The Objective Standard Blog
The Objective Standard Blog
Friday, April 03, 2009
Does My Child Know Grammar Better Than Me?
I would say that a debate is raging in our culture over whether or not we need to preserve the formal rules of grammar, but the sad truth is that there are too few defenders of grammar for a debate to rage. I am lonely in my fervency. Nevertheless, a few recent books and articles have brought the dispute between grammar snobs and grammar slobs to the fore.
Pundit of punctuation Lynne Truss tried to rally readers to her "zero tolerance approach to punctuation" with her bestseller Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. Alas, Birmingham, England didn't heed the call. In January, the city council abolished apostrophes from street signs, inviting criticism from pro-grammar organizations like the "Apostrophe Protection Society," and from our own students at VanDamme Academy, who condemned the decision in a paper written for Mrs. Battaglia's (or "Mrs. Battaglias," if we follow the Birmingham precedent) writing class. "If children grow up there, they will learn not to put apostrophes in possessive words," said 8-year-old Greta. "Usually kids learn from their surroundings."
This debate has also been given center stage unwittingly by President Obama. Obama, widely praised as a consummate intellectual, has been criticized by advocates of grammar for committing such common blunders as the inversion of "me" and "I."
In a February New York Times op-ed, Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman echoed the sentiments of many Americans when they defended President Obama against the "grammar junkies," claiming that the rules for pronouns are 19th-century creations that have no necessity in reality.
Really?
To illustrate my answer, I brought the following example into my Room 4 grammar class. Rather than the innocuous, "President Bush graciously invited Michelle and I," what if President Obama had said, "Michelle likes President Bush better than I." Is this a mere difference of opinion about the former President, or a scandal? The ambiguity is resolved with a universal understanding of the rules of grammar.
"Michelle likes him better than I," as my grammar students can tell you, contains an elliptical adverb clause with "I" as the subject, and means, "Michelle likes him better than I like him." On the other hand, "Michelle likes him better than me," contains an elliptical clause with "me" as the direct object, and means, "Michelle likes him better than she likes me."
So, if you whose children are gaining a thorough mastery of the rules of grammar have ever asked yourselves, "Does my child know grammar better than me?" the answer is no, he should know you better. And by the time he graduates, he will know better than to ask the question like that.
Follow this link for the latest VanDamme Academy Newsletter, which features this article and more.
Labels: Education
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Life After VanDamme Academy
The following is an interview with Evan Storms, a VanDamme Academy graduate currently in the process of applying to college. Perhaps my favorite part of the interview was his answer to my request for the interview itself: "Considering what I gained from your school, I would write a doctoral thesis for you if you needed it; but I can settle for the interview."
When did you attend VanDamme Academy?
I attended VanDamme Academy for two-and-a-half years from 2003 to 2005, from sixth to eighth grade.
Where had you gone to school prior to that, and how did your experience there differ from your time at VDA?
Before VanDamme Academy, I attended a reputedly exceptional public elementary school in Laguna Hills. My education there differed from my experience at VanDamme fundamentally. Where VanDamme offered a logically-structured, ordered curriculum, my elementary education consisted of unconnected lessons seemingly chosen at random; science would cover volcanoes one week, and the anatomy of a frog the next.
Where do you attend high school, and what have been the strengths and weaknesses of your experience there?
I attend Fairmont Preparatory Academy in Anaheim. Academically, the school is, to the best of my knowledge, the strongest in the area. Fairmont offers a wide range of AP and otherwise advanced courses, generally taught by knowledgeable teachers who present their material clearly and logically.
Moreover, the school allows considerable academic freedom; it has, for example, allowed me to create my own independent study philosophy course, and has created two new math classes so that I can continue to advance. The number of intellectually ambitious students at the school, however, is small. And despite the strengths of the higher level courses, the curriculum in general emphasizes memorization over understanding, with the widespread use of multiple-choice testing and the heavy reliance on textbooks.
What have been some of your most important achievements since your time at VanDamme Academy?
Since attending VanDamme Academy, I have excelled in every facet of my academics: I have earned nearly perfect grades, taken and earned fives on eight AP exams, and been recognized as a national merit scholarship finalist.
Where have you applied to college, and why?
Though I applied to many schools, I am only sincerely interested in attending two: Duke and Stanford University. Both schools offer strong general academic programs, so that, whichever course of study I ultimately choose, I will be able to study under a first-class department.
How do you think your experience at VanDamme Academy shaped you?
At VanDamme Academy, I gained the foundations of an independent mind. I learned that ideas have consequences, are important, and are worth pursuing. I learned to think logically, to allow myself no half-formed knowledge or superficial understanding. I learned to appreciate great literature, to analyze facts scientifically, to write with clarity. And I learned that the sublime is possible to the man who thinks.
Labels: Education
Thursday, October 09, 2008
'A Pygmalion of the Soul'
"It is a beautiful thing to mold a statue and give it life; it is more beautiful to shape an intelligence and give it truth." —Victor Hugo
The first work of literature read in Room 4 this year was Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw. The musical My Fair Lady was based upon this classic play.
Pygmalion is the story of a lowly flower girl who is invited into the home of a brilliant phonetician after he makes a bet that he can teach her the elegance and speech of a proper English lady and pass her off as a duchess at a garden party.
In the play's most comical scene, a favorite among the students, Eliza, the flower girl, ventures into society for the first time. Having been told to confine her conversation to the benign and inoffensive topics of weather and health, she discusses, with the utmost elegance of manners and articulation, her suspicion that her aunt who had allegedly died from influenza had actually been murdered over a hat. And so begins a comedy of errors, in which, as Higgins the phonetician says, the problem is not "how" she says things but "what" she says.
With more training, Eliza learns to curb her coarse speech, and she becomes thoroughly polished, dignified, and charming. Her debut at the garden party is a smashing and unmitigated success. She has become a proper English lady.
But in the last and most important scene of the play, we discover that though she has learned to be a lady, she has not yet learned to be a human being—an independent, self-sufficient individual with her own judgment and her own sense of self worth. She has learned how to conform to the standards of elite society, but she has not learned how to form her own standards.
It is only when she drops her decorum and stands up self-confidently against Higgins that he says, "By George Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have."
Because for Higgins (and for Shaw), the mark of a worthy person is not conformity to the standards of the upper classes. Rather, a worthy person is one who has-in my favorite expression of the play—his "own soul," his "own spark of divine fire."
Teaching the play this time, it struck me as metaphorical for my own view of education.
Just as Eliza was taught in a way that allowed her to be passed off as a duchess at a garden party, the best of schools today teach children in a way that allows them to be passed off as educated at a cocktail party. But have they learned to be independent, self- sufficient, clear thinking, passionate human beings? Have they gained their own "spark of divine fire"?
That is our goal at VanDamme Academy. Our aim is not to teach the children a stock set of facts that will make them culturally literate. Our aim is to empower them with the lessons of history, to equip them with the tools of math and science, to provide them the fuel and inspiration of literature—to endow them with the wisdom that will give them the means to live the life of a rational, happy, efficacious human being.
That is why the following were highlights of my week.
First, when Room 4 read that last act of Pygmalion, we came to a scene in which Higgins calls Eliza a fool and she responds that the comment is "not proper." I put down the play and asked the class what Higgins's response to that would be. 11-year-old Taylor's bright eyes became incandescent with understanding and her hand shot in the air. "He would say he doesn't care what's proper!" In that moment, she had not just grasped something deeply important about the character, she had grasped something about Shaw's philosophic perspective on life. She had understood that Shaw cares little for conformity to social standards. And her expression revealed that that kind of understanding was thrilling.
Second, I was stopped in the hall one afternoon this week by the mother of a 7-year-old girl named Emily. She told me that Emily had related to her a story from her book Adventures of the Greek Heroes. Emily told her mother the tragic tale of Admetus the king and his true love Alcestis. Admetus was dying, and the gods declared that if he were to remain with his love, someone would have to die in his place. Admetus went to his loyal subjects, his soldiers, his servants, then even to his own parents, but all feared to die for him. Finally, in a tragic twist, his own dear Alcestis, the love for whom he wanted to live, gave her life for his. As 7-year-old Emily shared the story, her voice became halting, and her mother noticed that she had tears in her eyes. (And as her mother told me this story, both she and I both had tears in ours.)
Our goal at VanDamme Academy is not to produce students who are refined, polished, and superficially educated. It is to produce students who are thoughtful, passionate, and sincerely educated.
