I just wanted to come on here to say that all hope is not lost. Often, I see posts in the Gulch, and I almost feel hopeless concerning the kids of today. I have been working as a high school teacher for 10 years now and largely despair of any hope for the future when working with the current crop of kids. I teach math and basically have to follow the curriculum but I always provide a reading list of books that I will consider for extra credit. Today I had a student come to me and tell me that he had just completed reading AS and wanted to find out what he had to do to get the extra credit. I asked him to tell me about what he had read. We had about a 20 min discussion, and it lifted my soul. Here I was talking with a 17-year-old and he gets it. He stated that obviously no real person would be a perfect version of any of the characters, he made correlations between real people and the book.

So I asked him,” Who is John Galt?” He though for about 30 seconds and then he said that he aspires to be able to say, “I am John Galt.” Guys, I was floored. I have offered this for 10 years and never had a student even consider reading AS. They always say that it is too thick. I feel as if I have reached at least one student and it has made the last ten years’ worth it in that one statement.