Schools generally choose their own reading materials. For nonfiction, however, the Common Core standards specify that students should read certain “seminal U.S. documents of historical and literary significance,” including the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” as well as presidential addresses and Supreme Court opinions. Many high schools have added these to American literature classes.There are at least 3 problems tangled up together here.
1. The relative value of nonfiction and fiction in early childhood education. This is a topic I've written about for a long time — under the tag children reading nonfiction — going back to 2005, when I said: "[I]f teachers are just trying to get kids to read, why shouldn't they provide a broad selection and give kids a chance to discover what they find interesting? It looks as though the biggest problem is that teachers are pushing too much literary fiction on kids. English teachers tend to be people who enjoy that sort of thing, but most people don't read it on their own. Why should we have an appetite for stories?" And in 2007, in a post that got a lot of outraged pushback:
And why does reading even need to be a separate subject from history in school? Give them history texts and teach reading from them. Science books too. Leave the storybooks for pleasure reading outside of school. They will be easier reading, and with well-developed reading skills, kids should feel pleasure curling up with a novel at home. But even if they don't, why should any kind of a premium be placed on an interest in reading novels? It's not tied to economic success in life and needn't be inculcated any more than an interest in watching movies or listening to popular music. Leave kids alone to find out out what recreational activities enrich and satisfy them. Some may want to dance or play music or paint. Just because teachers tend to be the kind of people who love novels does not mean that this choice ought to be imposed on young people via compulsory education. Teach them about history, science, law, logic -- something academic and substantive -- and leave the fictional material for after hours.2. Government — especially centralized government — taking over too much of education and distorting the decisions of those who are closer to the process who now must check the boxes and meet the percentages.
3. Whether the nonfiction reading requirement needs to impinge on the literature class. It might be interesting to teach a class that combines fiction with relevant readings in science, history, or current events. But it's bad if the literature teachers feel they're just being used to meet a government requirement and there's less time to read the great books that belong in the class. I would think that the percentages could be met in the science classes and the social studies classes. Why should it even be difficult? I wonder if perhaps it's not difficult, but the NYT is trying to make Common Core seem especially idiotic by showing an awkward approach deployed by balky teachers and cherry picking grumpy students who say things like "We do so much nonfiction. I just want to read my book." That's from a girl with a name that sounds like it came from a novel, Karma Lisslo.
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"That's from a girl with a name that sounds like it came from a novel, Karma Lisslo."
Karma Lisslo Spatula?
I preferred non fiction as a young person, but certainly not what these people have in mind.
If you go back to my 2007 post, you'll see that I was originally inspired to think about this by a WaPo article called "Educators Differ on Why Boys Lag in Reading":
""A lot of teachers think of reading as reading stories," said Lee Galda, professor of children's literature at the University of Minnesota. "And in fact, a lot of boys, and not just boys, like nonfiction. But we keep concentrating on novels or short stories and sometimes don't think of reading nonfiction as reading. But in fact it is, and it is extremely important."
"Teachers and parents have said boys generally prefer stories with adventure, suspense and fantasy and tend toward reading nonfiction stories and non-narrative informational books, as well as magazines and newspapers...."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35057-2005Mar14.html
When I began reading about the age of five or so, I read mostly western novels. In 1952 when the movie "Shane" came out, I saw it and immediately recognized a serialized version of the story that was in Argosy Magazine in 1946. I was 8 in 1946 when I read that novel. By the time I was in 8th grade, I had read every Sherlock Holmes story and I had found my cousin's high school "World History" textbook and read it cover to cover. It read like a novel. I lost track of it when I moved the California to go to college and wish I could find it now for my grandchildren.
Kids need to read and what they read will vary but reading anything is better than TV. The big great to reading and a literate public is TV. I know quite a few parents who have no TV in the home. Some have the TV for the kids to play video games but no programming.
We will pay dearly for the failure to educate kids in basic reading and math in this country.
Autocorrect again.
"The big threat to reading ..."