My favorite author, Victor Hugo, has a passage in which he describes the role of a teacher. He says, "It is a beautiful thing to mold a statue and give it life; it is more beautiful to shape an intelligence and give it truth." And he captures this whole metaphor in an exquisitely poetic description, calling a teacher "a Pygmalion of the soul."
Follow this link for the latest VanDamme Academy Newsletter, which features the above article.
Labels: Education
Friday, September 26, 2008
Math Magic
Most math curricula are an absolute pedagogical mess.
I have long known that math programs treat children like human calculators, programming them with processes they use to input numbers and churn out results. But this became poignantly clear to me when I tried to teach my daughter long division this summer.
Confronted with a problem such as 2,832 divided by 8, I began my "explanation," hearkening back to the process that had been drilled into me in third grade. "8 goes into 28 how many times? 3. So you write a 3 above the 8. 8 times 3 is 24. Subtract 24 from 28 and you get 4. Then bring down the 3. 8 goes into 43 how many times?..." and so on. At the conclusion of my presentation, she said something simple but telling: "That is going to be a lot for me to remember."
Indeed, it is a lot for her to remember, because she is remembering, and not understanding.
If you want to grasp the poverty of your own education in math, I offer you the following challenge: explain long division. Explain it to a child, to an adult, to yourself—but really explain it. Use words to describe not the process, but the reason for the process: why each number goes where it does; why you subtract, or divide, or bring down; why the process works. It won't be easy. I maintain that if you had been educated properly in math, it would be.
One of the defining principles of the VanDamme method is a concerted effort to ensure that every item of knowledge possessed by the child is true knowledge, to ensure that he understands it thoroughly, independently, conceptually. To realize this goal in math will require a total overhaul of the standard curriculum. It will require that someone strip the program down to essentials, arrange the material with total faithfulness to hierarchy, and design assessments that are true tests of the child's understanding.
Meanwhile, we can take moderate steps in that direction, by requiring, for example, that the children give complete, verbal explanations for all that they do in math.
Mr. Steele, VanDamme Academy math teacher for a group of 7 & 8-year-olds, demands of his students that they not just blurt out answers, or crank through mechanical processes. He makes them explain the processes using the proper terminology and demonstrating that they understand what they are doing and why.
If, for example, he is teaching subtraction with borrowing, and puts a problem on the board such as 2700 – 350, someone in the class will invariably ask, "Can I just tell you the answer?" Mr. Steele's answers are charming—and pedagogically correct.
Sometimes he says, "I don't want you to do 'magic math.' I don't want you stare up at the sky, come up with a number, and blurt it out to the class. That doesn't help us understand, and that doesn't show me that you understand. I want you to explain how you arrived at your answer."
At other times, he says, "Let's play a game called 'Mr. Steele bumped his head and can't remember math.' Don't just give me the answer, teach me the process by which you arrived at your answer."
The students proceed with explanations that demand, among other things, that they use concepts of place value (if they begin the problem above by saying, "0 minus 0 is 0," he says, "That's true," and waits for them to tell him that you put a 0 in the ones' place before he writes a 0 on the board), and that they explain what they are doing when they borrow (if they say, "Cross out the 5 and put a 4, and put a 10 in the tens' place," he will ask, "What does that 10 represent? 10 what? 10 monkeys?" which will make them giggle and offer the correction, "10 tens silly!").
These children are not treated like human calculators, they are treated like thinking beings. And when they truly grasp the concepts they are using, when they can explain them fully and articulately, when they retain them because they are not memorizing, but understanding—that is real math magic.
Labels: Education
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
California Children Still Considered State Property by Thomas A. Bowden
In a decision being widely hailed as a victory for parental rights, a Los Angeles County court has confirmed, grudgingly, that homeschooling “is permitted under California statutes.” In so ruling, the court reversed an earlier decision that ordered the parents of “Rachel L.” to send her away to a public or private school, where she could get a “legal education.”
But where’s the real victory for parents’ rights? Rights identify actions you can take without permission. A true victory would have been a judicial declaration that parents have an absolute right to control their children’s upbringing—and that they therefore don’t need government permission to educate their children as they see fit.
Instead, as this decision makes clear, California’s parents are expected to accept the status of perpetual supplicants, knees bent and backs bowed down to an all-powerful legislature that can decide at any moment to revoke its homeschooling “permission.”
Neither the state nor “society as a whole” has any interests of its own in your child’s education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government’s only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children’s, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.
To give parents a permanent victory, California would need to make its law consistent with America’s founding principles. Parents are sovereign individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their child’s upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child.
Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents’ moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your child’s upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or personally educating him at home.
Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account for California’s arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children residing within its borders.
Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child’s parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.
By confirming that homeschooling is legal in California (at least for the time being), the recent court decision will undoubtedly quiet the shockwaves that were threatening to impact the apologists for government education—teachers’ unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their political and financial survival depends on a policy that treats children as, in effect, state property—but they have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, when the undiluted collectivism of that policy is trumpeted publicly.
The defenders of public schooling can now go back to papering over their system’s own failures‑‑the very failures that helped fuel the homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge from the irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize government education, in California and elsewhere.
But what if parents stopped groveling and started asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools, dictating educational standards for children, and “permitting” parents to homeschool their own kids? This would call into question the moral foundation of public education as such.
As the smoke clears from the current round of litigation, the battle lines remain as they were, clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals whose right to guide their children’s development the state may not infringe?
The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the future of education in America.
####### #######
Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his op-eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Education, Individual Rights and Law
Sunday, August 10, 2008
$43,000 to Winners of 'The Fountainhead' Essay Contest
Irvine, CA—High school senior Ryan Holley, from Burlington, IA, is the winner of the Ayn Rand Institute's annual "Fountainhead" essay contest, for which he received a prize of $10,000.
Open to high school juniors and seniors, the "Fountainhead" essay contest requires contestants to write on one of several topics dealing with the characters and themes in the novel. The contest is designed to promote critical thinking and writing skills. Essays are judged on both style and content.
The following students have won this year's second and third prizes:
Second-Prize Winners ($2,000):
- Shea Levy, 12th Grade, New York, NY
- Kristen Liu, 12th Grade, Warrensburg, MO
- Sarah Magill, 12th Grade, Aravada, CO
- Matthew Noakes, 11th Grade, Modesto, CA
- Stasey Vishnevetsky, 12th Grade, New Haven, CT
Third-Prize Winners ($1,000):
- Michael Bruner, 12th Grade, Ames, IA
- Nathan Doan, 12th Grade, Elizabethtown, PA
- Michael Harris, 11th Grade, Burbank, CA
- Yameen Huq, 12th Grade, Cumming, GA
- Jessica Hwang, 11th Grade, Columbia, MO
- David Kurz, 12th Grade, Smithsburg, MD
- Jade Lawrence, 12th Grade, Fallbrook, CA
- Molly Ma, 11th Grade, Richmond, VA
- Madeline Magnuson, 11th Grade, Idaho Falls, ID
- Raphael Pond, 12th Grade, Westminster, MD
In addition to the $30,000 awarded to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, other finalists and semifinalists received a total of $13,000.
=======
First published in 1943, "The Fountainhead" offers the vision of a totally independent man, architect Howard Roark, who stands against society's conventions.
Since 1985 a total of more than 190,000 high school students from around the world have entered ARI essay contests. This year, more than 5,000 students submitted their essays on "The Fountainhead."
Each year ARI awards more than $57,000 in prizes to high school students and has given away more than a half a million dollars to contest winners during the past 23 years.
Information about next year's competition can be found at http://aynrand.org/contests.
Media inquiries: media@aynrand.org 949-222-6550, ext 213
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Announcements, Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Education
Thursday, April 24, 2008
An Interview with Lisa VanDamme on Education and Objectivism
Michael F. Shaughnessy, a senior columnist for Education News, has published a wonderful interview with Lisa VanDamme. Here are the first two questions and answers:
1) Lisa, first of all, what got you interested in education and teaching?
From one perspective, you could say I stumbled upon my career as a school owner and director; in another sense it is the perfect harmony of my lifelong interests.
The "chance" element came in 1996, when I had just graduated with a degree in philosophy and was contacted (through mutual friends) by some families in California who were fed up with traditional schools and were seeking a private teacher for their children. I came home one day to a message on my answering machine informing me of this unusual opportunity.
I very quickly became enthusiastic about the prospect: I would be given the opportunity to educate children as they might and ought to be educated, entirely unlike I had been educated in public schools, and as I had been attempting to educate myself as an adult. I interviewed, was hired, and packed my bags to begin the adventure.
