That is one of the 3 purposes of school. The other two are to get a good job, and to make you a better citizen of the world... (there might be more, but those are the 3 I've come up with).
Animal Farm tries to be the last, but the flaws in it mean I can't take it seriously and so it fails. Well maybe it soft of works because nearly everybody has read it, but again, the flaws are so bad I can't take anyone seriously who cites it and so I consider it a failure.
I think you're quite confused about what Animal Farm is. It's a short work of fiction. It's not something that you'd "cite" in support of a particular point, and it wasn't written with the intention of making the reader "a better citizen of the world". Of course it has obvious satirical and allegorical elements, but there's no He-Man-style PSA at the end of it.
That's a non sequitur. But you see, this is the exactly kind of thing that a high school literature class could usefully dig into.
We know that Orwell was thinking of the Russian Revolution when he wrote the book. Many events in the story have obvious historical parallels to it.
On the other hand, Orwell was also a political journalist who wrote political essays. If his primary aim in writing the book was to make a specific critique of communism, why did he decide to express that critique as a work of fiction with talking animals? He would certainly have been aware that such a work is inherently open to wider interpretation.
Do you really think that a class of reasonably intelligent high school students couldn't find any moral in the story that's not inherently tied to communism? There are clearly all sorts of analogies that can be drawn between the story and historical or current events. And there are all sorts of conclusions you can draw. Maybe the animals should never have had a revolution in the first place; maybe they should have, but they went about it the wrong way, etc. etc.
>Is the purpose of school to make you do things that you'll enjoy?
ideally, yes, enjoyment should be one purpose of school. it's much easier to teach when students are enjoying learning.
learning to engage with something that you don't enjoy is also important, though, and why i think some of "the classics" should still be required reading.
You're kind of missing the point of my comment. You said, in essence, that it's impossible to learn about Communism unless you've experienced it personally.
> China and North Korea, with Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba
Of those countries, how many have you experienced personally, and thus, by your standard, are qualified to comment on?
To what extent is modern China actually Communist, as opposed capitalist-authoritarian?
>This book cannot prove anything, other than one person's opinion on history
You've misunderstood the purpose.
Fiction was not ever intended to achieve scientific goals, i.e. to discover the truth about our universe. It's intended to be thought-provoking, i.e. to inspire questions about our universe.
You need the question before you can find the answer.
Problem is that book is based on so many things that we know are untrue about humans in general that it is hard to take any questions it provokes seriously.
I can accept the impossible for the fun of it, but when something is impossible I don't take is serious. And it wasn't a good book in general.
Animal Farm is interesting partially because its satire is actually extremely poignant and directed; the characters are meant to represent the important actors in the Russian Revolution.
Old Major is Marx/Lenin, Napoleon is Stalin Snowball is Trotsky, etc. Regardless of ones nationality or politics, the story of Russia in 1917 remains one of the most fascinating in our worlds history. For a lot of people, myself included, Animal Farm served as a nice way of being introduced to the tale without getting bogged down by the specifics.
No one who's cracked a history book open was pleased with that. Nazis were not elected democratically in the traditional sense; they never won a majority in a free national election. You're following me around in the comments because you're crashing out about being proven wrong here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546137
>Undemocratically outlawing the opposition to secure the vote...
You are cute in thinking your argument holds, but they were not that far (33, 37%) without outlawing the opposition - which were communists directed by Stalin. You profess your hate of the left in all your other posts; if you were in 1933, would you really mind?
>Remind me of party that is calling to undemocratically outlaw the opposition to secure the vote?
The law that would allow to ban the AfD is there since 1949. Reflect why. And also reflect why Germany is a constitutional democracy and not just a democracy.
> they never won a majority in a free national election.
They legally won a plurality in the Bundestag, which is sufficient for Hitler to be legally appointed chancellor, which made everything that follows legal. Like it or not, the Nazi regime was a legal result of democracy. Democracy, neither then nor now, requires an absolute majority, which is why so many European governments are formed as coalitions.
AfD did not win a majority in Saxony-Anhalt either. Nevertheless, a person can justifiably feel disappointed by the democratic outcome, both then and now, without being dismissive of democracy itself.
> You're following me around in the comments
I am doing my part to eliminate misinformation and stupidity in the world. You're welcome.
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