I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth repeating in the light of recent developments. The late writer Julius Lester commented that when political candidates are interviewed, they are often asked, “What books are you reading?” The answer to this anticipated question is usually some uplifting piece of non-fiction – a book by Churchill or a biography of Lincoln, perhaps. Lester argued that the more meaningful question would be “What fiction have you read lately?” because a reader of fiction is able to walk in someone else’s shoes, to empathize with characters outside of and different from him or herself.
So, I found it troubling that schools, influenced by the Common Core standards, adopted by most states during the Obama years, downplayed the presence of fiction in the school curriculum, favoring instead informational texts. The burgeoning testing industry followed suit and constructed test questions that were built around passages from non-fiction sources. Don’t get me wrong. Learning how to parse texts of that kind is a valuable skill, but not at the expense of honoring the value of material laden with complex emotions and accounts of relationships among characters, especially those young readers could identify with.
Around the same time, there was a similar set of beliefs crystalizing around writing. Dr. Lucy Calkins, who, for a time, was the most influential creator of materials and curriculum for young writers, argued that their writing should be about things they know, not things they imagine. “Write about what you know,” is common advice that writers of all ages receive from teachers, mentors and coaches. But what kids know best is what’s in their own heads, especially while their age and limited autonomy curtails their experience with the world outside themselves. That’s one of the reasons sci-fi and fantasy are such a large presence in the reading and writing that engage many kids.
So, I was excited to come across some material in Diane Ravitch’s blog that argued for the importance of fiction from a neuroscience perspective. I wanted to share that material with you and encourage you to see in it the wisdom that Julius Lester packed into a single interrogative sentence:
| According to an article by Richard Sima in the The Washington Post, the theory that fiction was of lesser value was wrong. Sima, a neuroscientist and science journalist, writes that fiction is better for the growing mind than informational text. He writes: Reading in general — newspapers, magazines, nonfiction books — has been linked to slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults and even longer lives. But reading fiction may have unique benefits. For example, the amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition — our ability to think about and interact with other people — and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place. Why? Fiction forces you to imagine a story’s world and characters. It makes you grapple with different perspectives, mentally inhabiting distinct points of view, according to Nick Buttrick, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. This can help us find “better insight into our own experiences, insight into the experiences of others who are very different from us,” said Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, who recently wrote a review on the benefits of reading narrative fiction. “It just tends to evoke a form of reflection and contemplation, which can only be good for us.” Why reading is actually social Social health is important for overall health. And it turns out that reading, though often thought of as a solitary activity, can boost our social abilities. To understand why, it helps to look at how reading shapes us as we grow. Between ages 4 and 6, children develop a theory of mind — the ability to understand that others have different beliefs, perspectives and feelings. Studies find that children exposed to more storybooks are further along this developmental milestone than those exposed to fewer ones, Mar said. A 2025 meta-analysis of 21 studies found that children who read more storybooks had more empathy. And there is evidence that empathy and reading go both ways. Better reading comprehension was a predictor of empathy later in life, while empathy also was a predictor of better reading ability, according to a 2024 study of more than 900 children. And adolescents who read more for fun became more social adults, a 2023 study found… Reading fiction “presents to us a complex cognitive and emotional simulation of the social world,” which is useful in the real world, Mar said. The power of storytelling These benefits may be due, in part, to the power of storytelling. Neuroimaging studies find that brain networks involved in understanding stories overlap with brain networks needed for theory of mind. This suggests that “while engaging with stories, we’re also pulling online the same kinds of brain networks that we use to understand other people,” said Mar, who wrote a review about these studies. Other forms of storytelling, such as television and movies, may provide similar benefits, but “one of the things that you do when you read is you have to construct the world” in your head, Buttrick said. “The world is not given to you. You have to do the work of imagining.” The article goes on in greater detail about why fiction is more important for young people than non-fiction, the exact opposite of the premises of the Common Core. |
| PS. Isn’t it ironic that this movement to downplay fiction in schools occurred during Barack Obama’s time in office? He was perhaps the White House’s most ardent readers of fiction, the effects of which are evident, to me at least, in the way he governed. |