I can only describe those early years of home-schooling as a magical experience. The children were wildly enthusiastic about learning: with my guidance, they became logical, articulate and eager writers; they devoured classics of world literature and learned to appreciate them with intellectual sophistication and deep emotion; they progressed to the limit of their capability rather than being held back by classmates; etc.—and, as it might and ought to be, they sincerely loved to learn.
I was convinced that the principles that made that home-school experience so "magical" could be translated into a school environment. So, in 2001 my ex-husband and I started VanDamme Academy, a school dedicated to giving children a real education. The school was to provide all that—and only that—which was necessary to help the children mature into informed, thoughtful, rational, life-loving adults. Rather than endless, fill-in-the-bubble busywork, rather than agenda-laden discussions of current events, rather than classes on everything from cooking to citizenship to clay making, rather than countless play-days meant to make the supposed drudgery of learning palatable, we would just educate them, in the core curriculum. That has been my ever-improving goal for the last ten years.
Though in a sense I stumbled upon my career, with that out-of-the-blue call from California, it is the perfect integration of my love of children and my passion for philosophy. I have the opportunity to contemplate, research, write about, and then apply my most deeply held philosophic convictions to the proper education of children, and then the joy of observing the results in year after year of students.
2) Who has influenced you?
The greatest influence on my philosophic views broadly was the philosopher Ayn Rand, and the greatest influence on my educational philosophy was Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand's intellectual heir and the father of one of my first students.
I discovered Ayn Rand in college and was awed by her philosophic insights, which, in contrast to all I had learned in my philosophy classes, made sense, were consistent with my life experiences, gave new order and intelligibility to the world around me, and identified rational principles by which I could guide my actions in order to live a fulfilled and joyful life.
I learned from Ayn Rand both the importance of having a philosophy to guide your life, and what a rational, life-affirming philosophy would look like.
Leonard Peikoff's course "Philosophy of Education" applied Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism to educational theory, and it is that course which has been the most formative influence of my career. The course identified a proper definition of "education," explaining the basic necessity and purpose of education. It identified the principles that define which courses a good education should comprise, and the basic methodology that should be followed in teaching those courses.
It contrasted a rational approach to education with that of other historical movements in education, such as Dewey's progressive method and Prussian education. It showed me, in essence, what had been wrong with my own education and how to redeem education for my students.
Read the whole thing here.
Labels: Education
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Your Child Is Not State Property by Thomas A. Bowden
Rocked by a nationwide storm of criticism, the Los Angeles County court that declared homeschooling illegal in California has agreed to rehear the case in June. At issue is Justice H. Walter Croskey's Feb. 28 decree, which ordered the parents of "Rachel L." to send her away to a public or private school, where she can get a "legal education."
Justice Croskey's edict interpreted state education laws that govern all children, whatever their home situation and "whatever the quality" of their home education. Except for the rare case when parents already hold state teaching credentials, parents who find public schools intolerable and cannot locate or afford a suitable private school were branded by the decree as outlaws if they choose to instruct their child at home.
California legislators were entitled to enact this blanket prohibition, according to the judge, because they feared the supposed social disorder that would result from "allowing every person to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests."
"Allowing"? By what right does government presume to "allow" (or, in this case, forbid) you to make your own standards concerning your child's education?
Government has no such right. Neither the state nor "society as a whole" has any interests of its own in your child's education. A society is only a group of individuals, and the government's only legitimate function is to protect the individual rights of its citizens, including yours and your children's, against physical force and fraud. The state is your agent, not a separate entity with interests that can override your rights.
If Justice Croskey's description of California law is correct, then the state's educational policy is at odds with America's founding principles. Parents are sovereign individuals whose right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness includes the right to control their child's upbringing. Other citizens, however numerous or politically powerful, have no moral right to substitute their views on child-raising for those of the father and mother who created that child.
Instead, a proper legal system recognizes and protects parents' moral right to pursue the personal rewards and joys of child-raising. At every stage, you have a right to set your own standards and act on them without government permission. This parental right to control your child's upbringing includes the right to manage his education, by choosing an appropriate school or personally educating him at home.
Of course, there are certain situations in which government must step in to protect the rights of a child, as in cases of physical abuse or neglect. But no such concern for individual rights can account for California's arrogant assertion of state control over the minds of all school-age children residing within its borders.
Education, like nutrition, should be recognized as the exclusive domain of a child's parents, within legal limits objectively defining child abuse and neglect. Parents who starve their children may properly be ordered to fulfill their parental obligations, on pain of losing legal custody. But the fact that some parents may serve better food than others does not permit government to seize control of nutrition, outlaw home-cooked meals, and order all children to report for daily force-feeding at government-licensed cafeterias.
The shockwaves from Justice Croskey's decision will likely impact not just homeschoolers but also the apologists for government education—teachers' unions, educational bureaucrats, and politicians. Their political and financial survival depends on a policy that treats children as, in effect, state property—but only rarely is the undiluted collectivism of that policy trumpeted so publicly.
What if, in the harsh glare of the "Rachel L." case, parents start asking whether the state has any right at all to be running schools and dictating educational standards for children, in order to advance society's "interests"? This calls into question the moral foundation of public education as such. In this light, one wonders if the court's decision to rehear the case could be a first step toward muting, and muddying, the controversy.
For their part, the defenders of public schooling can be expected to stay busy papering over their system's own failures—the very failures that helped fuel the homeschooling movement, by driving desperate parents to seek refuge at home from the irrationality, violence, and mediocrity that have come to characterize government education, in California and elsewhere.
For now, at least, the battle lines are clearly drawn. Are parents mere drudges whose social duty is to feed and house their spawn between mandatory indoctrination sessions at government-approved schools? Or are they sovereign individuals whose right to guide their children's development the state may not infringe?
The answer could determine not only the future of homeschooling but the future of education in America.
Thomas A. Bowden is an analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, focusing on legal issues. A former lawyer and law school instructor who practiced for twenty years in Baltimore, Maryland, his Op-Eds have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Daily News, and many other newspapers. Mr. Bowden has given dozens of radio interviews and has appeared on the Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Education, Individual Rights and Law
Monday, March 31, 2008
More on the Propriety of Donations with 'Strings'
The latest attack on BB&T’s educational donations—and on academic freedom—comes by way of this Charlotte Observer editorial, which opens with the obvious truth that “A public university's faculty and administration—not donors—should have the final say on the content of courses.” The editorial closes with the obvious truth that “it’s wrong to strike fund-raising deals that suggest a university's curriculum can be shaped by the highest bidder.” Unfortunately, what lies between those two undeniable truths is a series of non sequiturs, non-principles, and nonsense having nothing to do with the factual nature of BB&T’s grants.
Of course the faculty and administration of a university should have the final say on the content of courses—and of course it is wrong for a university’s curriculum to be shaped by the highest bidder. If a university were to permit the content of its curriculum to be shaped by the highest bidder, imagine the cognitive destruction that could be wrought by the likes of George Soros or British Petroleum (BP). But for the Observer to suggest that BB&T somehow has or seeks the final say regarding the content of university curricula is absurd.
Certain universities and professors have chosen to include Ayn Rand’s books in the reading material of their courses, and some of them have sought and received BB&T grants that are contingent on including her works. This voluntary meeting of minds is called academic freedom and moral responsibility: The academics are free to choose their course content and to accept or reject the grants—and BB&T is being morally responsible with respect to its donations by ensuring that its money is put toward curricula consonant with its values.
The second sentence of the Observer editorial claims: “Otherwise, the college classroom becomes just another a [sic] arena of commerce, not a place where independent learning and research take place.” If an arena of commerce (i.e., free trade) is somehow incompatible with learning, does this mean that no one can learn anything by reading the Charlotte Observer, which is certainly an arena of commerce? The notion that free trade is incompatible with independent learning or research is utterly refuted by such obvious examples as the private-school industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the computer and software industries, and libraries—which are filled with the products of the book-publishing industry. If the Observer’s editors want to proceed with their “logic” they will have to contend with these facts.
