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News & ArtsWednesday, February 6, 2013
Books Bill Would Require Every High School Student in Idaho to Read Atlas Shrugged
Posted by Paul Constant on Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 12:19 PM
Betsy Z. Russell at The Spokesman-Review reports:
BOISE – Coeur d’Alene Sen. John Goedde, chairman of the Idaho Senate’s Education Committee, introduced legislation Tuesday to require every Idaho high school student to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and pass a test on it to graduate from high school.
When Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, asked Goedde why he chose that particular book, Goedde said to laughter, “That book made my son a Republican.”
This is the best way to ensure that every adult in your state is a total asshole.
1
Not a single economics course was offered in my high school. Not even a personal finance class was available.
In a country so fixated and addicted to capitalism and making money, not offering those basic courses is a reprehensible.
In a country so fixated and addicted to capitalism and making money, not offering those basic courses is a reprehensible.
3
I am in favor of this plan. Atlas Shrugged is as mediocre a book as it is a movie, and there is no surer way to turn high schoolers off something than to jam it down their throats.
4
My high school was useless. It was just a place to house teenagers so their parents could work without going to the police station every day.
5
These people seem to not understand that by granting the state the power to force people to read (and comprehend) specific texts, they're subverting the power of local PTA and School Boards, who should be the ones generating curricula.
6
Let's skip all the mamsy-pamsy reading stuff and pass a bill requiring every high school student to vote Republican.
9
I'm with @3. Kids are made to read a lot of stuff in their young lives. They end up hating and resenting most of it.
This reminds me of proposals to make kids read the Bible -- it's as if these dingbats literally cannot comprehend anybody reading their cherished holy book and not instantly falling in love with it and believing every single thing it says.
It could be fun to watch the fundie parents fight with the free-market-fundie parents over the sex scenes.
This reminds me of proposals to make kids read the Bible -- it's as if these dingbats literally cannot comprehend anybody reading their cherished holy book and not instantly falling in love with it and believing every single thing it says.
It could be fun to watch the fundie parents fight with the free-market-fundie parents over the sex scenes.
11
I guess the irony of a government law that forces everybody to read Atlas Shrugged is lost on Sen. Goedde. He gets a D- for reading comprehension.
15
Is the USA falling behind teaching science, technology, engineering, and math? Yes? Oh, then we should make students read Ayn Rand. Problem solved!
16
Can we get a rider on that bill that says they also have to read Steppenwolf or Zen & Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Those should provide useful balance.
@11 - Precisely.
@11 - Precisely.
17
Forget the political grandstanding in Atlas Shrugged—unless their teacher is a Libertarian activist insisting on impressing the points upon the class, the message will be totally lost of most of'em—the real crime is that required reading should be well written, and Atlas Shrugged is check-out line garbage.
18
If they read it in high school, maybe they can grow out of thinking anything other than complete bullshit before they get to voting age.
19
Has Atlas Shrugged ever made anyone turn into a high speed rail entrepreneur, using their own money (say from a mining fortune) to build and operate a Super Train, across the US?
Because that's what it's about...right?
Because that's what it's about...right?
21
I think the quickest way to get the largest number of high school students to rebel against the message of a book is to require them to read it. So I eagerly await the coming generation of communists that Idaho is going to produce.
22
I actually DID read "Atlas Shrugged" in high school (IIRC, the book hadn't been checked out for some five years prior to me taking it out), and IMO that's about the ONLY stage of life it SHOULD be read, per @18's comment.
23
He obviously didn't understand the book if he thinks it's a good idea for the government to mandate that children read it. If this passes, the worst result would be kids being turned off of reading in general for having to slog (no offense) through that worthless shitstorm of a book.
24
@19: Me. While I don't have any mining fortunes to finance my super train with, I vote Democrat now thanks to Atlas Shrugged. They're the only ones interested in super trains these days.
25
If he really wants every high school student in Idaho to read Atlas Shrugged, he should try to get it banned from the curriculum. Nothing sparks interest in a book more than hearing that adults don't want you to read it.
26
I read it in high school and was a total believer. I outgrew it freshman year in college. Isn't that the usual lifespan of interest in Ayn Rand?
