One of the problems with the program Common Core is that it places little emphasis to the body of Western literature that has endured over the ages. Rather, it favors what it calls “informational” texts that contain neither moral judgments nor beauty.
The great conservative writer Russel Kirk summarizes well why a literary tradition is so necessary to education. It is that essential connection that links one generation with another. He writes:
“For literature is the breath of society, transmitting to successive rising generations,
century upon century, a body of ethical principles and critical standards and imaginative creations that constitutes a kind of collective intellect of humanity, the formalized wisdom of our ancestors” (Russell Kirk, Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics, Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1969 p. 68).