The editorial continues: “That’s why the University of North Carolina system ought to enact a clear policy that forbids universities to seek or accept private funds that come with strings about what will be taught to students. This is an important principle, one that affects each of the 16 campuses.” If the Observer’s editors had read and understood the works of Ayn Rand when they were in college, they wouldn’t call such a non-principle a “principle.” A principle is a general truth on which other truths depend. The actual and relevant principle here is that of academic freedom: recognition of the fact that teachers and universities should be free to choose their materials and to seek funding for their courses—including, if they choose, funding that comes with strings. If the Observer’s editors have a principled argument against academic freedom, they should put it forth. To do so, however, they will have to specify the general truth by reference to which professors and universities should be forbidden to choose their materials and curricula and to accept funding in support of their choices.
As to the alleged impropriety of businessmen and corporations donating money to support educational initiatives of which they approve, the fact of the matter is that it is illogical and immoral to give money to an educational organization without stipulating in principle (if not in detail) how that money is to be used. If you blindly give money to a biology department rather then specify what the department must teach in order to receive your donation, the department might use your money to teach “intelligent design” as science. Likewise, if you blindly give money to a political science department rather than attach strings stating what the department must teach in order to receive your funds, the department might use your money to teach such nonsense as the notion that socialism is compatible with freedom.
Donating money without strings to universities is not noble; it is irrational and irresponsible. Nor does the attachment of strings to a donation in any way violate the autonomy of the recipient (be it a professor or department or university); he (or it) remains (and should remain) free to accept or reject the offer.
In sum, this is how educational donations should work: Professors and universities seeking funding for their courses should say—and be free to say—in effect, “Here is what we want to teach, and we will accept donations to teach it.” Likewise, businessmen and corporations who want to support higher education should say—and be free to say—in effect, “Here is what we would like to see taught, and we’re willing to donate money to those who are willing to teach it.” To argue against this approach is to argue against academic freedom and moral responsibility.
BB&T’s donations would not have ruffled a feather had they gone toward teaching the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or John Stuart Mill or Thomas Hobbes. It is high time that the anti-Rand academics and the rabble-rousing media stop spewing fallacies and abusing language in their efforts to keep Rand’s ideas out of higher education (where they are clearly and desperately needed). If these people have a valid argument against academic freedom and moral responsibility, they should set it forth in plain, logical English. If not, they should move on to less obnoxious endeavors.
See also Rational 'Strings' are Good Things
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Education
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Rational 'Strings' are Good Things
“Gifts with Strings a Knotty Issue,” is the latest in a recent stream of articles about academics going berserk because BB&T, under the direction of CEO John Allison, has made contributions to universities with the stipulation that Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged be included somewhere in the schools’ curricula. For those who have not yet read Atlas, let me begin by saying a few words about the novel in order to set the context necessary for understanding the hostility of certain academics toward the book.
Atlas Shrugged is a spellbinding mystery about a man who said he would stop the motor of the world—and did. But the book is more than a wonderful suspense story; it is also a profound philosophical treatise dramatizing: the fact that reality is absolute (i.e., that facts are facts and cannot be wished or prayed away); the fact that reason is man’s only means of knowledge and basic means of survival; the fact that the requirements of man’s life constitute the standard of moral value; the fact that pursuing one’s rational self-interest is moral because doing so is necessary for one’s life; the fact that the initiation of physical force against a human being is immoral because it stops him from acting on his rational judgment (i.e., his basic means of living); and the fact that laissez-faire capitalism is the only moral social system because it is the only social system that bars physical force from social relationships, thereby enabling everyone to act fully in accordance with his own rational judgment and thus to live fully as a human being. The theme of Atlas Shrugged is a condensation of all of this: the supreme role of reason in man’s life.
Given the forgoing, it should come as no surprise that many of today’s academics loathe Rand and Atlas. “Absolutes? Reason? Egoism? Banning force? Capitalism?”—you can hear them shrieking in horror. Nor should it come as a surprise that these hostile-to-reason academics are coming unglued at the idea of Atlas being included in university curricula: The ideas presented in the novel clearly correspond to reality and thus are persuasive to students and threatening to the academic status quo.
What is a little surprising, however, is the ridiculously transparent nature of the “arguments” used in the efforts to keep Atlas out of the academic mix.
The universities receiving these donations from BB&T made voluntary agreements with the corporation whereby, in exchange for the donations, the schools include Atlas in the reading material for certain courses. More importantly, the professors in whose courses the book is used personally choose to use it because they see educational value in the book. Nevertheless, as the above article reports: “The schools’ agreements have drawn criticism from some faculty, who say it compromises academic integrity. In higher education, the power to decide course content is supposed to rest with professors, not donors.” Are we to believe that these anti-Atlas academics regard the act of using a book in which one sees educational value as a compromise of academic integrity? If so, they are operating with a bizarre definition of integrity. Integrity is, as one of the heroes in Atlas Shrugged puts it, “the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness . . . that man is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of two attributes: of matter and consciousness, and that he may permit no breach between body and mind, between action and thought, between his life and his convictions….” The incensed professors would do well to pick up the book.
Another “argument” against the agreements was eloquently put forth by UNC-Charlotte religious studies professor Richard Cohen, who complains that BB&T’s gift is “going to make us look like a rinky-dink university.”
I don’t know how else to say this: If anything makes a school look like a rinky-dink university, it is the unwillingness of its faculty to make independent, rational judgments about such things as what constitutes good curricula. Setting aside tangentially relevant issues (such as the fact that the University of Texas at Austin has accepted a $2 million grant from BB&T to establish a Chair for the study of Objectivism), second-handedly following the lead of more established universities that (allegedly) wouldn’t accept generous donations with the stipulation that they must include Atlas Shrugged in the reading material of a course or two is no way to succeed or become a leader in the field of education. The principle of independence is, as one of the heroes in Atlas Shrugged puts it, “the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it—that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life—that the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and your existence.” This principle applies to universities just as it applies to individuals. Professor Cohen and his sympathizers could profit from reading Atlas Shrugged. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)
The article continues:
Allison has been surprised that the gifts can generate controversy. He says he simply wants students exposed to the late author’s ideas, which he thinks the academic community has largely ignored. He welcomes opposing ideas.
In other words, the stipulation is not that other books must be excluded from the curriculum; the stipulation is only that Atlas Shrugged must be included. Are the sweating academics concerned that students who read Atlas will no longer fall for the canards of skepticism, mysticism, and collectivism?
[Allison] also points out that the schools approached the foundation, not the other way around.
“We obviously can’t make anybody teach something,” he says. “We wouldn’t want to, we wouldn’t try to. These are professors that want to teach this.”. . .
Critics of the agreements do not merely ignore this crucial point; they turn it on its head. The very academics who affirm that “the power to decide course content is supposed to rest with professors” simultaneously seek to obstruct professors who decide to include Atlas in their course content.
The article continues:
“Most of the defenders of free markets mostly do it from an economic perspective,” Allison says. “They argue that free markets produce a higher standard of living, which is certainly very good. But Rand makes a connection to human nature and why individual rights and free markets are the only system consistent with human nature.”
Observe that even today’s best defenders of free markets—such as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams—utterly fail to defend freedom on philosophical or moral grounds. Sowell regards human beings as innately depraved (e.g., “If you have ever seen a four-year-old trying to lord it over a two-year-old, then you know what the basic problem of human nature is”), which precludes him from recourse to human nature in defense of freedom. And Williams regards moral values as matters of opinion (e.g., “There are no facts whatsoever to which we can appeal to settle any disagreement. One person’s opinion on the matter is just as good as another’s”), which precludes him from employing morality in defense of freedom.
Rand defends freedom on moral and philosophical grounds—by showing that man’s life (as against “God’s will” or personal opinion or social convention) is the standard of moral value and that in order to live, man must be free to act on his rational judgment, which is his only means of knowledge (as against faith or “intuitions” or feelings)—and she does so by brilliantly dramatizing these truths in Atlas Shrugged. If this book is not qualified for inclusion in academia, then academia is not qualified to educate college students.
As to the putatively principled objection that donations to educational institutions in general shouldn’t come with strings attached, not only is this wrong; it is exactly backward. The opposite is true. As a matter of moral principle, all donations to universities should come with strings attached. Just as one should not blindly give money to a politician to do with as he sees fit, so one should not blindly give money to an educator to do with as he sees fit. The inclusion of strings (i.e., conditions pertaining to one’s values) makes a donation a trade, an exchange of value for value; it also establishes accountability, a means of determining whether each party does what he is supposed to do. Academics who don’t want to trade value for value—or to follow through on agreements—or to teach Atlas Shrugged are free not to accept donations that require such rational actions. But schools and professors who do want to engage in such actions should be free to choose and contract and teach accordingly.