"Whether the nonfiction reading requirement needs to impinge on the literature class."
But aren't English teachers supposed to teach, you know, English? Or in the lovely lingo common in these parts, "language arts"?
"It might be interesting to teach a class that combines fiction with relevant readings in science, history, or current events."
Many language arts classes already do.
"But it's bad if the literature teachers feel they're just being used to meet a government requirement"
All teachers are "being used to meet a government requirement." "just": if they feel bad about being the public's servants.
"to read the great books that belong in the class: depends on what actual class we are talking about. In AP Lit, a focus on fiction is fine. In general English classes, all texts should be fair game. I'd take Darwin over Dickens, Henry Adams over Henry James.
"I would think that the percentages could be met in the science classes and the social studies classes."
Social studies, maybe. Science, no.
Joyce Carol Oates tweets...
In 21st century virtually everything is "snippets" including nonfiction. Suggest core curriculum of tweets.
It's always worst than first thought.
History books are not the type of reading that will inspire most boys to read on their own, even if you like history. (And that's coming from a history major.) There are plenty of fictional adventure books, including historical fiction, that boys could read if that is what they like. They should be given the option of choosing what they want to read for some amount of their required reading.
Given that most English teachers push crap like "Catcher in the Rye" or Vonnegut, you might as well teach nonfiction.
Everyone would be better off getting rid of "English Lit" and just teaching people how to write. In fact, get rid of sociology and political "science" while you're at it.
You can't trust English teachers to teach English Lit. Remember the English Lit teacher who refused to teach Shakespeare? Lots of English Lit teachers have issues. They either teach stuff that relates to their personal problems or they try to push some Left-wing crap.
Jon Burack,
Have you seen how Common Core handles the elem. school mathe curriculum? At least in CA, it's done horribly. But then I'm fully sentient, not half sentient, so I don't see the benefit to it.
Ann, you are absolutely correct on all three of your points. First, kids need more non-fiction reading, secondly the feds could make a hash out of Common Core yet, and thirdly the education system itself could as well if teachers apply it in the mechanical and clumsy way the Times cherry picking seeks to suggest.
Common Core states its desire to see more non-fiction in the form of a GENERAL call for a greater percentage of non-fiction in the school curriculum. It absolutely does NOT insist it all take place in the language and literature classes, though it would like some there as well. Moreover it certainly does NOT call for idiotic lessons that fuse literature and non-literature in the stupid ways indicated in the Times story. In fact, Common Core does not mandate ANY alterations at all in the curriculum, as it is a rather simple set of standards promoting a more sophisticated literacy in general. It in no way defines the content taught.
Actually, that may be one of its flaws. Common Core is in fact a tepid reform that, at best, will move the vast education blob slightly toward somewhat greater rigor. What the Times piece shows, and you nail it perfectly, is that in implementing Common Core, the blob (in this case some unthinking teachers) may well dumb it down, mangle it, and absorb it into their worst practices, which they always label "best practices." And to the degree the feds try to push it on schools that are otherwise uninterested, this problem will only grow.
Meanwhile, the vast idiot talk radio right has turned Common Core into "Commie Core" out to seize control of children's minds. Alternatively - and what do they care - they will call it "Corporate Core," an effort to destroy public education entirely. (The second is probably the way the liberals at the Times lean, given that it is the more popular form of anti-Common Core venom on the left.) In fact, real conservative educators like Bill Bennett, the Fordham Institute, Sol Stern, and E. D. Hirsch (actually he's a centrist liberal) are all supportive of Common Core as any half sentient conservative ought to be.
exhelodrvr1
I work extensively with the ELA half of Common Core and apply it to history teaching tasks. I am aware of complaints about the math portion, but have also seen plenty of praise from actual math educators. I suspect the stories about Math are like those here about teachers combining the Odyssey and the GI Bill of Rights. Otherwise, I leave it to the math people to battle it out.
Well, based on what I have seen up close and personally from the math curriculum, I have no faith in the quality of the rest of the program.
