Abstract
This study chronicles the successive versions of the English curriculum for the final year of secondary education, 1901-1982, noting how the curriculum has responded to the introduction, growth, and development of mass media (newspapers, magazines, radio, movies, and television.). The 1901-1924 curriculum based all language learning on the study and emulation of classic English literature. The growth of newspapers, magazines, radio, and motion-pictures (1920-1930) gave the material and means for learning language from other more-current (or instantaneous) sources. The curriculum has used these sources of language as one of the means by which to teach oral and written expression; this has influenced the curricular concept of correctness in English usage. The curriculum has also been written so that it was possible and highly recommended that for English teachers to teach about mass media as forces which need to be understood and appraised. A third role of mass media in the curriculum has been its use as an aid to the teaching of literature. Two other changes in the curriculum which related to the growth of the mass media are the changing role of leisure reading and the decrease in the importance of oral reading.
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