Have you wondered, “Could Ayn Rand teach today in your school? Would other teachers allow her to express her ideas in classrooms, since many in business and entertainment find her ideas useful and profitable?”
I would vote to include her and would work with her. However, I think most teachers would vote, “No.” Few public school educators would knowingly work with her or want even her influence in their school.
I started wondering about these questions when I came across a recent review by Kim Girard of Rand’s bestsellers Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. I wss assembling background for writing future conversations with Dr. Doynit about his New Era School Initiative (NESI) of accelerated learning.
I also wonder to what extent familiarity with Rand’s philosophy supports the use of state-of-the-art communications technologies, such as Tablet and other mobile PCs, in schools?
Some have branded Rand the mother of “objectivism,” a philosophy followed by CEOs, MBAs, and others who aspire to so called mover-and-shaker and leadership positions, including in education.
Girard cites one of Rand’s principles as Every man exists for his own sake. Pursuit of his own rational self-interest and his own happiness is his life’s moral purpose.
An internationally recognized educator and teacher prep leader summarized this aspect of her philosophy when he said to me, “As we start to work together, I want you to know my priorities. They are Me, My job, and then My family. You come after these. I fired my best friend, (because he did not contribute to me meeting my priorities).”
He has been and likely remains a strong public supporter of “communitas” programs (cooperative learning, group projects, community building, conflict mitigation, etc.) in schools, as have more educators and other social welfare workers than I have counted who hold similar conflicting personal priorities and public positions. Many even changed their families in order to continue with priorities one and two.
An example of this conflict, arguably can be made, that teacher unions and professional development programs that emphasize teacher pay and teaching conditions give priorities to teachers over student learning.
The conflict between personal priorities and public posturing of educators bothers me more than does the priority of me-first. It takes a certain amount of me-first confidence to start and operate a business, to serve as a school teacher or superintendent, to perform a solo on-stage, to miss a tackle in a football game and then try again, as well as to initiate and place first in school academics.
The conflict appears unnecessarily uninformed at best.
Perhaps reading the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged should be required reading for at least one analytic paper in undergraduate intro or social foundations to education courses as well as graduate seminars. Wish I’d of thought of including them when I offered those courses.
Without thinking it through, I’d urge national teaching and supervision boards to examine the extent to which applicants know about objectivism and how to use it to increase student learning rates.
And then, I wonder if these steps would help set the stage for entrepreneurship given similar emphasis in K12 curricula to communitas programs.
I’m guessing that this conflict dampens, at best, student learning rates with and without uses of Tablet and other mobile PCs.
Hmm, the appearance of private me-first priorities conflicting with public communitas programs in schooling seems like a ripe topic for a several lit reviews and dissertations. Seems like a conflict index could emerge and serve a useful purpose during hiring and performance evaluation sessions with educators.
Yes?
Anyone interested in examining how much objectivism compare with communitas contributes to increasing learning rates with and without Tablet and other mobile PCs?
Kim Girard, Why do CEOs (still) love Ayn Rand?