John Allison and BB&T’s thoughtful, principled approach to supporting higher education is not a cause for academic anxiety; it is a model of moral propriety. Rather than being scorned for attaching rational strings to their educational donations, Mr. Allison and BB&T should be praised for setting an example of how all such donations should be made.
The greater the percentage of donations to universities that come with rational strings attached, the greater will be the percentage of schools that include rational ideas (such as those of Ayn Rand) in their curricula. Imagine the positive consequences of just a few additional highly successful corporations offering the kinds of thoughtful and purposeful donations to schools that BB&T now offers. Such a development could spark an educational revolution.
If you are a successful businessman, why not join Mr. Allison and BB&T in this admirable practice? Read Atlas Shrugged and see what you think. If you think it should be included in the curricula of schools to which you donate money, start donating with the appropriate strings attached. In addition to promoting the values on which human life and happiness depend, you will help expose the irrationality of those academics who will publicly denounce you for being rationally principled. Reasons don’t get any better than these.
See also More on the Propriety of Donations with 'Strings'
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Business and Economics, Education
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
One Million Ayn Rand Novels in Classrooms This Year
Irvine, CA—With a shipment of 80,000 books in January, the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) has placed more than 1 million copies of Ayn Rand's novels in the hands of high school teachers and their students across North America.
This astounding number of books has been provided for free by ARI, over the last six years, to high school teachers in the United States and Canada, as part of its mission to promote Ayn Rand's ideas in today's culture.
According to Marilee Dragsdahl, ARI's education manager, "Since we began this program in 2002, we sent teachers about 600,000 copies of Anthem, 400,000 copies of The Fountainhead and 50,000 copies of Atlas Shrugged. To date, 20,000 teachers have received and are using in their classrooms the Ayn Rand novels we sent them."
Each school year ARI distributes promotional flyers that offer free classroom sets of Ayn Rand's novels to English and language arts teachers, department heads and principals, as well as selected counselors and high school administrators. "This offer," said Mrs. Dragsdahl, "is available to both public and private high schools throughout the United States. Through this program, which I have been running since its inception, we estimate that almost 2 million students have read and studied Ayn Rand's novels."
"Each teacher who requests these books," explained Mrs. Dragsdahl, "receives a classroom set of the novels, along with a teacher's guide, lesson plans and information about ARI's annual Anthem, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged essay contests, which may well be the largest in the United States. We also offer phone and e-mail support to teachers to facilitate their teaching of the books in their classes. The response has been excellent."
Here is what some of the teachers who received free books from ARI and taught them in their classrooms had to say:
"Students were excited about the novels. They appreciated having their own copy and not having to share with other students. Overall positive experience for everyone involved. . . . Your providing a complimentary classroom set of books was a great offer, as budget constraints are a real issue in our district." (San Diego, CA)
"Our school could not have been more thrilled to receive all those free texts, and our students are gaining so much from them!" (Esparto, CA)
"In an age when we battle a multitude of distractions and apathy, these books have helped ignite a new spark in the classroom." (Victoria, TX)
"[My students] absolutely LOVED The Fountainhead. Over half of the students who read the novel cite major changes in the way they perceive their roles in their own lives. Many students feel that the novel has a life-changing impact, and several students convince friends in other classes to read the novel, as well.” (Carlsbad, CA)
"Students responded [to Anthem] with thoughtful reflection. They were honors 9th graders, and it was the first time they really had a book that presented them with so much to think about." (Covina, CA)
"I love Anthem and The Fountainhead. I have been recommending them to other teachers and students throughout my 20-year career." (Sierra Vista, AZ)
More information on the Free Books to Teachers program is available at the Ayn Rand Institute's Web site, www.aynrand.org/freebooks.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Ayn Rand and Objectivism, Education
Monday, January 28, 2008
VanDamme Academy in the News
Jillian Melchior has written an excellent piece titled " VanDamme Academy Shows Value of Choice" in The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News. Here’s the opening:
The VanDamme Academy, a K-8 school in Laguna Hills, California, has an unusual way of giving students a better foundation of knowledge.
Founder Lisa VanDamme said the students learn incrementally, not moving forward in concepts until they've mastered the one at hand. Moreover, teachers encourage them to make connections within and between the subjects, and between school and life.
"[We're] teaching in a very deliberate, planned, incremental order that provides for real understanding on the part of the child," VanDamme said. "They're starting on the small, simple steps and building on it, so at each new stage, they thoroughly grasp the material."
Personal Experience
Using a carefully planned curriculum, teachers help students build core knowledge and hone skills necessary for their future success, VanDamme said.VanDamme developed her teaching method when she began as a homeschool teacher to an exceptionally gifted child about 11 years ago. She drew on the experience of highly educated friends and the educational philosophy of Ayn Rand to put together her curriculum.
The school emphasizes science, math, history, and language arts, which VanDamme considers universally necessary for all mature, informed adults.
Students must demonstrate a thorough understanding of each topic, often writing essay questions to explain everything from scientific theories to vocabulary.
"Something can pass as knowledge when it's really just memorized gibberish," VanDamme explained. "We only consider ourselves successful if [students] can explain to us what they're doing in complete thoughts of their own.
"We don't give multiple choice or true/false [tests] at any time," VanDamme continued. "We put a big emphasis on writing. We want them to really, fully, completely understand what they're doing. We want them to grasp and be able to explain everything."
Read the whole thing—and for more on VanDamme’s revolutionary philosophy of education, read her articles in TOS:
- “The False Promise of Classical Education” (accessible for free)
- “Teaching Values in the Classroom”
- “The Hierarchy of Knowledge: The Most Neglected Issue in Education”
The most important aspect of a child's development—and the best hope for the future of the West—is proper, hierarchical education. VanDamme Academy provides it.
Labels: Education
Friday, November 30, 2007
Yesterday's Highlights: Stories From Home
We at VanDamme Academy love hearing stories about things the students do or say at home that reflect their VanDamme Academy education. I recently asked parents to share some stories from home. Here are a few highlights:
Calvin (5):
I was talking to Calvin about the upcoming trip to Schoolhouse Rock, and I told him how much I enjoyed the songs as a child. I started singing "Conjunction Junction" for him: "Out of the frying pan and into the fire. He cut loose the sandbags but the balloon wouldn't go any higher. Let's go up to the mountains or down to the sea. Always say 'thank you' or at least say 'please.'" Then Calvin said, "Pan, fire, bag, balloon, mountain and sea are nouns."
Mrs. O'Brien's poetry discussions and literature readings have had an impact on Calvin. He's begun to describe things metaphorically. Yesterday he told his little sister she has a smile of sparkly snowflakes. He told me my eyes are made of fairy dust, ocean water and chocolate milk. (They're green with flecks of brown and a rim of blue.) Later that evening he was thinking of Mrs. Beach and her black hair. He said, "Mama, Mrs. Beach's hair is made of night-time sky and pretty, pretty stars."
Last week we were sitting down to dinner and Calvin said, out of the blue, "Daddy, would you rather eat leather or die?" (I hope my cooking didn't put that idea in his head.) After some prompting from us, he told us he learned from Mrs. Beach that Columbus and the sailors on his ship ran out of food and had to eat leather to survive. He made a little game out of thinking of other things that might have some nutritional value and could pass as food if he were stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean. "Would you rather eat sawdust or die? Would you rather eat leaves or die?"
Jonathan (7):
Allie, Johnny's younger sister, received a copy of the Disney film Pocahontas. She was telling him about the movie when he said to her: "That's not the real story at all." He then proceeded to tell her his entire history lesson on the subject. When I asked him if it bothered him that the movie wasn't the real story, he said, "No, movies aren't real."
Lana (8):
Yesterday, on the way to a birthday party, we passed La Paz Rd., and Lana declared, " La Paz is the capital of Bolivia!" (A fact learned in Mr. Mizrahi's geography class.) Later that day, she feared Greta was being too rough on their dog Gracie, and said, "Be careful not to hyperextend her paw." (A term learned in Mr. Krieger's science class.) Over the summer, when I was at the gym with the girls and Lana heard someone say his son didn't "do too good in school," Lana waited until he was gone and whispered to me, "Don't worry, Mom. I corrected his grammar in my mind."
Darcy (4):
Darcy was telling me that she missed her family in Virginia and wanted to move back. I told her I understood how she felt and that it would be so nice to be near her aunt and grandma. I then said that if we did go back it would mean that Darcy wouldn't have her friends Lana and Greta nearby, wouldn't be in Mrs. Beach's class, wouldn't have her classmates, etc. Darcy said, "I have an idea. We can do what they did in olden times and start a colony."
