Literature and Nonfiction: Common-Core Advocates Strike Back
As we've told you, a particular slice of the common standards in English/language arts has become pretty flammable lately: the rise of nonfiction reading. Thestandards' expectation that students read more informational text has sparked fear—some would say misinterpretation—that great works of literature will be displaced from classroom instruction.
Even though mainstream news media have by and large ignored the common standards, this issue got enough traction to break through that quietude, garnering a Page One story in The Washington Post, and even becoming the butt of jokes on National Public Radio's popular "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" show. And the literature-being-squeezed-out people have been just about the only voices in the general-interest media on the issue. The Los Angeles Timesran an editorial saying that regardless of the standards writers' intent to preserve a hefty place for literature, it is sure to take a major hit under the common core.
With all this stuff flying around, education historian and blogger Diane Ravitch opined, it's