In English speaking countries English literature classes in which students read fiction should be abolished as a graduation requirement for High School and Universities for all Majors and the English Literature Major should be abolished from any University that receives taxpayer funding

Slightly Disagree... (on ending English Literature classes)

but fully agree that schools should not be funded by taxes, at all.

@matthew

How do you believe they will benefit by reading stories that are declared to be fiction meaning that the events never happened according to the authors claims

It is like reading a textbook for history class except the textbook writer claims the history never happened but you have to learn it anyway

Why?

People communicate through stories. Learning to understand those stories and talk about them is not completely useless (but might be close to useless with how most classroom instruction is conducted).

So I am not against learning literature. If you read a lot, you will be a better writer.

Writing is a very important skill.

@matthew @shortstories More generally the value is simply in "reading", and "reading aloud". You're on the internet, you've surely found an ample sample of people who did not develop either of these skills, especially the former. The difference is like night and day.
For example, even here on fedi, you can relatively easily shut down whole instances' brains by simply posting three or more paragraphs at once.

In fact, I believe that reading ability and learning ability are closely linked; As much as bluehairs try to argue otherwise about "different learning styles", what they fail to comprehend is that people who can learn from a book tend to also learn quicker by being shown, they are simply *better* than people who can't learn from a book.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone who has played board games with me tries to use the fact that I tend to reach for the rulebook before the end of the first game as evidence to the contrary, but I only do that if the rules that I've been taught are contradictory, or just seem off: You could teach me a completely different game to what's written in the book, and as long as your rules are good (that is, consistent and fair), I'd probably never find out. Most people can't even teach a game properly, letalone design a good game.

@shortstories @matthew ... But to address the original question on the grounds of it being fiction, specifically, instead of non-fiction, that is simply because it is more fun, and that helps everything.