The nation's leaders say that a 21st-century education must restore the competitive edge and prepare students for success in the marketplace; they affirm that the material wealth of a 21st-century nation is built upon the intellectual capital of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). But teachers need to remember this: A 21st-century education must empower all students to succeed not only in a global economy but also in the agora, the marketplace of ideas, communication, and civic action. They must prepare students to participate in the great conversation, and so they must teach them to distinguish between fact and opinion, between evidence and proof, between appeals to reason and to emotion. They must challenge them to question the values and assumptions of their world, to simultaneously doubt and trust themselves, and to decipher the DNA of ideas. They must inspire them to live a life of principle. In this article, the author discusses the relation of literature to logic. If there is a family of universal languages, then math, science, and English are the mother tongues of the 21st century, but students lack fluency in all three. The author contends that those who work in math, science, and English are partly to blame. They need to learn how to talk to each other again, to enter the conversation across disciplines, to comprehend, to connect, and to care. They need to speak the language of literature and of logic.