800,000 Ayn Rand Novels in Classrooms This Year
May 24, 2007

IRVINE, CA--This school year, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) shipped more than 325,000 free copies of Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to high school teachers all across North America. Adding these shipments to those in recent years which remain in classrooms today, ARI estimates that more than 800,000 students studied Ayn Rand's novels in 25,000 classrooms this school year. More than 16,200 teachers and 1.5 million students have participated in this program since it began in 2002. The program is funded through the generosity of ARI's contributors.

Each school year ARI distributes promotional flyers that offer free classroom sets of Anthem and The Fountainhead to English and language arts teachers, department heads and principals, as well as selected counselors and high school administrators. This offer is available to both public and private high schools throughout the United States. In addition, some teachers may request Atlas Shrugged.

Each teacher that requests these books receives a classroom set of the novels, along with a teacher's guide, lesson plans and information about ARI's annual Anthem, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged essay contests. ARI also offers teachers phone and e-mail support, as needed, to facilitate their teaching of the books in their classes. More information on the Free Books to Teachers program is available at the Ayn Rand Institute's Web site, www.aynrand.org/freebooks.

In addition to the Free Books program, ARI has also recently launched a new Web site for students, at http://www.aynrandnovels.com/. The site currently contains information about Ayn Rand's life, her novels and her ideas, as well as information on the Institute's other activities of interest to students, such as essay contests and the Objectivist Academic Center. ARI will continue to add content to the new site, including a six-hour course on The Fountainhead (release date, June 2007). Other courses and lectures on Anthem and Atlas Shrugged, and a "bulletin board" feature for moderated online discussions, are scheduled for release later this year. The primary goal of the new Web site is to help enhance the learning experience, and to generate enthusiasm among teachers and students for the ideas introduced in the novels and courses.