Most court opinions are fiction---When measured against the intent of the authors of our Constitution and its amendments.
I recommend a good physics textbook. Page turner.
When I was in second grade, I had a classmate who was a little behind in learning to read. He loved cars, and told the teacher he didn't need to learn to read, because he was going to be a race car driver. The teacher fought him on that, and even then, I knew she was wrong. Instead of trying to get him to love reading, why didn't she try to get him to read about things he loved? Think of all the books written about cars in one way or another. Novels, short stories, periodicals, comic books, fact, fiction, history, poems, in every Dewey decimal, from beginning readers to experts, there are things to read about cars.
@Original Mike-when you get to the part about "objects in motion" its practically erotic
OT: Adults reading fiction is like men wearing shorts. Discuss.
I was a voracious reader growing up. The first time a teacher got me to like, rather than dislike, a book more was in college. The prof had written his dissertation on Milton, and his teaching on Paradise Lost captured me and inspired me to read the whole thing in a long weekend (after not doing any of the reading from it prior).
I remember reading Call of the Wild for sixth grade. I had read the book multiple times in years prior leading up to that, and after going through it in class it took me many years to want to read it again. They ruined it.
One more random comment. I'm a huge fan of Mark Twain. I've read most everything he has written. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are my least favorite Twain books. They should teach "Some Learned Fables, for Good Old Boys and Girls" in school instead. I do now remember liking Connecticut Yankee in King's Arthur's Court when we read that for a class, so I guess there were some moments of literary inspiration during my years in public schooling.
This is just another example of the idiocy of the Common Core standards. You want students to read non-fiction? Great, get rid of the Marxist tracts masquerading as history textbooks, and have students read primary sources. But if you want students to really learn English, then have them read great English-language literature.
Paddy O, after Nephew and I saw the latest Avengers movie, with the discussions of peace and chaos and what what would really help mankind, I tried unsuccessfully to get him to read Twain's The Mysterious Stranger. Perfect follow-up, don't you think?
I got turned off to fiction after being required, in the 12th grade, to read one novel per week. I think it was "Vanity Fair" that sealed the novel's fate in my case.
Now I read only non-fiction and find autobiographies and biographies a good substitute for fiction.
Unfortunately, a person, especially an Amerikan, needs to read novels to improve vocabulary and learn to properly use the subjunctive mood and the transitive/intransitive verbs.
jimbino said...
I got turned off to fiction after being required,
When, in high school, we were supposed to analyze some novel or fictional story, I'd write a stupid little paper about why we shouldn't bother to analyze some novel or fictional story.
"Kids today" have teachers who didn't learn grammar or rhetoric. None. Their teachers can't diagram a sentence, and they can't argue about how an argument is structured. So English class is nothing but narrative.
Because they killed history and Bible reading, they can't much discuss literary dvicrs like allusion or similar either. This leaves discussion of characters.
And the rise of the therapeutic mind set means mostly, discussion of characters involves psycho analyzing characters. Except characters are not humans. They are not real. They don't actually have a true psychology, though that may be an element an author uses. But it's absurd to analyze the mood of the character. That is different than the mood of the piece.
So if this is all kids do with literature, many despise it. None are literate, though.
Kids today can't summarize what they have read. Teachers are taught kids need to relate and identify to engage with text, but young kids haven't had enough experiences to relate, and would be better off learning great gobs of content at these ages. But that's not available either. Nonetheless, that is what CC is supposedly trying to fix. But the Marxist ed community knows how to get their agenda in no matter what.
In college I dated a girl who desperately wanted to be a writer. She started writing a novel, by which I mean she wrote and rewrote Chapter One incessantly, Chapter One being the story of a quirky girl at college much like herself.
A bit later we were having sex, I came upon her chest, and -- finally -- there was a draft of Chapter Two, wherein the handsome love interest gives the quirky heroine a Pearl Necklace. Lots of metaphors written and scratched out, I remember; something about 'a Constellation of Star Milk' still sticks in my mind, sadly.
