fourthguy - 2012-09-03
Counterpoint: Atlas Shrugged
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fourthguy - 2012-09-03 In response to your description, I mean.
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MrBuddy - 2012-09-03
We saw this in grade school. Back when I was a kid rocks were good enough for us. You kids these days shoot each other with arrows to decide who gets enough to eat?
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erratic - 2012-09-03
I guess I was a little young to have ever seen it in school. I suppose it could have been traumatizing to a kid back then.
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John Holmes Motherfucker - 2012-09-03
But is "Atlas Shrugged" a required part of Public education? I don't think anyone makes it all the way through High school without reading "The Lottery".
This story is so great, and b great I mean horrifying, that I've avoided it for all the years since high school, and that's a whole lotta years. I'm going to read it now.
http://www.americanliterature.com/Jackson/SS/TheLottery.html
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dead_cat - 2012-09-03 I was required to read Rand's "Anthem" for school.
Short summary: IT BLOWS.
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Cena_mark - 2012-09-03 I read Anthem in highschool. I didn't really think it was that bad. At least is was a short book.
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dead_cat - 2012-09-03 It's one of her least-awful books, for what that's worth.
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FABIO - 2012-09-03
Huh? I missed the part where this was up there with Atlas Shrugged. Explanation?
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Robin Kestrel - 2012-09-03 He didn't like it, I guess. There's no accounting for taste.
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FABIO - 2012-09-03 I always took it to be a slam at the destructive nature of superstition. School curriculum can't outright say "fuck religion" so making this required reading is as close as they can get. Has there been some reactionary co-opt that I wasn't aware of?
(Ironically, I as a kid I always took the final Narnia book to be a slam against religion. I only realized later it was just slamming non-christian (non-white) religions.)
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Raggamuffin - 2012-09-03 So far as I can tell, this is a story about the dangers of conformity, and blindly following tradition. I would also like an explanation as to why this is a "damaging" piece of literature.
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chumbucket - 2012-09-03 My recollection of having to read this and books like Alas, Babylon reinforces the idea that education was about scaring the shit out of us kids.
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cognitivedissonance - 2012-09-03
They made us read this, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Atlas Shrugged and Julius Caesar. There should be no surprise that it was a largely Mormon school district, and the curriculum was designed to make us hate the government. Being the lone Baptist, I was pretty much open game for any student or teacher to bully if they were feeling shitty. That said, it's pretty ironic, knowing what I know now, to actually have been in the minority as a Baptist.
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MrBuddy - 2012-09-04 Sounds to me like you got the same education the rest of us did.
Fahrenheit 451 is usually taught as the evils of censorship (it's actually about people watching TV instead reading). 1984 is about Communism. Atlas Shrugged is about how the weak leech off the strong, how the strong should abandon the weak (the opposite of what Jesus taught) and how religion will keep you from getting ahead in life. Mormons revere the US government to the point it's almost considered holy, that censorship is good, that a godly form of Communism will one day rule the Earth (although they hate man-made versions) and are required to help other Mormons by donating their time and money.
We didn't read Atlas Shrugged when I was in school and I'm kind of glad. You start reading it and after a week or so you think, "Hey cool! Let's see how far into... this... 1/3?! How long is this book?!" I think I made it half way though, reading it as an adult.
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