I have a problem or six with this quote from Ayn Rand:
"The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life—by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past—and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort."
The entire quote smacks of kids needing something done TO them: teach, develop, equip, train, "has to be taught." It's completely antithetical to how we approach the world. We believe our kids arrived in our lives as complete people. They learn from what they see, do, and experience, just as adults do, but THEY own the process. Our part of it is simply to make their home and lifestyle as kind and fun and resource-rich as we can. What they take from it is completely up to them.
It's that old question about whether there is anything that kids MUST learn. I think the answer is "no," because as soon as you put something on that list, you take away from the kids the unfettered, creative right to determine for themselves what has value in their lives. And learning *that* is the most important learning of all.
Traveling, sleeping
2 hours ago
7 comments:
I just hate everything about Ayn Rand.
What Idzie said.
A half-baked pseudo-philosopher of the worst kind. It's no wonder that she's the darling of half-baked ideologues.
As Addison once said: He[She] thought he[she] was a wit and he[she] was half right.
You have no idea how much I hate being put in the position of defending something Ayn Rand says. For the record, I think her writing is, in general, the worst sort of poppycock, an opiate for the selfish and cruel.
But ...
I think that Rand wasn't talking about children of the playing age. The education she describes is, I think, perfectly appropriate for those over the age of 13 or 14, and in fact is crucial. It is the sort of thing that isn't taught in the US at all until college, and then it has to be taught as a remedial course in How To Think.
People arrive in college unable to argue a position, especially to argue against a position with which they agree. They often cannot read a story, and say what it is 'about' beyond the schematic of the events that transpire in it. They can't defend their own core beliefs except with empty cant.
They're incapable of seeing both sides of any story, and address either side with discernment. They can't distinguish between beliefs, theories, facts and fallacies.
The lack of this sort of learning is why people on both the right and left of the political spectrum can be swayed by a demagogue talking specious bullshit, and it is a threat to our continued existence as a democracy.
Kent, I have the same problems with this quote regardless of the age of the student.
"Determine what has value" in your life. Yes! I think you hit on a great way to think of unschooling. If someone is different from someone else's idea of what they should be, it is only because they have a different view of what has value. Thank you for this post.
-=-People arrive in college unable to argue a position, especially to argue against a position with which they agree. They often cannot read a story, and say what it is 'about' beyond the schematic of the events that transpire in it. They can't defend their own core beliefs except with empty cant. -=-
I don't believe this is true of teens or young people who were unschooled so much as it might be of those whose spirits were thrown down and trod upon for a dozen years by school.
Ayn Rand didn't have children. Her novels (I've read three, taught one when I was a teacher) are her therapeutic wrangling with her own childhood and revolutionary regrets and frustrations.
That quote is a huge wad of "has to" and I no longer sit quietly by in the presence of "have to."
http://sandradodd.com/haveto
My 8YO and I were talking today about this. She asked "Why do they (friend's parents) want her (friend) to go to school?"
I came out with this (and was rather pleased myself actually as I was thinking on the fly)
"Most people have been taught that kids need to be taught, that kids can't learn without being taught, and they believe it."
DD's response "That's wrong."
Me ~ :-D
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