Standards Porn, and Two Recommendations
I wish I had written this. In fact, I'm going to pretend that I did.
Apparently, it is vital that high school students read 70% non-fiction. This, of course, is because 69% is not enough and 71% is too much. David Coleman has reached into his extraordinarily gifted hind quarters and pulled out the perfect number. This is because students must be prepared to read things like train schedules and quarterly reports, and can't possibly do so unless we give them overt training.
I suppose that I am the exception to this rule. I can read all that stuff with no problem whatsoever, and none of my teachers showed me how. In fact, none of my teachers showed me context clues or any of the other things I've been compelled to teach over the years.This whole fiction vs. nonfiction conversation is just so much noise. At the end of the day, affluent kids will continue to have access to books--- including rich collections of fiction, which they will take home from wonderfully resourced public libraries and school libraries. And poor kids will have nothing, or they will have to