Atlas Shrugged

This book should become mandatory reading in high school.
Agree? [Y/N]

What about making the movie mandatory viewing.

>>2
The movie is a trilogy and the last part won't be released until April 15 2013, kids will get confused if they only see the first part.

I think it's worth reading, and discussing thoroughly. I read it when I was 15, and I'm glad I did, however, I have since realized that the real world is a lot less black and white... I would have benefitted from a teacher-led discussion stressing that fact.
Also, compassion is very important, and I find it significant that Ayn Rand was not a mother, because, let me tell you, with the experience of raising a baby and child, I began to have a lot more compassion and empathy for others.
The book has a lot of nice theories... perhaps it could be contrasted with Ursula LeGuin's "Always Coming Home"

I think it has good ideas, not so good from a literature standpoint. She should have just stuck to writing essays. We definitely need something though. I don't remember any of our books being explicitly individualist. Individual rights and non-coercion should be taught more in school. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress might be a good one for high schoolers.

Honestly, the world could use a little less empathy.

lol looks like somebody just discovered the mediocre works of Ayn Rand.  Wait a few years and you will eventually realize that it's good material, but not revolutionary or ground-breaking.

>>4
>I would have benefitted from a teacher-led discussion
You realize that teachers and schools are DESIGNED to not benefit you in the slightest?
>I began to have a lot more compassion and empathy for others.
And this is why women should not be able to vote or hold position in government. They are simply not fit.

>>8
Riiiight.
Because you guys have been doing such a fucking bang-up job.
God forbid anyone should have compassion on anyone else. Why, then where we be? I mean, there would be no pretext for war!

Atlas bumped

N

Ayn Rand went from the most totalitarian collectivist nation on earth and a particularly wartorn one to the US in the booming 20s when electricity, mechanization, automobiles, aircraft and rampant commercialization were just about to hit the scene, this must have had an enormous impact on her during her late teens and early adulthood, during the great depression she must have looked back on this golden age in her life and her yearning motivated her to create all these ideas. Moralists, classical liberals and socialists all base their ideology on altruism, that you must give up selfishness for the greater good, Ayn Rand challenges these notions and points out that while there is nothing wrong with kindness there is something wrong with guilt tripping productive people into handing over their cash to bums and corrupt politicians, this is an interesting philosophical tidbit and it would be interesting to see what inferences a student could draw from this. Atlas Shrugged however is a really fucking long book, it certainly isn't material for high school or lower since it consumes as much time as analyzing 3 or 4 other literary masterpieces, "introduction to objectivist epistemology" isn't highly regarded either even though it is perhaps the only abstract definition of objectivism, she should have written, edited and published it herself in the 50s.