Imagine seeing your Egyptologist father standing in the British Museum, chanting in front of the Rosetta stone, and within seconds bits of the Rosetta stone begin flying everywhere. Your father suddenly becomes encased in a coffin which disappears into an opening in the floor. You may very well wonder, “How did this happen?” and “What do I do now?” Such were the questions in Carter’s and Sadie’s minds as they lived this experience in the beginning chapters of The Red Pyramid, by Rick Riordan.
Such may be the questions in educators’ minds as state after state adopts the Common Core Standards for Literacy, changing our curricular landscape as we knew it. “How did this happen?” How did we so quickly adopt national standards which were never field-tested? Who is/are the author(s) of these standards, and what are their experiences in the classrooms with students, if any? Despite these haunting questions, if your state has adopted the Common Core Standards, they are now, for you, the law of the land. The next question to ponder is “What do we do now?”
One of the new parameters laid out in Common Core Standards is a shift in the balance of fiction and nonfiction texts used. In elementary grades, the balance is to be 60% fiction and 40% nonfiction, possibly an increase in the amount of nonfiction customarily read by elementary students. The arguments I have heard for this shift are that we need to prepare students for the real world, and in the real world, adults read much more nonfiction in their careers and in their daily lives. While that may very well be true for most adults, I take issue with what seems to be an underlying belief that reading more nonfiction at younger ages is a better way to help students become ready for their adult literate lives.
What is the value of fiction? I remember our middle son crying at age 6 when I finished reading Winnie-The-Pooh for bedtime stories. He wasn’t ready to leave the Hundred Acre Wood and the friends he’d made there. Our daughter read voraciously, begging me to read every chapter book she read, wanting, I presume, a shared experience. Our youngest son began reading the Harry Potter books at age 9, and continued to read and reread them as they were released. Last summer, at age 20, upon seeing the movie version of the final book, he left the theater with a tinge of sadness. “That was the epic story during my childhood,” he said. “And now it’s over.”
As part of our bedtime routine from early on, on as into upper elementary and beginning middle school years, I read stories aloud to my children, or they listened to stories on tape. They learned of great peril and great strength by listening to Jim Weiss (audio books) read the story of Odysseus. They understood the meaning of facing a Herculean task by hearing the Greek myths. They met Baba Yaga, forming vivid mental images of her flying through the air with her mortar and pestle, and of her hut on chicken legs in the dark wood. They read chapter book after chapter book on their own, relating to problems similar to their own, and empathizing with problems they hadn’t personally encountered. They tried out roles, imagining themselves in situations they would never experience in our small Midwestern town. They became fluent readers; their vocabularies grew and grew.
Where are they now? Our oldest is pursuing a doctorate in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University. I daresay she’s reading the nonfiction in her life quite well. Our middle child completed a degree in Philosophy, and I would wager he has competently read more nonfiction, and more complex nonfiction, than I will ever read. Our youngest is a sophomore in college, successfully reading volumes of nonfiction.
Reading fiction allows us to learn who we are, how we fit into our culture, and how our culture fits in with the rest of the world. Reading fiction allows us to understand others and their reasons for why they behave the way they do. Reading fiction allows us to escape into a world totally different from our own, giving us short time-outs from the responsibilities of our daily lives.
Do students need to learn how to read nonfiction in the elementary grades? Yes. Do we need to provide nonfictional texts in classrooms so students can indulge themselves in their interests? Yes. But let’s not forget the power of story.
Three cheers! Yes, it's true, adults read more nonfiction than fiction. But that's more accredited to their interests changing, not that they were raised on nonfiction. What seems more important to me is to instill a love of reading in general. Sure one might like fiction more as a child and nonfiction more as an adult, but if a child doesn't learn how to sit patiently with a book and spend time reading, they will not want to read anything (fiction or nonfiction) when they are an adult. I hardly read ANY fiction anymore, but I love READING. I've had others my age tell me that they're impressed with, and inspired by, how I continue to read philosophy and other intellectual nonfiction even though I'm not in school. My response is simply, "I just like reading, and this is what has my interest right now." And my love for reading began with fiction.
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