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Political apathy can be described as a hinderance to democracy, and many people believe that it is a problem in the United States — yet the education system seems to be more focused on ensuring that students understand that communism is bad than helping students understand the importance of being politically active.

For illustration, in many high schools either “Anthem” or “Animal Farm” have been given to students as reading assignments for decades. While “Animal Farm” and “Anthem” provide marvelous lessons about the impact of communism, the United States has bigger threats to tackle than a communist revolution.

The largest flaw in assigning junior high to high school level students to read “Animal Farm,” “1984,” or “Anthem” is that those books are popular with adults, not students. No junior high or high school student ever said, “Aw yeah, time to read Anthem!” It just does not happen. On the other hand, the Hunger Games trilogy was ranked second on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “100 Best-Ever Teen Novels,” only beaten by the Harry Potter series.

But popularity is not the only factor that needs consideration. Luckily, the Hunger Games trilogy is about young people rising up and making an affront to an oppressive, powerful regime — which has struck down a past revolution — and succeeding. Conversely, in “Animal Farm,” the leader of the revolution against Napoleon’s government, Snowball, is chased away fairly early on in the book. Meanwhile in “Anthem,” the novella ends when Prometheus reaches the house in the mountain and we never get to see him build a new society. To simplify, “Animal Farm” and “Anthem” just do not show success, so the novels can hardly serve as motivation to stand up against injustice. “Anthem” and “Animal Farm” do a good job at painting a picture of how poorly communism works out for the majority of people, but it does not do a good job at showing students that revolutions are possible. And as I have alluded to before, the threat of communism is very outdated, considering that you can count the amount of modern day communist states on your fingers.

Just consider it — what is more relevant to modern day American students, a Cold War era novel or a popular young adult novel about young people standing up against injustice?

About the author: Corwin Shapiro is a senior at McKinley High School. Prior to that, he attended Voyager Public Charter school from kindergarten to eighth grade.

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