28
I read it during the summer after my freshman year in college, and it changed me from a person with moderately right/conservative economic beliefs into a socialist who believes that many libertarians are absolute psychopaths. Coincidentally, I had recently read Robert Anton Wilson's ILLUMINATUS trilogy which features sort of an Ayn Rand/Phyllis Schafly character who wrote a thinly-veiled parody of 'Atlas Shrugged' called 'Telemachus Sneezed'.
31
What is it about Atlas Shrugged? She wrote the same basic idea a lot...and every last story is better than Atlas Shrugged because every last one is shorter.
Anthem can mess a person up about as well in a mere 1/10th the time and effort.
Anthem can mess a person up about as well in a mere 1/10th the time and effort.
33
@26, that was basically my script as well. Once I was around people who were cool, people I could relate to, it suddenly became far less important to use a 'everybody hates me guess I'll go eat worms' philosophy.
34
I'm more interested in the questions on the test. I bet they would focus on whether the student agreed with the stupid premises in the book rather than simply identifying them.
35
Wouldn't that mean they all had to know how to read, first? I thought the Republicans were against that.
36
I'm an Objectivist, which is to say I am all down for as many people as possible learning how to be rational and living life rationally. (There are some political stances that usually follow through on this, but they are not the same ones the good people of Idaho think they are.)
I'm also a writer, and an avid reader. I've read this book four times... and if I were assigned it in high school, and worse yet had to pass a test on it to graduate, I wouldn't have blown my brains out. I certainly wouldn't have gotten a damn thing out of it, and would have reached for the Cliffs Notes like everyone else.
This is the wrong Ayn Rand novel to push into high school required reading... the 'right' one would be Anthem. It's short, and works over simpler concepts (and doesn't have twenty-five-page speeches). But 'introducing the concepts of rational thought, self-reliance and self-empowerment' wasn't what the sponsors wanted, they wanted to mandate their own misreadings of Atlas Shrugged as justification for Republican douchebaggery.
They don't want better children, they want more Republican voters, and their reading of Atlas Shrugged is comparable to Christian Fundamentalists' reading of the Bible (with all that made-up shit about Jesus going on about the gays just so Jerry Falwell can con rubes out of their dollars). The people who want to make Atlas Shrugged their bible have rather missed the point of the thing.
(For the curious, I'm a libertarian who usually votes Democrat, and spent the last year at Occupy Wall Street. A contradiction wrapped around a riddle wrapped around a Paul Ryan joke, I know. It's possible there is more to this book than the rough liberal treatment gives it, but considering what the conservatives do with it, I entirely understand and say 'have at it,' because they need to be knocked down seven or twelve pegs before we can even deal with these assholes.)
More...
I'm also a writer, and an avid reader. I've read this book four times... and if I were assigned it in high school, and worse yet had to pass a test on it to graduate, I wouldn't have blown my brains out. I certainly wouldn't have gotten a damn thing out of it, and would have reached for the Cliffs Notes like everyone else.
This is the wrong Ayn Rand novel to push into high school required reading... the 'right' one would be Anthem. It's short, and works over simpler concepts (and doesn't have twenty-five-page speeches). But 'introducing the concepts of rational thought, self-reliance and self-empowerment' wasn't what the sponsors wanted, they wanted to mandate their own misreadings of Atlas Shrugged as justification for Republican douchebaggery.
They don't want better children, they want more Republican voters, and their reading of Atlas Shrugged is comparable to Christian Fundamentalists' reading of the Bible (with all that made-up shit about Jesus going on about the gays just so Jerry Falwell can con rubes out of their dollars). The people who want to make Atlas Shrugged their bible have rather missed the point of the thing.
(For the curious, I'm a libertarian who usually votes Democrat, and spent the last year at Occupy Wall Street. A contradiction wrapped around a riddle wrapped around a Paul Ryan joke, I know. It's possible there is more to this book than the rough liberal treatment gives it, but considering what the conservatives do with it, I entirely understand and say 'have at it,' because they need to be knocked down seven or twelve pegs before we can even deal with these assholes.)
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