Losing Fiction

Oh, how I've missed this.

I'm pragmatic. I love non-fiction texts--biographies, social analyses, theology (duh), political theory, all types of history. I think all people, particularly young people, should spend more time immersed in history. But this article raises the hackles on my knowledge-loving soul. In short, it reports that almost all states will require at least 70% of classroom texts to be non-fiction by 2014. Here's the terrifying ending quote from the article: "Supporters of the directive argue that it will help pupils to develop the ability to write concisely and factually, which will be more useful in the workplace than a knowledge of Shakespeare."

God help us all. Besides the fact that public education in our country is incontrovertibly failing (case in point: how many high school graduates do you know who can sit down and write "concisely and factually" about, say, how the printing press affected the Reformation or three causes of the American Civil War? Really, anything historically, politically, theologically significant that happened before 1990?), since when did usefulness in the workplace become the definitive educational purpose?  I know that liberal arts education has long been out of vogue, but I suppose I hoped most educators at least pretended to embrace knowledge for knowledge's sake, not just because they could draw a direct line from addition to clean accounting books.

Some years ago, Wendell Berry, the agrarian philosopher and author of some amazing novels, succinctly put our educational quandary this way:

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

"First things first." And what are first things? Truth and that which sheds light on it: great art (and, I would argue, science can shed light on Truth, too). But if first things are passé at best and rejected outright at worst--and it would seem we're reaching for the worst--then we're all in serious trouble. For if usefulness in the workplace more than any other reason drives our education for our children, then they--and we--will lose a lot more than fiction.