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Comment by hospitalJail | Hacker News Reader

One of my gripes about k12 is how english was seen as the opposite of Math/Science.

When in reality these are all intertwined. Logic necessarily uses words. Science might make some equations, but the scientific method is going to use words.

Instead english spent soooo much time on fiction. It really hurt my interest since I was often a contrarian when it came to fiction and my teachers hated it. I thought I was bad at English, turns out teachers didn't like me.

The first time I figured out I was good at English was when my wife, a 4.0 student read a college English paper for me and she was shocked she said "YOU ARE GOOD AT EVERYTHING".

I don't think I was actually that good, I struggle so much writing professional/scientific papers, my readers apparently agree because I'm quite limited in my reach. Meanwhile I see others write juicy content.

Maybe I have a problem with clickbait/marketing/copywriting.

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> Logic necessarily uses words.

I'm surprised no one has challenged that statement. Logic is making deductive statements that are true. One only needs symbols for this. That's why computers can prove mathematical theorems. Words are necessary because we are human and we need to communicate are base assumptions which normally come from the natural world. Saying logic necessarily uses words is like saying logic necessarily uses eyes or ears.

As long as there are humans involved, yes, there are words, even for visual symbols.

Actually this is only half true. Formal logic relies on words because some concepts, like finiteness, are impossible to grasp within the formalism itself. A good textbook on this is “Gödel's Theorems and Zermelo's Axioms A Firm Foundation of Mathematics”, which spends the early chapters dedicated to making you aware of this issue.

I'm not sure I follow, under what formalism does "finiteness" become a concept that's impossible to grasp?

> When in reality these are all intertwined.

I'm not a great writer. I hated Norwegian at school.

But I've helped both my SO, my sister and others improve their college grades significantly by simply doing a pass on their hand-ins. They'd write an essay or similar, and I'd just check that their arguments were consistent and made in the right order.

If I found their arguments lacking I'd ask them, they'd explain what they meant and I said "great, put that in there". Other times it was just a matter of swapping segments around. Simple stuff like that.

I wasn't versed in the things they studied, they knew their stuff but they just struggled to put it in writing. I'm not a good writer, it's not what I do. But as a programmer, getting arguments consistent and in the right order, well, that's basically my day job.

> Instead english spent soooo much time on fiction.

Respectfully, I think this is a vital part of any English education—the more you read, the better your writing becomes. Conversely, it's very difficult to become a proficient writer without becoming a proficient reader first, and for school-aged children, fiction is both the most accessible point of entry (although good nonfiction can capture kids' imaginations, too) and a great way to cultivate analytical skills.

Btw Plato disagrees and I'm with him. (But I am aware of the argument that fiction can intrigue)

Fiction sets unreasonable expectations. Why not use history? The bad guys sometimes win, but at least people learn something closer to reality.

How much time was wasted learning about symbolism? How much time did we waste learning how to be entertained?

Today I do none of this. Non-fiction is far more interesting than someone making stuff up. I'd much rather have good reading and writing skills than the ability to decode entertainment as an adult.

Fiction gives us things to shoot for, and a way to envision tomorrow. Think about all the things that science fiction envisioned that became reality. Would we have strived for those goals without it? It can also help us understand each other on a level that describing real events can't. Good fiction is art. We need art, and we should be able to be able to interact with it on a sophisticated level. I'm surprised if you honestly find all fiction uninteresting.

History, and I say this with a degree in the subject, does not do the same thing. History too is important, but it is not art, it's a social science. It's a complex field, assuming you mean the study of history and not just telling stories from the past, which half of the time is basically fiction. History is a way for us to understand our past and past and contemporary modes of thought, but it does not fulfill the same role as fiction.

Perhaps you should consider the emotional aspects of fiction. There’s more to life than facts.

Life doesn't care how you feel. Life only deals in what you do.

Life doesn't care how I feel, but _I_ do; and I want to live life in a way that makes me (and the people I care about) feel good. Empathy, imagination, and innovation are important for that - and fiction helps feed those.

Empathy and imagination can be found in plenty of non-fiction.

I enjoy reading fiction, mostly for escapism although the good ones also enrich me, but there is plenty of non-fiction that can feed those qualities. Non-fiction that focuses on the psychology, motives and feelings of people, and focuses on special, different , or creative individuals, might dk just that.

The autobiography "Lab Girl" comes to mind.

Fair point well made!

Sure, you do. Most folks care about how they feel. Life doesn't. It won't. It can't.

You accidentally only read the first ~1/5 of the comment.

The first 1/5th was the only relevant portion to my comment so that's all I replied to. I only stated that life doesn't care. I never said anything about non-fiction, fiction, and/or empathy.

I've been noticing this kind of sentiment online a lot. Seems like a recipe for an accomplished, unhappy life. Ambition, this time for "doing", whatever that means, without considering your and other's happiness.

How does this sound appealing?

Seems like you're misunderstanding what is being said. Life doesn't care if you have ambition or have a large family and everyone is happy. It doesn't care if you're apathetic and unhappy. It doesn't care if you have cancer or if you were cheated on. It does not care. It cannot care. Life is not sapient nor sentient. It merely is.

> Fiction sets unreasonable expectations. Why not use history? The bad guys sometimes win, but at least people learn something closer to reality.

Fiction does not require bad guys to loose. That is just contemporary American cultural expectation to make them always win.

>How much time was wasted learning about symbolism?

If you want to communicate with people, symbolism matters. It is part of the communication, just like analogies or figures of speach.

> I think this is a vital part of any English education

I wouldn't say "vital". There are plenty of examples everywhere since language is like air. Fiction may be great art, but that's not representative of what most people write. I agree there should be a better balance. When I was growing up we didn't even analyze famous speeches until high school which is far too late.

I think fiction has a place in education for sure, but I think nonfiction, especially longer nonfiction reads (not textbooks, something less dry), should have an equal or slightly larger presence than fiction.

My favorite english class was either technical writing or freshman comp 1 because both were focused on nonfiction pieces, which was so rare elsewhere in my education.

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