After that we experimented with anal sex on her futon, and -- lo and behold -- there was Chapter Three, wherein the handsome love interest anally ravages the quirky heroine. On a futon. Obviously, a pattern was developing.
Then: Chapter Four -- a lesbian encounter.
Hey.
Now she wrote and rewrote Chapter Four over and over, incessantly, obsessively. Again: lots of metaphors written and scratched out. Thighs were either pale or creamy, depending. I recall that a cucumber was introduced.
Needless to say, I had hoped that the upcoming Chapter Five would produce a threesome with the handsome love interest, the quirky heroine, and the quirky heroine's lesbian fling, but alas the narrative had taken a permanent turn in Chapter Four and now the novel was about the story of a quirky girl at college much like herself who finds her true self as a lesbian.
Anyways, I generally stick to non-fiction.
I am Laslo.
I became a better educated person the day I started reading spontaneously about things I was interested in and for pleasure/entertainment. Getting students to become readers should be a primary goal of education. After a student becomes a reader, he will learn language, grammar, vocabulary, and syntax by osmosis, as well as information about the subject of the book.I don't think it matters so much exactly what you read as long as it is well written and it lights up your board.
I generally dislike fiction. Many times I've read novels and felt no better for having read them, and not entertained in the least., with a few exceptions. There are writers who are very talented and have very interesting things to say, but I generally don't like stories, and unless done right, fiction is really the driest and dullest of the arts. Some great minds have combined writing skills with ingenious thought, for sure, and I have enjoyed some novels, usually the kind that read like essays by a writer worth reading. Mostly, I think I can spend my time better with something else.
Boys will read about brave boys doing important things including being soldiers and sailors with roles in well known historical events.
But boys will not enjoy reading women's romantic indoor wars for claiming ownership of trophy men/husbands.
Charles Dickens is still a good read for boys.
"This is just another example of the idiocy of the Common Core standards. You want students to read non-fiction? Great, get rid of the Marxist tracts masquerading as history textbooks, and have students read primary sources. But if you want students to really learn English, then have them read great English-language literature."
This is an amazing statement to me. First off all, anyone who thinks the usual U.S. textbooks today are Marxist (they are in fact mildly social democratic with a heavy emphasis on identity and diversity themes, but mainly bland as hell to be able to appeal to all markets) needs to read a bit of non-fiction himself - actual Marxist nonfiction included. Secondly, Common Core, in all its "idiocy," puts a huge stress on using primary sources. And finally, as for the idea that non-fiction cannot be as great English language literature needs, again, to do a bit of reading. I recommend Lincoln's Second Inaugural, W.E.B. Du Bois "The Souls of Black Folks," Churchill's "Blood Sweat and Tears" speech, the Adams-Jefferson letters, etc. In fact, most of what I just listed is recommended reading in the Common Core appendices. Note the presence of the dreaded dead white males.
We read shite like Flowers for Algernon and Death of a Salesman 50 years ago. The stuff my kid had to read is worse. Never an intact family, always a death, usually of a child. And Howard Zinn for history. La plus ca change,..
Well, based on what I have seen up close and personally from the math curriculum, I have no faith in the quality of the rest of the program.
exhelodrvr1 is right as far as the math goes in a roundabout way. Curriculum companies have convinced school districts that Common Core Math must be Everyday Math, though the two are not the same. The district spends millions on new Everyday Math curriculum. Then the teachers botch the delivery, so parents are pissed, because their kids can't even figure out how to solve 43 plus 69. So while Jon Burack is generally correct that Common Core is not the root of all evil, as to the way most districts have implemented CC is.
Btw, my son loves reading non-fiction: anything about animals that he is interested in---eating habits, lifecycle, etc.
When a student realizes that non-fiction is another version of fiction, the diploma should be awarded.
