In contrast to the kind of leisurely climate that nurtured such creative artists of the past as the Brontes or Fanny Burney, today's adolescents exist in a frantic academic and social whirl in which their only leisure is often "a negative inertia against planned activity." To develop these students' potential as creative individuals and as social beings, English teaching must be liberated from its typically fixed curricular "subject" approach. Emphasis must be placed, instead, on an "activity" approach which (1) relates contemporary literature and history to the students' level of experience, (2) draws instructional materials from the students' own everyday speech patterns, (3) uses mass media materials as a major language source and as a revelation of life, and (4) gives attention to talking and listening experiences and to reading for pleasure in a receptive, non-critical classroom atmosphere. (JB)