Fiction versus non-fiction

If David Coleman, President of the College Board has his way, he would convert an entire generation of potential "workers"--i.e. 4th through 10th graders in the nation's public schools--into precisely that: "workers".

Coleman's is the leading brain in designing the new English curriculum, or the Common Core Standard, for future K-12 in PS's across the nation. Thus, starting in 2014, when the new Common Core will be in effect, Language Arts teachers will find themselves teaching more non-fiction than fiction.

Coleman's rationale for ushering out fiction and ushering in non-fiction into the curriculum is as follows: 

English classes today focus too much on self-expression [...] It is rare in a working environment, [...] that someone says, Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.

If the above doesn't represent reductive thinking, then I don't know what does; what's scarier is that this kind of thinking springs from the head of the president of the College Board.

Let's look at the non-fiction that Coleman has in mind to produce future workers who can churn out market-analysis with robotic efficiency: historical documents, scientific tracts, maps and other “informational texts” — like recipes and train schedules.

I've always known fiction to encompass all the above and much more. When was the last time one heard of fiction being lumped together as a genre of "self-expression?"

For lack of a better explanation, one has to assume that Coleman has narrow conceptions of both fiction and non-fiction, and probably has little respect for the in-between genre of creative non-fiction.

I support Sara Mosle's corrective. Mosle suggests teaching good non-fiction, not just "informational texts."