When I was in Jr. High, there was a series of race car novels about a race car called Black Tiger. "Black Tiger at Le Mans", Black Tiger at the Mexican Road Race" and so forth. I read every one I could find. No one encouraged me to read them. I just wanted to. I also read Classics Illustrated comic books where I learned that "gaul was divided into three parts" and how the history of Poland was forged "With Fire and Sword".
My kids use the old "Catholic National Readers" as part of their Homeschool curriculum (Kolbe Academy.)
The 5th grade reader mixes fiction by authors like Washington Irving, accounts written by Arctic and African explorers, pieces of nature writing, poetry, history and biography into a single text.
It's not that hard. My daughter enjoys the variety, because it means that you never know what will come up in reading class.
BUT when you type the stories into a 'reading level' calculator, they're not at the modern 5th grade level-- they range from 8th to 10th.
Maybe the reason kids don't read more non-fiction in school is because we're creating lousy readers.
One form of literature that speaks to kids, especially boys, is science fiction and fantasy. However, like most genre fiction, it's looked down on in most English departments.
Robert Heinlein's "juveniles" that he wrote in the 50s would be perfect for late elementary school and middle school. But he's out of favor and I'd guess that most school libraries don't have any of his stuff. There's a host of other books that would appeal to both boys and girls, A Wrinkle in Time for one.
As for non-fiction, there was a series of biographies of famous sports stars, scientists, political figures, etc. that were written for elementary school kids that were pretty good, if a bit whitewashed. I remember reading ones on Babe Ruth, Marie Curie, George W. Carver, and Thomas Jefferson.
"Meanwhile, the vast idiot talk radio right has turned Common Core into "Commie Core" out to seize control of children's minds. "
You turned me off right there. This is about kids and reading and math. You obviously have an agenda and it
is one I am not interested in.
JB : "In fact, real conservative educators like Bill Bennett, the Fordham Institute, Sol Stern, and E. D. Hirsch (actually he's a centrist liberal) are all supportive of Common Core as any half sentient conservative ought to be."
Actually, Bennett has admitted that he was paid to write a piece in WSJ touting Common Core.
And as for "... the vast idiot talk radio right...". That's a blaring tell, there. I bet you think all conservatives are idiots.
A young male relative of mine resisted fiction reading for a long time -- but loved reading "game guides" to his video games. Non-fiction reading with the purposeful use of contents and index to extract specific desired information -- priceless.
"Char Char Binks said...
When I was in second grade, I had a classmate who was a little behind in learning to read. He loved cars, and told the teacher he didn't need to learn to read, because he was going to be a race car driver. The teacher fought him on that, and even then, I knew she was wrong. Instead of trying to get him to love reading, why didn't she try to get him to read about things he loved? Think of all the books written about cars in one way or another. Novels, short stories, periodicals, comic books, fact, fiction, history, poems, in every Dewey decimal, from beginning readers to experts, there are things to read about cars."
A subscription to Road and Track could have started a life-long love of reading. It all gets easier to love as it gets easier to do, which it does with self-motivated practice.
About a third of my first graders books she brought home for daily reading homework were non fiction. Animals, space, dinosaurs ... She may have enjoyed the non-fiction more than the fiction. According to her teacher this is new with CC, I can say that I never had to remind her to finish her reading during those months.
Being the homework parent, I have been happy to see how my district is integrating common core. Many of the problems elsewhere seem to be in the application or which materials they choose to use ... and of course parental involvement. Any set of standards, implemented poorly or with terrible materials is going to be an issue - something critics of Common Core often fail to acknowledge in their arguments.
Thankful for my school and district, who have done a good job with this.
Talked to my educator daughter about this. First these common core edicts are what teachers are to teach. their curriculum will represent the fiction non fiction reqirements. What kids choose to read will still be up to them.
After the long discussion, we both landed on the same conclusion. If parents dont read, kids wont either. So, in the end, reading is the responsibility of the parent, not the govt.
We tangled with the teachers and administrators when our kids where learning to read. The above mentioned daughter was being taught sight reading, we were teaching phonics. The teacher explained that we would kill her desire to read by making her stop and sound out words. We ignored her learned advice and said daughter is a voracious recreational reader. Imagine that, parents understood their kids better than govt employees.
