the definition of text comes an expanded definition of what constitutes reading. To understand and to 'read' the media and advertisements, English teachers need to be versed in the nuances of popular culture. They are expected to build bases of cultural capital that are situated in and engaged within television, Hollywood movies, pop radio, videos and an assortment of pulp journals and novels. In order to lead students in meaningful text discussions, teachers of English are expected to keep current with media happenings. Thus Calvin Klein's pictures of scarcely clad children or Bennington's ads (texts) of copulating horses or Disney's placement of its corporate symbols on Canadian postage stamps need to be studied. Traditional teachers of English will argue that you cannot have it all. They will say that a blending and rolling of academic, vocational, workplace, technical, personal-growth, and liberal conceptions of English into a 'one-philosophy-fits-all' notion of secondary education will not fly. The rise of electronic communications skills and the decline of literature is challenging traditional conceptions and values associated with the teaching of English. An industrial/technical/vocational model of education raises many new theoretical questions for English educators. As the new curriculum documents are implemented in Canadian high schools, questions arise about the kinds of educational backgrounds and experiences the next generation of English teachers will be expected to have since a literary education seems to satisfy only part of the new requirements of the discipline.

English teachers will need a background in specific computer skills. In Foundation for the Atlantic Canada English Language Arts Curriculum, teachers are required to be more flexible in the uses of technology in classroom practice. Included under the document's teaching suggestions are such ideas as having students "use a range of media (including, but not limited to computers) to produce a text..., edit spreadsheets, use formulas, sort information and manipulate data in a number of ways to create meaning", and "apply the principles of good design to produce a variety of desktop published documents using desktop publishing software" (p. 152). Teachers are to encourage students to "subscribe to listservs and news groups of interest to them and participate in electronic discussions," (p. 153).

Assuming the present generation of traditionally educated teachers can set aside the overwhelming weight of tradition and historical precedence that has come to guide and inform the intellectual habits and nuances of English instruction, a host of questions come to mind in light of these new curriculum initiatives. Literature based teachers are bound to ask a number of questions: What are the methods we might develop to evaluate electronic texts? What are the new grammars and genres students will need to learn as they begin to write in networked classrooms and electronic and digitized environments? How will twenty-first century virtual environments support the more traditional educational objectives of English and language arts instruction? As a culture raised on print, are we relying too heavily on print conventions to address virtual communication requirements? Some teachers of English might feel they are becoming the servants of technology and question a curriculum that focuses on Internet communicating rather than looking at the structure of human communications. Others will question the use of multimedia and a cacophony of technologies to make critical judgments about media and technology. They will direct students to more traditional sources and see in them the tried and tested seeds for developing critical thought.

As I have written elsewhere (Barrell, 1996), the exposure to Internet information and databases fails to guarantee much. Just as the existence of community libraries did not guarantee literacy, neither does the availability of computer printouts, Internet search engines, complex statistical graphing, or technological forecasting necessarily improve instruction or learning. In the English classroom it is time, memories, solitude, and companionship that are the ingredients that encourage one's ideas to marinate and mature into thoughtful words and creative actions. Literature study, as Northrop Frye would have us understand it, is there to educate the imagination. We need to be careful about moving away from time spent on aesthetic textual engagements and creative critical thought. Efferent reading is useful, but it must not come to dominate student readings. Just as I have asked questions about what it means to write in electronic environments, I can also see that a new set of reading skills is required to function well in hypertext. The act of 'reading' on the Internet is not as simple as we might think. Print authors restrict our reading as well as control and filter the flow of information that reaches us. Reading on the Internet, if it is to be done knowledgeably and skilfully, requires an ability to elbow past undifferentiated information and to find links that render access to relevant data. Because of the multiplicity of pathways on the Internet, I see the instructional role of the teacher as being responsible for finding pathways through encroaching distracters and advertisements to worthwhile sites. They must make sure that the lateral reading access the Internet gives students is not done at the expense of depth. Teachers of English in the next millennium will need to develop trustworthy, accurate, reliable, and reapplicable materials and be able to leave markers for students to follow as they venture and read in various sites (Barrell, 1997).

English educators will need to spend time assessing the new conception of high school English instruction being introduced in Canada. Though they have argued over the nature and the thrust of various literary canons, they have tended to agree that aesthetic readings are key to understanding the human condition and for allowing young people to engage with the issues that impact on their lives. They know it allows students to vicariously experience human motives, conflicts, and values. Technology is seriously challenging literature for time and space in the English classroom. A balance must be struck so that English does not simple become a vehicle for working and operating in cyberspace.

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