In order to become well-rounded individuals, all college students should be required to take courses in which they read poetry, novels, mythology, and other types of imaginative literature.

Many would argue that learning imaginative literature would promote students' imagination. Admittedly, one might contend that learning the gods in Greek mythology would help people envision the celestial palace, the mystical universe and giant creatures. Also, reading the best-selling mystical novel Harry Porter might help students imagine the magic wizardry schools and a world with magical power parallel to our own. These courses would provide students a chance to know a hypothetical world beyond their own and help them expand their thoughts and many people argue that they can make students more well-rounded and successful in later development. They might claim that a writer could use his/her wealth in imagination combined with his/her writing skills to create about a promise land or a Xanadu, and a science researcher could use his/her imagination combined with scientific knowledge to create novel theories.

However, it may not be beneficial to students if such courses contain horrible depictions. For many imaginative literature, horror is an essential element the author strives to contain so that their books can captivate more readers. However, the sudden death of characters, the grotesque appearance of the monsters or the evil rituals might scare the students or even affect their lives. For example, the famous fiction "Frankenstein" contains depiction of the twisted monster created by doctor Frankenstein, and although many critics argue that he has a sense of humanity in the beginning when he tried to save people, his life became twisted after he was mistreated by many people including his creator, his cruel actions including killing Victor's friends and beloved wife could be too harsh and brutal for young college students to accept and in this case, this book might not be appropriate to them. Also, many horrific imaginative literature contain misleading content that could be bad for students. For example, many medieval novels depicting witchcraft often associated evil witches with the cats and claimed that cats were evil creatures. This misleading content could result in abandoning of pet cats because of fear of evil witchcraft.

To expand, even if the imaginative literature do not contain horror content, studying them might not help science students who require logical reasoning more than pure imagination. For a student studying in oil industry, the literature which contains fanciful story in which magic can transform water into oil can always be misleading and hamper the study of the chemical theory. Similarly, for a biology students, reading fictions can also decrease their ability to reason scientifically. For example, they might consider it magical power that renders the tiny seeds into a gigantic tree without trying to understand the true scientific mechanisms during seeds sprouting and development.

In conclusion, imagination could be very important for students to become well-rounded, yet the courses of imaginative literature could have negative effect when they contain element of horror, and for science students studying them might not increase their logical reasoning skills.