Bianca (8):
At home one evening, Bianca was plotting schemes to steal balls from the boys at recess in their benevolent, ongoing boy-girl rivalry. She read her plans to me in the car on the way to school. I was instantly struck and thrilled by her scheme: it was in outline form! I thought to myself, "My child has an orderly mind! She THINKS in outlines!" This is unquestionably the result of the structured note-taking and writing she does at VanDamme Academy.
Labels: Education
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Yesterday's Highlights: 'Success'
In a letter called "Yesterday's Highlights," I periodically describe my observations of classes to the VanDamme Academy parents. I have decided to share these highlights with readers of this newsletter as well. I hope you enjoy your glimpse into a VanDamme Academy classroom.
Dear Parents,
This week and last, I have had the pleasure of teaching poetry to Rooms 1-5. This gave me an opportunity to get to know each of the students a little better, and to share with them something I love.
In each class, we studied a poem that connects to the novel the class had recently completed. If you want to learn more about your child's education, help him study his poem, and ask him to explain how it relates to what he has been discussing in literature.
For example, Room 5 is memorizing the following gem of a poem, which I only recently discovered, and which immediately struck me as having an obvious connection to The Miracle Worker.
Success
If you want a thing bad enough To go out and fight for it, Work day and night for it, Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for it
If only desire of it Makes you quite mad enough Never to tire of it, Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for it
If life seems all empty and useless without it And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you'll sweat for it, Fret for it, Plan for it, Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you'll simply go after that thing that you want. With all your capacity, Strength and sagacity, Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt, Nor sickness nor pain Of body or brain Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it, You'll get it!
BERTON BRALEY
The students were quick to identify and explain that this poem captured Annie Sullivan's dogged, dauntless determination to teach language to Helen Keller. They noted that she "gave up her sleep for it," immediately implementing ideas that struck her in the middle of the night; that she held Helen's obedience and grooming as "tawdry and cheap" compared to her need to learn language; that she endured the bodily pain of being slapped, kicked, stuck with a pin, and having her tooth knocked out, and never gave up on her goal; and that she lost all terror of God, man, and Captain Keller for it. Now, they have seen this theme demonstrated in the inspirational character of Annie Sullivan, and they have heard it eloquently captured in the words of Berton Braley.
Poetry is incredible fuel for the soul. After your children have memorized the poems, they will have a claim to them, and will have them at the ready when a relevant time arises. Just today, a parent shared with me a charming story of her daughters reciting their poem "Courage" to her when she was afraid to jump from the Jacuzzi into the pool.
I will take inspiration from "Success." This school is something I have had to "fret for" and "plan for," something that has at times taken all my "strength and sagacity," something I "schemed" and "dreamed" about. And my life would definitely be "empty and useless" without it. Thank you for helping all of us at VanDamme Academy achieve our "Success." We, in turn, will help your children to do the same.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, e-newsletter, "Pedagogically Correct" featuring articles about the principles of teaching employed at the Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Labels: Education
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
The First Day of School: VanDamme Academy Style
I have often been told that, when asked what was special about their VanDamme Academy education, graduates say, "We always understood why we were learning what we were learning." This important effect has many causes, the most significant among them being that what the students are learning is, in fact, important, and that the teacher always makes a purpose of conveying, implicitly and explicitly, why it is important.
In a discussion of the distinctive VanDamme Academy history program, Andrew Lewis said that the little history that is taught in today's schools typically addresses five questions: Who? What? When? Where? and How? Mr. Lewis recognizes that the answers to those questions are inadequate without answers to two more: Why? and So what? The story of history must be causal and explanatory, the explanations must be relevant to the students' lives, and the students must understand the relevance.
It is this principle that defines the first day at VanDamme Academy. In each class, the teacher begins with the questions: What is this subject? and Why do we need to study it? Here is what I glimpsed walking through the school's halls on that inaugural day:
In Mrs. O'Brien's grammar classes: She discussed what grammar is (principles concerning the proper use of language), and answered the cliché objection, "We don't need grammar; we just need to make ourselves understood." She demonstrated that we cannot consistently make ourselves understood without the rules of grammar, presenting humorous examples from Eats, Shoots, and Leaves and Anguished English of the problems and ambiguities that result from the placement or misplacement of a comma (e.g., "Slow, children ahead," and, "Slow children ahead.") or from an amphibolous construction (e.g., "Customers who find the waitress uncivil ought to see the manager."). She introduced a theme to which she can refer throughout the year: that a mastery of grammar is vitally useful.
In Mr. Travers' literature classes: He began with a discussion of the personal value of literature. He explained that a great plot presents an extraordinary sequence of events that is purposeful and has an abstract meaning, differentiating it from the story of an ordinary day, which is full of the mundane, accidental, and meaningless. He showed how that abstract meaning can illuminate the world around them, and referred to the inspiration they had drawn from the themes of works they had previously studied (e.g., the virtue of independence in An Enemy of the People.) He showed that great works of literature present people who have been distilled to an essence, that they highlight the nature and consequences of certain traits of character, and discussed how this could help the students in understanding and evaluating qualities in others and in themselves.
Educators often wrestle with the question: How do we motivate the students? Many resort to the carrot and the stick, dangling rewards or threatening consequences. But the technique employed by Mr. Travers, Mrs. O'Brien, and Mr. Lewis, and the way they will make good on their promise to present what is important and show why it is important—that is the essence of motivation, and a defining feature of the VanDamme Academy curriculum.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, e-newsletter, "Pedagogically Correct" featuring articles about the principles of teaching employed at the Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Labels: Education
Monday, August 20, 2007
Multiculturalism's War on Education by Elan Journo
Back to school nowadays means back to classrooms, lessons and textbooks permeated by multiculturalism and its championing of "diversity." Many parents and teachers regard multiculturalism as an indispensable educational supplement, a salutary influence that "enriches" the curriculum. But is it?
With the world's continents bridged by the Internet and global commerce, multiculturalism claims to offer a real value: a cosmopolitan, rather than provincial, understanding of the world beyond the student's immediate surroundings. But it is a peculiar kind of "broadening." Multiculturalists would rather have students admire the primitive patterns of Navajo blankets, say, than learn why Islam's medieval golden age of scientific progress was replaced by fervent piety and centuries of stagnation.
Leaf through a school textbook and you'll find that there is a definite pattern behind multiculturalism's reshaping of the curriculum. What multiculturalists seek is not the goal they advertise, but something else entirely. Consider, for instance, the teaching of history.
One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in pre-Columbian times for having prosperous economies and for establishing a university in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in slaves and the proliferation of far more consequential institutions of learning in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or underplay the fact that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek to portray Islam as peaceful in part by presenting the concept of "jihad" ("sacred war") to mean an internal struggle to surmount temptation and evil, while playing down Islam's actual wars of religious conquest.
What these textbooks reveal is a concerted effort to portray the most backward, impoverished and murderous cultures as advanced, prosperous and life-enhancing. Multiculturalism's goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote—by means of distortions and half-truths—the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture. Far from "broadening" the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West.
If students were to learn the truth of the hardscrabble life of primitive farming in, say, India, they would recognize that subsistence living is far inferior to life on any mechanized farm in Kansas, which demands so little manpower, yet yields so much. An informed, rational student would not swallow the "politically correct" conclusions he is fed by multiculturalism. If he were given the actual facts, he could recognize that where men are politically free, as in the West, they can prosper economically; that science and technology are superior to superstition; that man's life is far longer, happier and safer in the West today than in any other culture in history.
The ideals, achievements and history of Western culture in general—and of America in particular—are therefore purposely given short-shrift by multiculturalism. That the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age were born and flourished in Western nations; that the preponderance of Nobel prizes in science have been awarded to people in the West—such facts, if they are noted, are passed over with little elaboration.
The "history" that students do learn is rewritten to fit multiculturalism's agenda. Consider the birth of the United States. Some texts would have children believe the baseless claim that America's Founders modeled the Constitution on a confederation of Indian tribes. This is part of a wider drive to portray the United States as a product of the "convergence" of three traditions—native Indian, African and European. But the American republic, with an elected government limited by individual rights, was born not of stone-age peoples, but primarily of the European Enlightenment. It is a product of the ideas of thinkers like John Locke, a British philosopher, and his intellectual heirs in colonial America, such as Thomas Jefferson.
