Politician Wants Sci-fi To Be Mandatory In School

Avantare writes "The first sci-fi novel I read was A Wrinkle in Time; the next was Dune. Why don't more people read these extraordinarily imaginative books? Delegate Ray Canterbury, who represents Greenbrier County in southern WV, wants to help with that. Canterbury introduced House Bill 2983, which reads, 'To stimulate interest in math and science among students in the public schools of this state, the State Board of Education shall prescribe minimum standards by which samples of grade-appropriate science fiction literature are integrated into the curriculum of existing reading, literature or other required courses for middle school and high school students.' For decades, walking around with a paperback sci-fi novel in your back pocket at school was the quickest way to find yourself permanently excluded from the cool-kid clique. But what if it wasn't just the geeks who read Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke? What if science fiction was mandatory reading for all students?"

Comments

By Science Fiction, does he mean....

[Anonymous Coward]

Creationism?

Re:By Science Fiction, does he mean....

[ultranova]

I'm quite interested in Dune not being sci-fi, because that's so ridiculous it should be on a meme.

Dune's setting is carefully constructed to enforce semi-medieval status, from Butlerian jihad banning computers to forcefields that force melee combat to the return of feudalism. This effectively weeds out any sci-fi tropes. At the same time it has a hearty dose of fantasy tropes, from witches to ghosts possessing their descendants to magical worm-juice that grants precognition.

Dune is high fantasy with spaceships (who's pilots need magical worm-juice to fly them). It's sci-fi in the same sense Spelljammer is.

No - that is called Fantasy.

[Anonymous Coward]

And though Science Fiction is usually combined with Fantasy, there is a rather BIG difference...

Science Fiction (at least GOOD science fiction) tries to stick with only one violation of physics (frequently the speed of light, other times just that something is easy to do - such as neural implants). Each additional violation weakens the "science" into fantasy. Good Science Fiction focuses on the characters, and the physics violations are only a transport to get to a situation.

Fantasy, on the other hand, allows all kinds of physics violations - at the whim of the author when they can't figure out how to resolve a situation - POOF, a miracle (some god or other magical being/device) fixes/saves the character. Good fantasy doesn't even focus on the magical issues - they focus on the characters. Unfortunately, many fantasy authors cannot keep their "magic" coherent (and I include JK Rowling in this group - fortunately, the focus on characters greatly exceeds the magic.. most of the time).

Re: Wrinkle

[Nerdfest]

Look where that got us. The current crop of politicians thought 1984 was an instruction manual.

Re: Wrinkle

[kilodelta]

Hell, I did Catholic schools - the reading list for freshman year of high school had books like Brave New World, Black Like Me, 1984, Animal Farm, and a whole bunch more that I've temporarily forgotten but my memory will jog to it eventually.

Kind of happy I did Catholic as opposed to Public schools for the first 12 years. If there's two things they pushed in those schools it was heavy amounts of reading, and critical thinking. Made me a better atheist.

Re:TOO MUCH FREAKING MEDIA!!!

[VanGarrett]

This politician's point isn't about making children read his favorite books because they're his favorites. He wants children and teenagers to read Science Fiction because it makes science and math interesting, which in turn, turns more of our youth to those fields of study. I seldom agree with politicians, but this guy is absolutely right-- if we want to improve ourselves as a species, we need to get our youth interested in these subjects. Getting them to read Science Fiction is one good approach.