# Why is Ayn Rand not taught in schools? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [July 1, 2014, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078 "2014-07-01T10:30:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/121 "2014-07-03T04:31:47Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Her prose and logic are less than adequate too, but that doesn’t rise to the level of evil. I loved P.J. O’Roake’s description of her characters “…hacked out of concrete with a blunt ice pick.” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/122 "2014-07-03T04:32:14Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Can you expound on that? What do you think Rand means by selfishness? Can you not refer back to the other threads on her philosophy, or do we have to start all over again? ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/123 "2014-07-03T04:35:48Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Can you not refer back to the other threads on her philosophy, or do we have to start all over again? Oh I know all about it, and I’ve linked back to other threads to support my contention that its the people who think Rand = evil understand little of what she says. Why don’t you take a stab at why you think she’s evul? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/124 "2014-07-03T04:41:41Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Oh I know all about it, and I’ve linked back to other threads to support my contention that its the people who think Rand = evil understand little of what she says. Why don’t you take a stab at why you think she’s evul? I never said she was “evul”, but I _will_ note that you have made an assumption I have seen some of her followers make quite often-the arrogant assumption that the only reason we do not like what she teaches is because we do not understand what she teaches. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/125 "2014-07-03T04:53:58Z")
I will not explain why her “philosophy” is stupid to people who don’t understand why it is stupid. I’m selfish that way. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/126 "2014-07-03T04:54:54Z")
> [@Stringbean](#): > > Rand has, in my opinion, no shortage of quality debate fodder, though her writing is over-wraught and at times insufferable. The question presented was “why is Ayn Rand not taught in schools?” That’s why. By all means, teach Mises/Rothbard/Hayek, at least as inoculation. Hell, teach Branden. You can expose young minds to libertarianism, even Objectivism, without them having to read Ayn Rand’s novels. ---
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/127 "2014-07-03T05:33:44Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I never said she was “evul”, but I _will_ note that you have made an assumption I have seen some of her followers make quite often-the arrogant assumption that the only reason we do not like what she teaches is because we do not understand what she teaches. The conversation that you continued by claiming you didn’t want to rehash was about her being ‘evil’. If you want to back away from that, fine. And it’s not an assumption that people don’t understand her. I’ve participated in multiple threads that debate Rand, and read many more. There are very few people who demonstrate an understanding of her ideas, and those that do invariably do not display reflexive hatred of them. I’ve seen posters arguing against Rand’s ideas and condemning them at length while admitting they haven’t read her books. People who’re challenged to back up their statements about what they think she believes just refuse to do it. Look at Silenus in this thread. For another example, see Amateur Barbarian on the first page of the earlier linked thread. There are plenty of other posters who take great pleasure in showering invective on Rand, but provide no substance to back it up. All of these debates have shifted my null to “Rand haters haven’t actually bothered to engage with her ideas”. It isn’t arrogance. It’s experience. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/128 "2014-07-03T05:49:04Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Can you expound on that? What do you think Rand means by selfishness? I have no obligation to expound on that. If you have a homework assignment that asks you to write what _you_ think Rand means by selfishness, then you need to do that, we don’t do your homework assignments here at SDMB. She has plenty of places that she makes it clear that she means plain old selfishness. > [@](#): > > Walker, her biographer, researched her personal journals and found an entry written when she was 30: “One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself. Fine!” (All this in the pursuit of happiness.) > > This is belligerent contempt for your fellow man. Aggressively pushing your impulses at the expense your group is not normal behavior. It destroys human bonds. It corrupts community. > **[Ayn Rand, sociopathic politics](https://leftsolutions.wordpress.com/ayn-rand-sociopathic-politics/)** > >    At one point Ayn Rand referred to her own work as propaganda. It is militantly capitalistic; she vigorously campaigned for the demolition of the common good. She energetically promoted selfishne… There really isn’t a need to dress up this kind of sentiment in a series of fictional straw man novels. That she spent the rest of her life dressing this up isn’t a testament to logic or philosophy, it is the obsession of a deeply mentally ill narcissist justifying an immoral and hypocritical life. That people like investment bankers can adopt this attitude and sell sub-prime mortgages, convince people to take equity out of their homes, rebundle these mortgages in packets that cannot be traced, sell them and then purchases default swap insurance and then recommend them to clients, while effectively betting against these actions themselves is a con game, not heroism. Galt is a fictional person who did not invent a special kind of steel out of his selfishness. Andrew Carnegie was a flawed flesh and blood human being who modernized real steel production, made the world’s largest fortune, and then gave it away selflessly, mostly to build libraries for poor people to use. A real Randian success story was Steve Jobs, a vicious man who stole from Wozniak, screamed at subordinates several times a day, abused handicapped parking spaces as a matter of principle, took credit for inventions of Xerox Parc and ground his opponents down in legal actions. That he had a unique aesthetic sense is