The Common Core has shifted the emphasis in reading toward nonfiction. I will not take issue with the Core’s new emphasis, except to say that districts must be careful not to leap too exclusively onto that expository bandwagon. Our critical thinking requires access to words and many words simply never make their way into nonfiction literature. Others pop up only rarely.

“And the ring had fit him very well. Yet, now it spun round, loose and wobbling. His appetite had been poor, of late. The wooden platter of bread still sat. Drying out, untouched. The cheese looked crusted. Almost brittle.

 Was that a mouse he had seen, scuttling away?”

In nonfiction, no one scuttles. Few things wobble. And the cheese hardly ever becomes untouched, crusted and almost brittle.

Eduhonesty: Too many standards may suck the poetry out of English and language arts classes. Real-life events supplant imagination. Diaphanous images are replaced with concrete instructions. What words are perishing, as standards shove our souls into chutes, forcing us to crawl in serpentine fashion toward this new, more-prosaic world?