Writing for Academic Discuttion Should schools spend more time allowing students to read fiction rather than just books about facts?

There is an ongoing debate about the balance between fiction and non-fiction in school curriculums. Some argue that students should spend more time reading fiction to foster skills such as empathy, while others believe that non-fiction is more important to learn essential facts about the world. In your opinion, should schools spend more time allowing students to read fiction rather than just books about facts?

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1.        What other benefits than strengthening empathy does reading fiction provides?

2.        Share your experience of learning from a non-fiction book.

 

 

☆Hints for Points

Fiction

1.       Stories and dramas are necessary to make life rich and enjoyable.

2.       Fiction is good for emotional education. Students get, even partially, the brain wiring of the author, a great intellect, as well as the author’s vocabulary, world view, attitude, and so on.

3.       Good fiction reflects reality and tell the truth that non-fiction cannot.

4.       A novel is in itself is a raw data of a period of history.

 

Non-fiction

1.        Non-fiction books have more information than fiction. Students need to learn more about the real world to make the most out of life, to avoid problems, and to help those who are in trouble.

2.        Students may not read non-fiction after graduation, so they should be assigned to read as many non-fiction books related to their studies as possible while at school.

3.        “In the end, fiction doesn’t go beyond the author’s world, while non-fiction does.” – Takashi Tachibana, an award-winning journalist, who kept reading fiction all day every day for 8 years at Tokyo University

 

 

☆Sample Answer

【Thesis】I agree with Ella in that fiction provides insights into real events and real people. People tend to think that fiction is for emotional education for children, and teens and young adults, whose mentality and personality are almost established, don’t need it in their curriculum. However, I think reading fiction is even more important in higher grades because of simulated experience it gives to the reader.

【Supporting Details】Students need the power of fiction to maintain their interest in the subjects that become increasingly complicated and layered as grades go up. Fiction helps relive the real events or issues effectively, and thus it makes students assimilate them and feel related to them. Stories of victims of war or pollution, for instance, help students experience the tragedies vicariously and this leads them to understandings of and interest in the issue. In other words, students can acquire imagination necessary to learn advanced level subjects by reading fiction.

【Counterargument-treatment】Certainly, fiction has its limits. It cannot beat the value of non-fiction as facts. But good novels are not fantasies or delusions. They usually have models in the real world. The difference is that authors filter and process the reality into the truth just as artists filter the image a camera lens projects on the film to capture the intrinsic nature of the matter and process it into what is universal and eternal or something new. As a result, although fiction doesn’t have all the information non-fiction has and it contains the author’s imagination, it often comes closer to the reality than non-fiction.

【Conclusion】Although the risks of confusion between facts and fantasy always exist, the tremendous power of fiction that helps students sympathize with those involved and have insights of the issue cannot be ignored. If used carefully, it will help much of the students’ studies. Therefore, I think fiction should be used more at school, especially in the advanced level. (314 words)