Literature and Information

Extract

The Tenth and final “anchor standard for reading” in the common core state standards defines as “college and career ready” a student who can “[r]ead and comprehend literary and informational texts independently and proficiently” (35). I want to remark on just one aspect of this worthy if blandly unremarkable goal. The distinction between “literary” and “informational” texts has the sanction of common sense, but, like many commonsense notions, it cloaks some knotty issues. For the authors of the standards, “literacy” requires mastering two different if closely related sets of reading skills. One lays the groundwork for “understanding and enjoying complex works of literature,” while the other is needed “to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally” (3). Pedagogically, one is the job of the “English language arts teacher,” the other the responsibility of “teachers of history/social studies, science, and technical subjects” (8).

The axiom that literature cannot be read in the same way as other forms of writing is by no means universally held, but it has long governed the teaching of reading in high school and college classrooms. In ways that humanists can find heartening, the Common Core standards valorize the traits that reading literature both requires and strengthens: habits of attention and intellectual rigor; the refinement of sensibility and emotional response; the ability to analyze, to synthesize, to discriminate, to evaluate. Such virtues travel well, too. The authors of the standards recognize that students who have mastered literary reading skills are better equipped to meet the challenges posed by texts in other disciplines.