A couple of things I will react to one final time here.
rightguy2. Bennett is a strong Common Core supporter and it is beyond me why his being paid to write an article (it is after all what he does) matters a bit.
rightguy2 and Michael K, you do not like my disgust at the "the vast idiot talk radio right..." as I so delicately put it. Too bad. I stand by my judgment as temperate and precise. But it is beyond me how you conclude I think that about all conservatives, since I defend Common Core AS A CONSERVATIVE and in the name of several other conservatives. Michael K. it is no "agenda" with me. It is talk radio, not I, who made Common Core the great slouching beast they say it is. I make my living by creating history curriculum materials (and by the way have been writing things critical of the liberal tilt of the profession for decades - you could check out my review of "Conrak" in Education Week, 2001), and I use Common Core in some of my projects as a set of guidelines, so my only "agenda" is defending sound concepts about teaching and learning.
As to Birches on the math standards, I agree and think what you say is consistent with my point. The problem, if it is a problem, is in the way the blob (textbook companies and teachers both being part of that) implements Common Core, which is why I called it a tepid reform only likely to improve things marginally. As to math itself, it was not the subject of Ann's original post. I know little about it. So I really didn't feel a need to deal with it. But I have a suspicion that all those wonderful anti-Common Core "Moms" (as the opponents like to describe them) are reacting to poor implementation.
I was a typical boy reader-the first novel I ever read cover to cover (probably in 5th grade)was Von Ryan's Express, by David Westheimer. Loved the book, loved the movie with Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard. I also ate up all the Robb White books- The Survivor, Torpedo Run, and Up Periscope. Up Periscope was the only one made into a movie (with James Garner and Edmond O'Brien, and I often wondered why the others were not filmed. Still time, Hollywood! I recently re-read them- while they were considered adolescent fiction, I enjoyed them on re-reading. I can't imagine anyone writing adventure stories for boys set in Afghanistan or Iraq today. We were encouraged to read in our house- comic books- OK! Mad Magazine? OK! And all 4 of us grew up to be readers.
English teachers today (I'm a History teacher- know and like a lot of my English teaching colleagues) mostly don't teach 'English', they want to teach literature- and not the classics, either. Well not exactly true To Kill a Mockingbird and Catcher in the Rye are considered classics, and I share the disdain of many on this thread for those two books. Heinlein is never used, although a couple of teachers in our building teach Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Mostly though, books for girls. Nobody teaches grammar, not even the foreign (oops, sorry, WORLD language teachers)
In school I always read the ones I liked and didn't read the ones I didn't. As long as you were familiar with the plot, symbolism, and character descriptions, things you could mostly gain in class, you could ace a test on a book you didn't read. Sometimes a clever teacher might try to trip you up by asking you to name the character who said certain pieces of dialogue, but you could usually figure these out based on the character descriptions and reflecting on who was likely to have said what.
I remember especially liking the following assigned texts: Hamlet, 1984, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, and The Inferno.
"One form of literature that speaks to kids, especially boys, is science fiction and fantasy. However, like most genre fiction, it's looked down on in most English departments.
Robert Heinlein's "juveniles" that he wrote in the 50s would be perfect for late elementary school and middle school. But he's out of favor and I'd guess that most school libraries don't have any of his stuff."
It's been said that the "golden age of SF is 12" (the age of the reader, of course). But Heinlein-era SF tended toward the sort of heroic problem-solving stories (dare one say "triumphalist"?) that boys liked, but which are currently out of fashion. Much of today's SF (including most young adult fiction is strongly dystopic.
Part of the difficulty surely is that we live in an age of PC, and much older literature doesn't conform to contemporary PC.
In any case, some Heinlein may still be readable, but overall my impression is that much of it has become badly dated. At least, that was my impression when I tried to read the "restored" version of Stranger In A Strange Land.
Jon Burack doth protest too much, methinks
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