English Education: A Literary Firestorm

The face of English education is changing not always for the better. Education as a whole has made leaps and bounds in the last 50 years this has been assisted by many other factors including technology, new teaching techniques, better training of teachers among other things. One of the areas that have changed the most is English education. There have been three recurring issues that have been maintained over the last few decades. These are debates that have valid arguments on both sides of the issue which is why no real solutions have been proposed.

The first and one of the most hotly debated topics even outside the classroom is the fiction vs. nonfiction debate. The current push is for more nonfiction towards the high school level. It has been studied the percentage of reading done for English in 8th grade is around 55% and only four years later in 12th grade it rises to 77%. The push for more nonfiction comes from a belief that our English education focuses on self-expression too much. Which many say is a useable skill in the workplace (Mosle). Even with this push towards nonfiction reading scores of 17-year olds haven’t shown a large improvement since the 1980’s (Mathews).The problem may not be the quantity of the nonfiction or the existence of it in the English curriculum, the problem leans more towards the quality and type of non-fiction being taught. The non-fiction currently being taught is usually a narrative. There is a subgenre of non-fiction that will both keep kids entertained and give them the skills they need from reading non-fiction. This subgenre is literary narrative. There are many examples of these types of texts and novels that can be taught, but rarely are. One wildly, popular, best-selling example of a lite...

... middle of paper ...

...we need to face to continually provide a good foundation of English for future generations. Reading and writing well will continue to be lifelong skills that will provide success later in life. By addressing some of the issues facing our English teachers we will still produce well-read, kids.

Works Cited

1. Brenyo, Michael. "Book Banning in the US Education System." Journal of Law and Education. Jul. 2011: 541. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 19 Mar. 2014.

2. Toppo, Greg. "Contemporary vs. Classic ." USA Today . Yahoo!, 24 5 2004. Web. 1 Apr 2014.

3. Damschen, Kalli . "Classics vs. Contemporary: Maybe Schools Should Try to Find More Balance Between Genres Available to Readers ." Standard-Examiner. Standard Examiner , 30 4 2012. Web. 1 Apr 2014.

4. Mosle, Sarah . "What Should Children Read." New York Times. The New York Times Company , 22 11 2012. Web. 13 Apr 2014.