Dunno why this is being downvoted. Animal Farm is a commentary / allegory on communism. Teaching it to young minds who have not experienced the difference between the realities of communism and the rest is a vanity at best.
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.
That's a bold and misguided assertion of authorial intent.
Since you're a fan of the scientific method: you can please cite sources in support of your claim?
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.
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.
So, we shouldn't learn about history until we experience it ourselves? Seems like that would eliminate, uh, most of history.
I haven't experienced the harsh realities of the Cretaceous period but I still like reading about dinosaurs.
Today, the obvious communist societies are China and North Korea, with Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba perhaps the lesser-known of the bunch.
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?
While it's true that the finer political nuances of Animal Farm are likely to be lost on most children, it's a perfectly comprehensible story in its own right, and it needn't be read narrowly as an allegory about Communism per se.