students were not asked to read fiction but to focus on non fiction instead because they “needed” to concentrate on facts and absorbing data (like the workers of the future don’t need ideas, just computation).
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This flashed me back to a conversation 45 years ago with a person I later recognized as a ‘change agent’. With vast superiority, he said: “I never read fiction.” We were in a group and no one disagreed. I, along with my husband, were the only fiction readers in a gathering of 8+ people, all in their 30s. At the time, I just found it strange, but the comment, the ambiance and the tone have stayed with me.
No creativity allowed. Like Soviet Realism isn’t really art.
Now, back to work.
Sometimes a work of fiction contains more TRUTH than does non-fiction on the same subject.
We could easily come up with a list of hundreds of novels, poems, stories and plays that meet this criteria.