BFTP: A new life for non-fiction

This post is now 5-years old and references the Common Core, a much criticized approach to education. Somehow, like with most educational "reform" movements, schools and libraries pretty much keep on keeping on despite the Common Core. As I age, I learn the big scary things often don't amount to much. It's the small ones that blind side you that should keep you up at night.

As an elementary librarian back when God's dog was still a puppy, I divided the books I booktalked to students into three major groups: fiction, folklore, and non-fiction.

As a well-trained ALA library school graduate, I had my kiddie and YA literature down cold and had a wonderful time sharing classic novels, chapter books, and picture books since I loved most of them personally. My own passion for tall tales, myth, fables, fairytales, and legends made these resouces a natural in helping acquaint my ethically-diverse student populationi with other cultures. Hey, everybody in the world should know about Babe the Big Blue Ox and the Minnesota values he represents!

But talking up the non-fiction books in my library was probably the favorite thing I did. Yes, the "official" reason I pushed non-fiction was that I knew many boys liked reading factual materials more than fiction books and I wanted to make every one of my students a self-motivated reader. But the real reason was that there were just so many really cool non-fiction books to promote. Who could resist a title like Body Noises? How could a book be more fascinating than growing up on a river infested with crocodiles in Vietnam in The Land I Lost? After 25 years, my memory of specific titles is failing me (and my lesson plans were lost in a long-ago hard drive crash), but I do remember that I had NO trouble finding amazing non-fiction that was snapped up as readily as fiction by most kids. I just picked up If Stones Could Speak from the library, so it's heartening to know great nonfiction is still being written.

Reading the very good, concise summary of the controversy over the requirements of the Common Core standards in Sara Mosles commentary "What Should Children Read?", NYTimes.com, November 22, 2012, stirred these memories. Mosles writes:

Depending on your point of view, the now contentious guidelines prescribe a healthy — or lethal — dose of nonfiction.

For example, the Common Core dictates that by fourth grade, public school students devote half of their reading time in class to historical documents, scientific tracts, maps and other “informational texts” — like recipes and train schedules. Per the guidelines, 70 percent of the 12th grade curriculum will consist of nonfiction titles. Alarmed English teachers worry we’re about to toss Shakespeare so students can study, in the words of one former educator, “memos, technical manuals and menus.”

So that's the nub - should education be about helping people navigate life - reading manuals and such - or about enriching one's life - vicariously exploring human nature with Anna Karenina, Macbeth, Tom Joad, and others. Oh, and having read these types of writing, then be able to compose them as well.

Now I have taken the math folks to task for wasting precious class time teaching "mathematical thinking" instead of pragmatic application of math skills. And I can make a similar argument that our reading and writing classes should spend less time developing "literary appreciation" and a lot more time developing real-world reading and writing abilities. We definitely need to move in the direction of the pragmatic in education.

But it one nice thing about quality nonfiction is that one can read for writing's substance and style. Unlike watered-down, boring and politically-neutered textbooks, library materials can be chosen for not just what information they contain, but for how effectively they get that message across. Wheter in print or e-formats, these wonderful materials cannot be replaced by Wikipedia, WorldBook or subject-specific databases.

Not long ago Joyce Valenza wrote:

The Common Core focuses heavily on reading and on many of the skills we [librarians] value and actively teach across media platforms: information literacy, working with primary sources, developing independent thinking, analyzing complex texts, communicating effectively.

The key points for English Language Arts cry out for library partnership, for the librarian to be embedded in school and district scope and sequence documents and plans, and it is likely that the content area standards to come will do the same. - Joyce Valenza, "CCSS and us", Neverending Search, April 22, 2012.

In the coming move to an emphasis on reading nonfiction materials, Joyce's observation could not be more accurate. 

Are you balancing your collections with both high-quality, interesting, popular fiction and nonfiction materials?

Original post November 30, 2012