Same scenario with me, was your teacher under 30?

 

Yea late 20's.

That's the problem with young teachers, they are still unexperienced and have narrow-open mindedness. Mine was 27, and she didn't explain Anthem's message thoroughly enough either.

 

When I was in the 9th grade, I read The Odyssey, and my teacher was close to being 56 years old. And you don't know how deep and satisfying it was to listen to her lectures and just lose yourself into the whole story.

 

So yeah, in my opinion, it's kind of better to have an old English teacher.

Yes, I've read everything she wrote, I think, but it's been many years. Of course her epic is Atlas Shrugged - a really gripping and exciting story centred on a woman who is VP of a large railroad when the great minds of the world go "on strike".

She is known as the 20th century's greatest apologist for capitalism. Her passion for individual excellence is extreme. She escaped communist Ruswsia under Stalin and she loathes collectivism. Her philosophy is called "Objectivism".

Discovering her work was a major turning point in my thinking about social issues, but not an easy one. More than once, while reading Atlas Shrugged, I literally pitched the book, angrily rejecting what she had been saying. But she weaves her stories brilliantly and I had to finish reading, and, as I said, went on to read everything she wrote.

Any Ayn Rand novel is very challenging emotionally and intellectually, and not for everyone. Definitely not a light summer read! And her opinions should be seriously questioned by the reader. She celebrates "justified" violence and her views on women's sexuality are pre-1960's. She's a great and deliberate story teller, but not someone who can be thought of warmly. Handle with care.

All just my opinion, of course.

We read Anthem in English this past year. After reading it my whole class, aside from myself, was convinced that any form of Egoism is evil, and we should all strive to be fucking communist Altruists.

 

They didn't even understand the basic concept of the book. Poor literary analysis FTL.

 

 

But the whole point of egoism is that selfishness is unavoidable. Every action anybody does has selfish roots - to argue otherwise is to say you don't have control over your own body.

 

Rand is sort of the Ann Coulter of egoism. She says things that grab peoples' attention, because they appear crazy on the uptake. Over time I've grown to prefer the subtle and intellectual persuasiveness of the Austrian economists like Hayek. I think that's the best way to show a statist/collectivist the truth, because when you attack peoples' primal beliefs, you should be as friendly and logical about it as possible.

My mom bought me atlas shrugged a while back ago, I just have yet to read it. I plan on reading it soon though