The Patriot Post® · Teaching the Uncommon Core: A Curriculum to Save American Education

Recently I attended a professional development event devoted to helping teachers comply more fully with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Among other facts about this volatile subject, the workshop participants were told that 80 percent of reading mandated by the Common Core was to consist of nonfiction. These readings could be biographies, instruction manuals, procedural texts, essays, or a myriad of other nonfiction possibilities. Under no circumstances, however, were we to spend more than 20 percent of our time as educators covering fiction, poetry, drama, or more creative genres within the language arts.

What exactly does this grossly imbalanced ratio mean for students in our public schools and state-funded colleges? Simply this: The seminal message to today’s learners is, “Be compliant. Be a good direction-follower. Read what is there, and obey.” A look back at history shows us similar emphases on “nonfiction” throughout history. Eras and governments hallmarked by subjugation and repression have inevitably mandated the reading of what officials loosely termed “nonfiction.” Like scenes from Rand’s and Orwell’s novels, the powers that be have always ensured that their underlings get intentionally exposed to materials that promote the larger agenda. In this case, our own state governments have doomed our students to a myopic study of data in language form. This practice, they say, will prepare our students for “the real world.”

Lest the reader think that I am completely against any historical or procedural readings, let me add that I have gladly taught nonfiction works every year in my classes. Students have studied great lives from Anne Frank to Louis Braille, Amelia Earhart to Martin Luther King Jr., and their readings have produced valid and vibrant discussions and interactions in the classroom. We have admired both canonized and contemporary essays, and we have analyzed articles down to their last lines. But these readings fail to address one major cognitive component that our students cannot do without: The Innovative Spark.

The study of fiction, poetry, and drama compels students to develop their own creativity, research shows. Memorable narratives, engaging word artistry, and stimulating dialogues may be found in the realm of nonfiction. Nowhere are they more perfectly displayed, however, than in the invented literature of acknowledged, canonized masters. The negligible “twenty percent” readings of genres outside nonfiction means that, among other problems, students will receive limited exposure to Shakespeare. How will the next generation understand real-life “Shakespearean” situations if no serious study has been given to The Bard’s works? What texts will they connect to romantic love, betrayal, revenge, ambition, and the lust for power? And do we want them connecting to those?

Moreover, if we are expected to create cultural literacy, as E.D. Hirsch suggests, withholding the great works of other genres from our students cripples them. Educators across the nation aspire to create “whole” people – global citizens who possess empathies and understandings that cross our interconnected lives’ boundaries. CCSS, parading nonfiction under the banner of practical productivity, fails to recognize the thread that binds the fabric of literacy: humanity. Fiction, poetry, and drama may not show students the drab, workaday world that awaits them after graduation. But these genres do impart the emotional, the psychological, and in some cases, the spiritual tools that students will need to eventually become self-actualized. Nonfiction’s lessons fall somewhat lower on Maslow’s hierarchy, providing students with some basic sense of reading “security,” a fundamental human desire. Whereas fiction, poetry, and drama propel students toward the top of the pyramid, nonfiction reading and assessment allows them to linger and labor closer toward the bottom.

Perhaps these assertions may seem a bit extreme to the lay reader, but as an educator with more than a decade’s experience inside schools of all sorts (public, correctional, charter, and independent), I have seen what works and what fails in the field of literacy. When students at any level are exposed to the canon, then critical analysis, metacognition, and higher-level theoretical formulations occur on the students’ part. Even the most disengaged adolescent is roused to the defense of Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird. Even the most calloused and distant are compelled to feel sorrow for Lenny in Of Mice and Men. And even the most misunderstood can relate to Ponyboy Curtis in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders.

Under the heavy burden of Common Core, however, these masterpieces and thousands like them will be relegated to the trash cans of trivia. The great hypocrisy is that many of the people decrying the loss of music and art programs are the very same ones jumping on the CCSS bandwagon. Never mind that our students are being stripped of a literature heritage. Never mind that tomorrow’s leaders will have fewer tools to achieve self-actualization. And certainly, never mind that a broad, truly liberal education is being tossed aside in favor of basic “comprehension.”

Parents, now is the time to impart to your sons and daughters the Uncommon Core: Train up your children in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it. The nonfiction that our students should be receiving includes our founding documents, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and the classical works of philosophy that have inspired great leaders. But more important, to give our children a well-rounded education, they must be exposed to the created works of others so that their own innovations can have legs upon which to stand. With only minimal exposure to invented literature, our students will be deprived of both literary and life understanding.

Teachers, if you must comply with Common Core, leverage the standards’ vagueness in our students’ favor: Instruct them in the nonfiction that will inspire them to achieve on their own. Point motivated students in the direction of the knowledge you are disallowed to impart, and when they come back to you with discoveries and questions of their own, answer them honestly. It is our duty as educators.

John Davis Jr. serves as English Department Chair for the Vanguard School of Lake Wales.