The move currently underway to construct a formalised national curriculum presents us, as educators and as citizens, with both opportunities and challenges. This is perhaps especially the case with English teaching, clearly the most contentious of the four subject areas in the front line of such initiatives and agendas. Why this is so needs to be better understood. What are the opportunities and what are the challenges for English teaching at this time of national curriculum construction? To what extent might there be value in thinking again about fundamental issues of rhetoric and democracy, language and power, in specific relation to English teaching? In this paper I want to open up and explore some of the issues that are involved here, as I see it, with respect to renewing the project of English in Australia. But first it is necessary and important to revisit and recall some of the history, and to clear some conceptual and definitional ground. (Contains 3 notes.)