In favour of literature as a school subject

Estonian writer Jaan Kaus calls for literature to be given high priority in the plans for the new school curriculum. "Literature is an important school subject for both formal reasons and textual reasons. The formal aspect is literature's influence on everyday usage of the language, because reading increases people's powers of expression. One could even say that literature is one of the most important intellectual sources. The less people are able to use their language, the poorer the world becomes and the less they can express themselves and communicate. The textual aspect revolves around people's relation to the world around them. In this respect literature differs greatly from mathematics. I appreciate the latter's importance for promoting logical and spatial thinking, but I've never met the square root of seven on the street."

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