Te new Common Core Standards, adopted by 46 states, including California, recommend that by 2014, 70 percent of material that students read in high school is nonfiction. The Common Core Standards are guides created to give teachers an idea of the things they should be teaching their students during their twelve years of schooling.
The great works “Of Mice and Men,” “The Taming of the Shrew” and “Lord of the Flies” that I read this year might be replaced by “useful” texts like “FedViews” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the EPA’s “Recommended Levels of Insulation” on Common Core’s suggested reading. What a shame. English class was just starting to grow on me.
This shift in emphasis is based on the idea that reading structured, informational text will make students learn to write the same, boring non-fiction for their futures in the “real” world. The problem is, that’s not the English teacher’s job. Sure, the benefits of education do stem beyond just school. But whereas math teaches us to be careful with money and history teaches us to learn from the past, English illustrates how words on a page can mean so much more, not how to be a good assistant for your future employer.
If I need to write a stocks analysis one day for my corporate boss, perhaps I will recall reading “FedViews” in the 10th grade. Because according to the Common Core, by reading nonfiction works, I’ll be able to assess usefulness of complex data and integrate useful information effectively.
But reading something like “Recommended Levels of Insulation” isn’t going to improve my fluidity with the English language. That’s where fiction comes into play. Fiction teaches us how to tell a story. A tale of two migrant workers, a play of a troubled marriage and a novel about English school boys stranded on an island are all works of fiction that help students tell their own story. If you can’t tell a story, you will never be able to write a hit breakup song for your teenage British singer ex-boyfriend. Personally, I’d rather listen to Taylor Swift perform a breakup soliloquy than her sing a tune on levels of insulation.
Yes, being a good employee is a good thing. Companies don’t hire entire offices of people who like expressing themselves through descriptive language. But instructing students on these skills should happen in college, or when they intern for their first job. If the people behind the Common Core Standards learned anything from high schools themselves, it’s that literature teaches us about life, something that is worth more than just a career.