It is a gross misconception to view multiculturalism as an effort to enrich education. By reshaping the curriculum, the purveyors of "diversity" in the classroom calculatedly seek to prevent students from grasping the objective value to human life of Western culture—a culture whose magnificent achievements have brought man from mud huts to moon landings.
Multiculturalism is no boon to education, but an agent of anti-Western ideology.
Elan Journo is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand—author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Business and Economics, Education, Individual Rights and Law
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Ayn Rand Institute Offers Educational Program for the Study of Rand's Philosophy
Irvine, California (June 14, 2007)—Fifty years after the publication of her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, interest in Ayn Rand has never been greater. For those who want to study her ideas in depth, the Ayn Rand Institute's educational program, the Objectivist Academic Center, offers systematic instruction in Rand's philosophy, Objectivism.
More than one hundred students currently participate in the OAC's graduate and undergraduate programs, which for years have been offered as a supplement to a standard college education. The undergraduate program helps students develop a basic understanding of philosophy, of Objectivism as a philosophical system, and of the art of clear, objective thinking and writing. The focus of the graduate program is on mastering Objectivism, with special attention paid to proper philosophical methodology.
Students from all over the world attend classes online and via teleconference. Local students also have the option of attending classes at ARI's headquarters in Irvine, California. Select courses are open to auditors.
As a benefit to students who would like to receive college credit for their OAC coursework, ARI has partnered with Chapman University to offer two OAC courses, "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Introduction to Writing," through Chapman's distance learning program. Students are able to take the classes for credit, transfer the credits to their own university, and apply them toward their college degree.
Most full-time students receive tuition waivers, as well as other generous scholarships to help defray the costs of participating in the OAC. Additionally, ARI offers a wide array of support for OAC students, including grants, scholarships, and mentoring.
The application deadline for the 2007-08 academic year is July 30.
For more information on this program, please visit the Objectivist Academic Center website at http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=KIjNTULFfDcOZ9FS_4B7Hw.. or contact:
Debi Ghate
Vice President, Academic Programs
Ayn Rand Institute
(949) 222-6550, ext 206
dghate@aynrand.org
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Labels: Announcements, Education
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The False Promise of Classical Education
The print edition of the Summer issue of TOS is at press and will be mailed shortly; the online version will be accessible to subscribers on June 20. For promotional purposes, we are making Lisa VanDamme’s “The False Promise of Classical Education” available early and to all. Here are the first few paragraphs of Ms. VanDamme’s essay:
In E. D. Hirsch’s best-selling book Cultural Literacy, he cites a Washington Post article titled “The Cheerful Ignorance of the Young in L.A.” in which the author says:
I have not yet found one single student in Los Angeles, in either college or high school, who could tell me the years when WWII was fought. . . . Nor have I found one who knew when the American Civil War was fought. . . .
Only two could even approximately identify Thomas Jefferson. Only one could place the date of the Declaration of Independence. None could name even one of the first ten amendments to the Constitution or connect them with the Bill of Rights. . . .1
A typical study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) concludes that the average eleventh-grade student is an incompetent writer. To evaluate their writing ability, testers asked high school juniors to write a paragraph based on notes they were given about a haunted house. The performance of half the students was judged to be either “unsatisfactory” or “minimal.” The following is a “minimal” response: “The house with no windows. This is a house with dead-end hallways, 36 rooms and stairs leading to the cieling [sic]. Doorways go nowhere and all this to confuse ghosts.”2 That is the student’s complete, word-for-word response—and represents the performance of nearly half of all eleventh graders. Most of the other half were evaluated as writing “adequate” paragraphs. Just 2 percent wrote something that was judged to be “elaborate,” a step up from “adequate.”
In Dumbing Down Our Kids, Charles Sykes tells a chilling story about a straight-A student in the eighth grade named Andrea, who was very eager to learn science. Unfortunately for Andrea, her school, like most today, stressed the importance of “creativity” over “dreary” facts, and of “hands-on,” “active” learning over “dull,” didactic instruction. This bright young girl with a thirst for scientific knowledge spent her time in science class picking up cereal with a tongue depressor (to simulate the way birds feed), hunting for paper moths on a wall, and drawing pictures of scientists. When Andrea wrote a letter complaining that she had gotten nothing out of the class, she was expelled for being rude and disrespectful.3
You have probably read stories like these and been horrified both by how shamefully ignorant, inarticulate, and illiterate many American students are, and, even worse, by what schools do to students like Andrea. I wish I could dismiss such stories as rare incidents circulated among cynical critics of American schools to give poignancy to their arguments. Unfortunately, my experience interviewing and teaching students at my school has shown me otherwise.
Some time ago, a woman brought her teenage daughter to visit VanDamme Academy. In an effort to get to know more about this girl and her educational history, I asked her a few questions about her current school. At one point, I asked what she was studying in history class. She looked at me with an expression of utter bafflement and said nothing. I realized my mistake and promptly changed the question to, “What are you studying in social studies?” Her puzzlement briefly dissipated—she now understood the question—but it returned as soon as she attempted an answer. After a little thought, she looked at me, shrugged her shoulders dismissively, and said, “I don’t know.” I realized that my second question was as unanswerable as my first. To state what she was studying would presuppose some connection, some integrating theme among the stories, newspaper articles, and papier-mâché projects that made up her social studies class.
One of my best, most dedicated, and intelligent students in recent years transferred to VanDamme Academy from an Orange County public school in seventh grade. In his first year at my school he studied ancient history—a subject that, I later discovered, he had also studied in sixth grade at his previous school. His mother told me that she once asked him, “Daniel, aren’t you bored repeating the same material?” Apparently he simply chuckled and said, “Mom. Everything meaningful we learned last year in my social studies class?—here we covered that the first day.”
Literature classes—or rather, the literature portion of “English” classes, which cram in literature, writing, spelling, vocabulary, and sometimes grammar—are no better. I am the junior high literature teacher at VanDamme Academy, and I often begin the year with a discussion of the value of studying literature. I intend to remind my students what they stand to gain from reading, by drawing upon novels and plays they had read in my class in seventh grade, such as Hugo’s Ninety-Three, Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo, Rattigan’s The Browning Version, and Corneille’s Cinna. I want to remind them that a character can stand in your mind as a powerful embodiment of certain traits, that the plot of a great novel can be gripping and emotionally stirring, and that a classic work of literature can capture a highly complex and abstract theme in a compelling, concrete form. One year, my class included a new student who had just completed seventh grade at St. Margaret’s, arguably the most prestigious private school in Orange County. So that I could include this new student in the discussion, I asked her mother what she had read the previous year. Her mother informed me that her daughter’s class had done a six-month study of A Walk to Remember, which is described by Amazon.com as a “boy-makes-good tearjerker” and which was recently made into a movie starring teen pop star Mandy Moore.
One of my most memorable experiences with a new transfer student came several years ago, when I taught my class the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, the poem with the immortal line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty—That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” In an effort to understand the poem’s theme, we defined unfamiliar words and discussed the poem line by line and stanza by stanza, rewriting each section in plain prose. I explained to the students that I believed the theme of the poem to concern the timelessness of art and its consequent power to inspire future generations. I showed them how I inferred this theme from each line of the poem, stressing the connection between them. I later asked my students to write an essay explaining the theme of the poem. One student, who had recently come from another school, wrote an essay that began with a line I will never forget: “The theme of this poem is that all art is sacred, whether it is a realistic painting or a smudge on a canvas.” This moment, to me, summed up an important characteristic of American education: Cultural bromides had come to replace thought. The student was not troubled by the fact that this bromide bore no relation to the poem, because, like a smudge on a canvas, she regarded her opinion as sacred. I looked at her essay, handed it back to her, and said, “Could you please go find some evidence from the poem to support this theme?” Needless to say, she could not.
What has brought education to this state of disintegration, superficiality, and mindlessness? Bad philosophy. The educational philosophy that has most influenced modern education is the school known as “progressive education.” The leading theorist of “progressive” education was 20th-century philosopher John Dewey, but the intellectual foundations of the movement lie in the writings of 18th-century philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant.
Read the whole thing here.
If you’ve not yet subscribed to TOS, now is the time to act. While supplies last, you can still begin your subscription with the inaugural issue; just let us know your preference. Subscribe today!
Labels: Announcements, Education
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The VanDamme Academy Field Trip
In my recent newsletter "The Failure of Field Trips," I explained what is wrong with traditional school outings. The typical field trip is irrelevant to the students' education, either because they have been unprepared to appreciate it by their schooling (e.g., City Hall or the opera) or because it is intended as a reprieve from their schooling (e.g., the water park or bowling alley).
