Literature is Good Medicine

As much as I love to read and write, my least favorite class in high school was Eng­lish. I’m not entirely sure why, other than the fact that some of the teach­ers seemed far more inter­ested in telling me what I was sup­posed to think about a novel than in find­ing out what my ideas and insights were. The focus of the classes was mainly on pure lit­er­ary analy­sis, and there was rarely any rel­e­vance to the real world.

It appears there is some con­nec­tion to life. Guy Kawasaki, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist, speaker, and busi­ness guru, talks about how lit­er­a­ture is being used in med­ical schools and res­i­dency pro­grams. He pro­poses that the effects they see—notably a bet­ter abil­ity to see things from other points of view and greater com­pas­sion for their patients—could apply as well to business.

Per­haps this could inform the way we teach gifted chil­dren about lit­er­a­ture, too. There are cer­tainly going to be some for whom the tra­di­tional lit­er­ary analy­sis will be fas­ci­nat­ing and enjoy­able. I sus­pect, though, that there will be far greater num­bers who will ben­e­fit more from look­ing at lit­er­a­ture in the con­text of life. Gifted stu­dents often strug­gle with their iden­tity and social rela­tion­ships. Just as it is doing for med­ical stu­dents, lit­er­a­ture can help lift the stu­dents’ eyes and give them new ways to see the world and their place in it.