(Disclosure: I used Grammarly to check for plagiarism free because when I express myself, I want to be sure it’s really myself that I’m expressing--and if it's not, I want to give proper citation and credit where it's due. This post is sponsored by Grammarly, but the opinions expressed in it are all mine.)
Until I was well into adulthood, my reading habits were pretty firmly entrenched in the “Fiction and Literature” section of the bookstore/library. But I’ve never been a particularly plot-driven reader, and so I’ve been most drawn to fiction that doesn’t strongly follow genre structure and conventions; characters are what get me. I’m more likely to read a novel because I want to know “what happens with the characters” as opposed to “what happens,” and to gain more insight and understanding about what makes people tick by taking the opportunity to spend time in the minds and hearts of those characters. Reading fiction opens that window like nothing else I know, and what it can teach is crucial to developing the empathy necessary to living in a civil society. Some new (non-fictional) research seems to back that up, showing that
The new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) rolling out in schools across the US don’t seem to give these intangible lessons of fiction much importance, and place more value on nonfiction “informational” reading:
"In language arts, the emphasis will shift to far more informational text than literary. This is because once students reach college or the workplace, one reads predominately informational-based material. Reading will be evenly split between literary and informational in elementary school, will be 60 percent informational in middle school and 75 percent informational in high school."
Kristen had an eloquent response to this after attending her kids’ Back to School Night, making the case that fiction can be just as “real” and “true” as nonfiction. I think she’s absolutely right on these points:
To be fair, I’ve equated “enjoyment reading” with fiction for most of my reading life. Once my student life ended, I rarely picked up nonfiction unless it was
But as I said earlier, reading nonfiction uses different skills, and so it can feel different than reading fiction. If it wasn’t school-style textbook reading, I wasn’t sure I really had the right skills for it--and as someone with more than three decades as a reader under my belt at that point, that was a strange and uncomfortable feeling that I preferred to avoid.
I can tell you exactly when things shifted--late 1999, into early 2000--and I can tell you exactly why. I will do that in Part 2 of this post, tomorrow. I can tell you now that it was due to something much more uncomfortable than a reading nonfiction could ever possibly be.
Until I was well into adulthood, my reading habits were pretty firmly entrenched in the “Fiction and Literature” section of the bookstore/library. But I’ve never been a particularly plot-driven reader, and so I’ve been most drawn to fiction that doesn’t strongly follow genre structure and conventions; characters are what get me. I’m more likely to read a novel because I want to know “what happens with the characters” as opposed to “what happens,” and to gain more insight and understanding about what makes people tick by taking the opportunity to spend time in the minds and hearts of those characters. Reading fiction opens that window like nothing else I know, and what it can teach is crucial to developing the empathy necessary to living in a civil society. Some new (non-fictional) research seems to back that up, showing that
"... after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence—skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking. The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity."
The new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) rolling out in schools across the US don’t seem to give these intangible lessons of fiction much importance, and place more value on nonfiction “informational” reading:
"In language arts, the emphasis will shift to far more informational text than literary. This is because once students reach college or the workplace, one reads predominately informational-based material. Reading will be evenly split between literary and informational in elementary school, will be 60 percent informational in middle school and 75 percent informational in high school."
Kristen had an eloquent response to this after attending her kids’ Back to School Night, making the case that fiction can be just as “real” and “true” as nonfiction. I think she’s absolutely right on these points:
“Fiction is not limited to actual events, so it can capture a universality of human nature or behavior beautifully”and
“Fiction needs to be every bit as accurate as non-fiction in many ways. Good authors will have thoroughly researched all aspects of their plot, from character dialect to appropriate behavior to tiny details about place and more. If they don't, they will be certain to hear from a reader who knows better and who will call them on sloppiness. They tend to have a plethora of facts woven into the framework of their stories which readers may not even recognize they are learning.”In case it’s not obvious, I’m not trying to argue against reading for information. I believe it uses and hones different skills than reading fiction does--analysis, evaluation, discernment--and developing those skills is also crucial to living in a civil society. I just don’t think that these qualities are necessarily more important that those we develop through reading fiction. I also have to question whether this approach is likely to foster the desire to read for the sheer enjoyment of it, which is pretty valuable in its own right.
To be fair, I’ve equated “enjoyment reading” with fiction for most of my reading life. Once my student life ended, I rarely picked up nonfiction unless it was
- A Book Everyone Is Talking About,
- Highly and almost universally praised,
- Strongly urged on me by someone whose taste I respected,
But as I said earlier, reading nonfiction uses different skills, and so it can feel different than reading fiction. If it wasn’t school-style textbook reading, I wasn’t sure I really had the right skills for it--and as someone with more than three decades as a reader under my belt at that point, that was a strange and uncomfortable feeling that I preferred to avoid.
I can tell you exactly when things shifted--late 1999, into early 2000--and I can tell you exactly why. I will do that in Part 2 of this post, tomorrow. I can tell you now that it was due to something much more uncomfortable than a reading nonfiction could ever possibly be.
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