College and Career Readiness: Fiction versus Non-fiction Texts

          Today's post will focus on the Common Core English Language Arts Standards' requirements for use of informational texts versus Literary Texts.  One of the new pieces within the standards is a recommended percentage of informational and literary texts.  There has been much discussion about the new standards requiring English teachers to throw out the classics and supplant them with boring (or worse, politically biased) EPA documents.  Many argue that a study of the classics teach moral and ethical values that have been otherwise abandoned by educators.  They furthermore worry that study of informational texts cannot possibly instill in children a love of reading - a joy that could be missing for the rest of their lives.  These are arguments I wish to visit and analyze, but my research today has led me to looking at whether increases in the amount of non-fiction texts will in reality better prepare students for college and careers.  Most specifically, I have spent some time looking at college degrees earned and the most common jobs and trying to determine what percent of college students and job holders need to be able to read and/or analyze fictional texts on a regular or even semi-regular basis.
          I have looked at two sources of data for my (very amateur) analysis.  The first is a report of college degrees earned in 2009-2010.  You can view the data here.  The second is a simple list of the 30 most common jobs in the US.  You can view this list here.  I used the data in these reports to calculate percentages.

The Facts:

• Of all Bachelor's degrees earned in 2009-2010, about 46% require occasional use or analysis of fictional texts within the major field of study.  This is based entirely on my own assumptions about each field of study.  For example, I assumed that architecture did not require use of fictional texts, communication and journalism might occasionally, and literature majors definitely use such texts.  Following this line of calculation, just under 20% of majors use fictional texts regularly.  These majors include: education, English language/literature, foreign language/literature/linguistics, library arts/humanities, library sciences, philosophy/religion, visual & performing arts.
• Of the top 30 most common jobs in the US, only 3 required any substantive use of fictional literature: elementary teacher, teacher assistant, and secondary teacher.  These three professions account for under 8% of the total jobs included in the top 30.
• Of the Bachelor's degrees earned, it seems very likely that all require regular use of informational texts in college classes.  Even a course of study such as Visual Arts will require a study of the artists and their work.  Likewise, a study of English Literature will require learning about influential historical events and authors.
• Of the top 30 most common jobs in the US, over 65% require regular use of informational texts.  The amount and types of informational texts vary greatly among these jobs.  A job like security guard I assumed no real reading requirement whereas healthcare professionals have much greater reading comprehension needs.  Jobs like stock clerks and order fillers fall somewhere in the middle.

My Opinion:

          It seems clear from this simple exercise that there is a much greater need for competency in use of informational texts in both college and careers.  If the goal of the Common Core Standards is (as they state) to produce more college and career ready students, then the increase in use of informational texts makes sense.  Use of literary texts in the workplace is very uncommon and in this regard, the decision to increase the use of informational text seems sound.  However, I am interested at looking at studies of how literary texts impact the lives of students and their importance to language development. 
          It is important to note that the Common Core Standards do no require or even suggest the classics be thrown out.  On the contrary, literary texts are an important part of the standards.  What they do is require a shift in the amount of informational texts in comparison to literary texts.  Much of that shift, however, is suggested to come from texts used to teach other subjects (especially science and history).  Their actual impact on the amount of classical literature studied by our students has yet to be seen.