Is English most important class of all?

Self-effacing storyteller Garrison Keillor enjoys poking fun at himself, with stories in which the English major gets the girl, and sponsoring segments of his radio show with the Professional Organization of English Majors -- POEM.

We've often decried the damage done to great literature by requiring it to be read in high school English classes instead of discovered on one's own, but there's new evidence studying literature in the classroom has benefits beyond fulfilling a graduation requirement.

Lumosity, which finds its way into our email, offering free mental exercises in hopes we'll subscribe to its service, points to a new study that the kind of critical thinking our English teacher forced us to do is much more valuable than lounging around, reading something like "Fifty Shades of Grey" or worse.

English professor Natalie Phillips and Stanford neurobiologists cooperated to see whether critical textual analysis taught in classrooms heightened attention when compared to casual reading.

To test the theory, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging -- fMRI -- on 18 participants, all doctoral candidates pursuing literary degrees, while they read a chapter from Jan Austen's classic "Mansfield Park."

First, they were asked to read the chapter casually as they would for fun.

They were asked to switch to close reading, a common term for the type of scrutiny to detail required to analyze text in a literary course.

As PhD candidates, they had plenty of experience doing the latter.

The fMRIs showed a significant shift in brain activity as the subjects went from casual to critical modes. As they switched to the latter, bloodflow increased across the brain in general, especially to the prefrontal cortex.

That part of the brain is known to play a role in executive function, which refers to a set of higher-order cognitive processes that manage how you divide your attention and coordinate complex activities.

Granted, it's a new field of research, and many more studies need to be run.

However, there is no shortage of need for critical thinking, from running a multi-billion-dollar company to casting a vote for city council.

There's a tendency to lump English into the group of studies we won't need in "real" life, like math or philosophy, but if the study of literature helps us to be better at critical thinking, English may be the most important class of all.