If you really want to hear about it, new educational standards now approved in 46 out of 50 states mandate that nonfiction books constitute at least 70 per cent of the texts high-school students read, the Daily Caller reports. As a result, The Telegraph reports, literature classics such as The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are about to be replaced by insulation manuals and dated dispatches from the Federal Reserve. Common Core State Standards call for the new, notably nonfiction-heavy reading regime to be fully in place by 2014. English teachers nationwide have about a year to decide which novels, short stories and poems to eliminate, according to the Washington Post. Great novels will be largely replaced by “informational texts.” Examples include Recommended Levels of Insulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and “FedViews” by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (2009). The suggested nonfiction list includes undeniably important works as well, such as the Declaration of Independence and Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”
- ‘Buyer’s remorse’ dogging Common Core rollout - October 30, 2014
- Calif. law targets social media monitoring of students - October 2, 2014
- Elementary world language instruction - September 25, 2014
