@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.

I just noticed your username is "short stories".

@matthew

So I originally posted fiction stories as a means to try to get around censorship that would happen if I posted certain information in non fiction form

But I still think it is bad policy to force people to reae stories about things that never happened and then test them on that knowledge especially when people could be studying information that is supposed to be true

They could double the hours teaching math for example instead and most people could have college degree level science

> So I originally posted fiction stories as a means to try to get around censorship that would happen if I posted certain information in non fiction form

Good approach. That's another reason to encourage literacy.

I think it is bad policy to force people to do anything (some exceptions). That is one of the reasons that the classroom model is fundamentally broken.

Some non-fiction books on this subject you may enjoy are by John Taylor Gatto:

https://greathomeschoolconventions.com/blog/the-legacy-of-john-taylor-gatto

@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.

@shortstories @matthew [though, in my experience, about 1/4 of the classroom reading was fun, and I never got why they didn't choose the books that I was choosing myself in the library - I was pretty good at picking good books by their covers, disproving that old adage]

@Zergling_man @matthew

Let's say a teacher is going to assign someone biology textbook for homework

They could remove the English literature class and just have all the students read the biology textbook as a class group and then not assign that as reading homework when they get home

With the extra hour they saved they could read fiction when they get home if they want to or not read it at all whatever they got their reading practice in and have less homework

I still stand by the maxim:

"Teacher! Leave those kids alone."

@shortstories @matthew It's a reasonable point.

@Zergling_man @shortstories @matthew it's an excellent point. in principle, why should school compel what could be voluntary?
in practice, school is a maximalist bureaucracy that will never yield the child unless that child is literally pried away from it -- sometimes it will retain a death grip even then, e.g. tranny stuff. you can't really negotiate with these people. winning back an hour here, cutting out pointless assignments there... they [the academic class] are experts at moving words around to create 0 effective positive change from any decision. you have to tear out this weed root and branch, there is no other option.

@Zergling_man @matthew @shortstories thus, given that we are to have schools ("abolish schools", as i noted, is not among the options) we should encourage excellence. target the highest common multiple instead of least common denominator. teach them programming and philology and sculpture and plumbing and geometry.

@shortstories @matthew While the characters in the 'story' may not be strictly historical, and some or all of the events in said story may not have strictly happened, typically the overall time in which a story took place DID happen (unless it's fantasy fiction or science fiction) and typically the locations/settings a story takes place in were also real. One can learn a lot about a historical period from literature.

"Beowulf" is English Literature, for example. "The Tale of Genji" is Japanese literature, but it can be assigned in an English class as it is considered the world's first novel, and one can learn a lot about the Heian period in Japan by reading that novel. I had to read Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" and I believe that was the only pre-class summer assignment I very nearly thanked the teacher for assigning, but instead I could only ask him if he were positive I was really in that class because I was the only guy in there and he started assigning Jane Austen novels right away. The same applies to her novels as well though, not that I ever cared for the English gentry (or for being coerced into playing one) or how English chicks dedicated their whole lives to competing to be trad-wifed back then. Just joking, they were gold-diggers back then too. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” NOTTT.

Oh yeah, even though it's another chick book and the 'protagonist' has to be the worst character in it, one can't forget "Gone With the Wind." If you haven't read "Gone With the Wind," are you even a real American? Believe it or not, you'll learn more about that period from "Gone With the Wind" than you will from reading a generic "Social Studies" textbook chapter on the so-called American Civil War that won't even tell ya the Emancipation Proclamation didn't free a single slave. Where else are you going to learn that "Ashley" was originally and historically a BOY'S name? Until the 1960's. Feminist women are the original trannies.

@bigmattoidchimpin @matthew

How about you again cut corners and reduce class time by having them read primary historical documents from the civil war time period instead of a fiction book or a history book

@shortstories @matthew Hopefully, one will encounter some primary source documents in their History classes (though they'll probably be cotton-picked excerpts). I'm not trying to suggest that an English class or an "English Literature" class should replace a History class or would suffice standing alone teaching someone history. It's supplemental to an extent, and for other skills (someone already mentioned writing in the thread, vocabulary, reading comprehension, cultural awareness, and so forth).

Students also have different learning styles and reading material preferences. You're not going to be able to teach a History class to High School or lower level college students with primary source documents exclusively. Moreover, they're not necessarily going to learn more about History in terms of 'historical facts' or how History is constructed from just reading primary source documents. Especially if they don't really understand those primary source documents, what a primary source is, how to use them, and/or where they can locate primary source materials on their own to perform their own historical research and potentially even write their own history books.

What are you going to use to teach the whole Civil War with just primary source materials anyway? Contemporary newspaper articles with their own issues? Abraham Lincoln's correspondence? Government documents? A collection of diaries from (White) people of all walks of life and relevant regions that will have to be photocopied? Documents with Frederick Douglass in his own words that don't mention his Jewish girlfriends like Ottilie D. Assing, or those fine words of other abolitionist spinsters who squealed when they realized they were used as a means to an end and their feminist lesbian dreams were not going to be realized? Everyone could read the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision in its entirety. That will turn Boys into Men and Girls into teenage drop-out drifters who enter the workforce via the Lolita Express ("girls FTW!")

Edit: Whoops, this is besides the point, but I forgot that girls just make an OnlyFans now to achieve independence through monetizing their pornographic content, and when they enter the workforce it's not on the Lolita Express but for real money as port-a-potties. And that's all I have to say about women liberation shit.

@HatkeshiatorTND
Why would a doctor, chemist or engineer need to know what is in a fiction book to graduate from a university in order to be certified that they can safely treat patients or modify product design specifications or supervise work with chemicals

How would reading Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings or Narnia make someone better at those professions

How would it help them make new science discoveries better than reading more science textbooks or practicing more math instead

@shortstories it's a filter.
would you trust a heart surgeon who thinks, of the greatest poets and authors of his country's history, of the generals and philosophers who exalted his nation's man, that they were nothing more than oafs about whom he resents to learn?
i wouldn't.