ABSTRACT
In a now infamous speech to the New York State Education Department, College Board president and Common Core “architect” David Coleman said:
The only problem, forgive me for saying this so bluntly, the only problem with [personal writing] is as you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think. What they instead care about is can you make an argument with evidence, is there something verifiable behind what you’re saying or what you think or feel that you can demonstrate to me. (2011, p. 22)
There is some merit in Coleman’s statement; constructing evidencebased arguments is an important skill for students to master, but his broad
dismissal of personal writing is problematic for several reasons. First, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, the literary landscape disputes Coleman’s claim. The popularity of Serial, The Moth, This American Life and other narrative nonfiction podcasts, the many notable memoirs and works of literary nonfiction that continue to be adapted into based-on-a-true story films, and television shows like “Making a Murderer” prove that readers, viewers, and listeners are hungry for true, personal writing in various modalities.