At VanDamme Academy, we use field trips as opportunities for students to have experiences that enhance their education-experiences that directly relate to their schooling but are not available to them within the walls of the classroom. Past field trips include: an astronomy night, to observe a lunar eclipse and to find the constellations they had mapped on a star chart in science class; a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, to watch on stage a play they had read and thoroughly analyzed in literature class; the King Tut exhibit at LACMA, to see relics of a time they had studied in depth in history class. In each case, because they were so well prepared, they relished the experience.
Probably the most thrilling of the VanDamme Academy outings, and the one that best exemplifies the very meaning and purpose of field trips, was our visit to the San Diego Museum of Art. This field trip was attended-and enjoyed- by every student in the school, from kindergarten to eighth grade.
The students had been thoroughly prepared for the experience by many aspects of their education. They were well read in literature: five- year-olds delighted to find a painting of the myth of Apollo and Daphne; elementary students discovered portraits that reminded them of Arthur and Lancelot; junior high students argued over which artist best depicted a figure with the strength and independence of An Enemy of the People's Dr. Stockmann. They were knowledgeable about history: all the students had some familiarity with the cultural context in which a Medieval, Renaissance, or American painting was produced; many students identified portraits that reminded them of historical figures, like Charlemagne or St. Augustine; the junior high students could relate the philosophy of asceticism to three different renderings of Mary Magdalene.
In addition to being broadly well educated, the students were also expertly trained in the process of analyzing and thereby appreciating a work of art. This is thanks to Luc Travers who—with his knowledge of philosophy, literary analysis, and art history, and his unique ability to see to the theme of a painting, relate it to real- life values, and make it accessible and meaningful to students— has developed a remarkable course in art appreciation.
Mr. Travers has taught all the VanDamme Academy students how to "read" a work of art. They learn how to make detailed observations, about the setting, the objects, the facial features, the expressions, the posture, the attire, etc. They learn to make explicit their immediate impressions (that the central figure looks brave, or apprehensive, or proud, or determined), to connect those impressions to their observations (the muscular figure, the furrowed brow, the upright posture, the clenched jaw), and to then make further observations and refine their original impression. They learn to compare and contrast their observations with closely related works of art, and identify subtle differences (the furrowed brow of concentration vs. the furrowed brow of anger vs. the furrowed brow of resolution). After repeatedly cycling through this process, they formulate a statement of the work's theme. Then, to round out their understanding of that theme and harness its power, they relate it to history and literature and their own life experience.
Armed with the knowledge of how to analyze a work of art and having experienced the rewards of doing so, the students stormed the museum grounds, clipboards in hand, eyes and spirits wide open, ready to discover and enjoy a new work of art. As one parent arrived on the museum grounds, her six-year-old daughter Sydney cried excitedly, "Le Cid! Look! It's Le Cid!" There, proudly leading his troops to battle, was the sculpture of the Spanish hero she had analyzed, contrasted with the meek and weary Don Quixote, and come to love. Walter, a junior high student, found a wealth of visual images of the moments and traits he had encountered in literature: one reminded him of Marguerite from The Scarlet Pimpernel when she was in fear for the life of her husband, because she is "on her knees," has "her hands folded," and has "an upward, teary gaze"; another reminded him of the novel's villain Chauvelin, because of his "tightly closed, almost snarling mouth" and his "sinister gaze"; another called to mind Montfleury from Cyrano de Bergerac because of the "dull, inane look in his eyes." Chelsea, a junior high student, did a reading of an unfamiliar portrait, noting her glossy eyes, her coal-black pupils, her smooth, peachy skin, her erect posture, her slight smile, and her seeming unhappiness. She brought these and other features together into her determination of the theme: "She smiles, yet her eyes droop; she seems happy, yet sad—the woman is LONGING for something."
Far from enjoying a diversion from school or being forced through a cultural experience they were unequipped to enjoy, these students were cashing in on the groundwork laid in their education. That is why they met with universal enthusiasm the news of next week's school-wide trip to the Getty Museum. The experience is sure to justify a newsletter of its own.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, weekly e-newsletter: "Pedagogically Correct." Every week, you will be sent a new article about the principles of teaching employed at VanDamme Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Labels: Education
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The Writing Process: One Step at a Time
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or NAEP), the average high school student is an incompetent writer. To evaluate their writing ability, testers asked high school juniors to write a paragraph based on notes they were given about a haunted house. The performance of half the students was judged to be either unsatisfactory or minimal. The following is a "minimal" response:
"The house with no windows. This is a house with dead-end hallways, 36 rooms and stairs leading to the cieling [sic]. Doorways go nowhere and all this to confuse ghosts."
This is the student's complete, word-for-word response-and represents the performance of nearly half of all eleventh graders. Most of the other half were evaluated as writing "adequate" paragraphs. Just two percent wrote something that was judged to be "elaborate," a step up from "adequate."
This explains why when Francisco LePort, one of my first students, started college at the age of 13, he was pulled aside by his humanities professor and asked, "Where did you learn to write so well?" In an age plagued by misguided efforts at preserving students' "self-esteem" (by leaving their mistakes uncorrected), classrooms bursting at the seams, teaching-to-the-standardized-test methods, and a disdain for the traditional, rigorous, academic approach to education, essay writing is simply not taught.
It is taught at VanDamme Academy. Our K-1 students learn to write complete, articulate, properly punctuated sentences; our lower elementary students learn to write coherent, grammatical, well-structured paragraphs; our upper elementary students learn to write clear, fluent, logical essays; and for our junior high students, who have been through this evolution, the writing process is second nature. That is why when a law professor evaluating the school for her children, after seeing samples of the junior high students' essays, asked whether she could photocopy them to show her law students what real writing looked like.
Those of us educated in a public school in the last few decades probably remember with a mutual shudder what it was like to face the blank sheet of paper. On those rare occasions that we were asked to do any writing, it was treated as an automatic or inborn skill. We were given a topic, an injunction to write about it, and that dreaded piece of paper, and at best managed to pour out a semi-coherent series of sentences loosely related to the assignment. That is why most of the parents of VanDamme Academy students confess, shame-faced, that they do not know how to write well, and then confess, amused, that they ask their children to proofread any letters they send to me.
At VanDamme Academy, writing is not crammed in with vocabulary, spelling, and literature under the heading of "English." Writing is its own course, and students have a daily opportunity to learn crucial writing skills.
The writing process is broken down into small, incremental steps learned, practiced, and mastered over the course of their nine years at the school. From learning what makes a sentence complete at the kindergarten level, to learning how to create the topic sentence of a paragraph at the elementary level, to learning when one has adequately supported an essay's theme at the junior high level-students build their writing skills methodically over many years.
When they begin to write essays, at about third or fourth grade, they are taught and asked to follow a deliberate sequence of steps in the writing process, and these steps are reviewed and supervised by the teacher along the way. First, they are asked to create a "laundry list" of points, in no particular order, that are related to the topic at hand. Then, they are asked to group these points into categories. Next, they are asked to formulate a theme for their essay, and to use that theme to identify which points from their laundry list are relevant and which can be discarded. Using the theme as a guide, they create an outline of sub-points to support the main idea. Then they write a rough draft of the essay using the outline as a blueprint. Finally, they reach the last three stages of the writing process: edit, edit, edit.
All of this is done in class, with the guidance and feedback of the teacher, over a course of weeks. It is this approach that led a former student of mine who, at her past school, had loathed writing, to become and eager and enthusiastic writer. "What changed?" her mother asked. She replied, "The teacher showed me how."
It is important that a child learn to write not just so that he can draft a compelling essay for his college applications or compose a persuasive cover letter for a resume. The repeated practice of a deliberate, structured, systematic approach to writing is critical for training students in a deliberate, structured, systematic approach to thinking. It is in writing class that they are asked to take the knowledge they have gained in other subject areas, contemplate it, organize their thoughts, and express their understanding with clarity and purposefulness. If we want students to develop clarity of thought on any issue, if we want them to harness the power of the knowledge they gain over the course of their education, they must learn, practice, and master the skill of writing.
Click here to sign up for the VanDamme Academy's free, weekly e-newsletter: "Pedagogically Correct." Every week, you will be sent a new article about the principles of teaching employed at VanDamme Academy, along with stories about the results they are achieving.
Labels: Education
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