wonderful in the way he artfully repacked his material and made a lot of people happy. But he did not make the world a better place, he was no hero, he was a nasty villain. Another example is the still living Alan Greenspan. An admitted Randian, and in fact a man who was a paramour of the married Rand, diddled along life believe all the tripe. How many millions lost their homes in the mortgage meltdown he laid the foundation for? A shitheel’s ideal of being selfish engaging an invisible hand will result in good is nonsense. There is no invisible hand. Modern economics does understand how economies work: the invisible hand is the wild west that helps only the rich, powerful and criminal \*at the expense of everyone else. \* If a person wants to accomplish something good, then that person needs to do something good for someone else, benefit to the self needs to be incidental to it, not the other way around. Rand, 180 degrees from Marx, is just as wrong as Marx. Human beings are social animals, and we do best without following unrelenting dogmas. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/129 "2014-07-03T05:59:28Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > There are very few people who demonstrate an understanding of her ideas, and those that do invariably do not display reflexive hatred of them. Invariably the people who do not display reflexive hatred of Rand’s ideas, are the very few people who understand them. Let’s be clear, Rand claimed that only she understood her “objectivism”, and none of her followers did. > [@](#): > > In 1976, philosopher Leonard Peikoff, her longtime student and associate, gave a lecture course that Rand described as “the only authorized presentation of the entire theoretical structure of Objectivism, i.e., the only one that I know of my own knowledge to be fully accurate.” > **[Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand - AynRand.org](http://aynrand.org/novels/objectivism-the-philosophy-of-ayn-rand/)** And that is entirely accurate. Her writings are an illogical miss-mash. What Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard had in common was that they both invented fake systems of fantasy thought on how people should live their lives in order to scam people for a buck and gain personal worshipers, regardless of the costs to those scammed and society as a whole. Hubbard might be the lesser of these two evils because it was so obviously a lot of crap that only the truly lonely and mentally ill would be taken in. Rand is the greater of the evils because she was adopted by the selfish rich and powerful as propaganda, but worse yet, young, confused, lonely people think her fiction is real, and her fiction teaches the evil of being selfish and never altruistic. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/130 "2014-07-03T06:10:05Z")
I want to go back to the point that Rand was the only person who understood it. It was never written down as a philosophical tract. When it does get written down as a philosophical tract, like the Wealth of Nations, Leviathan, Common Sense (short and sweet), Two Treatises of Government, Spirit of the Laws, Cannibals All! (a hoot), Theory of the Leisure Class and other such philosophical systems, then we can discuss it as a philosophy, and not as a religious tract to pull examples from “scripture” and argue who knows the “word of god” better and has a better grip on the “canon”. The “canon” for Randians is a series of fictional works, of less value to the lives of people than Trekkers debating life in the Federation. Since someone cannot point to a systematic and scholarly, if not philosophical, treatise on “objectivism” we could argue its merits. Until then, Gulliver’s Travels would be a more penetrating social commentary than Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/131 "2014-07-03T13:13:12Z")
I would also like to point out that a cursory overview of a subject is sufficient to determine it’s worth. The British socialist prime minister, Harold Wilson once dismissed Marxian thought with light-hearted brutality: _Harris: You talk of the nonconformist radical influence on the development of your political views. How much has Marx influenced you?_ _Wilson: Not at all. I’ve studied the subject as history: you can’t understand the Russians without it. But, quite honestly, I’ve never read Das Kapital. I only got as far as page two – that’s where the footnote is nearly a page long. I felt that two sentences of main text and a page of footnote were too much._ Anyone who thinks one of the youngest Oxford dons and later crafty politician was too stupid or biased to understand Marx _ **because** _ he didn’t read the holy scriptures is fooling themselves. The trouble was, like most in the post-war Labour party he understood communism _too_ well, and had a holy hatred of communist infiltrators. ---
**Author:** ![ratatoskK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ratatoskk/32/2987_2.png) [@ratatoskK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratatoskK)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/132 "2014-07-03T14:16:11Z")
:dubious:For the same reasons that L. Ron Hubbard is not taught in schools ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/133 "2014-07-03T14:26:32Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > The conversation that you continued by claiming you didn’t want to rehash was about her being ‘evil’. If you want to back away from that, fine. > > And it’s not an assumption that people don’t understand her. I’ve participated in multiple threads that debate Rand, and read many more. There are very few people who demonstrate an understanding of her ideas, and those that do invariably do not display reflexive hatred of them. Amazing. Right after you say that you don’t assume that the reason people don’t follow Rand is because they just don’t understand what she is saying, you say that people don’t follow Rand because they just don’t understand what she is saying. ---
**Author:** ![CheshireKat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheshirekat/32/1207_2.png) [@CheshireKat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheshireKat)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/134 "2014-07-03T14:42:17Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Amazing. Right after you say that you don’t assume that the reason people don’t follow Rand is because they just don’t understand what she is saying, you say that people don’t follow Rand because they just don’t understand what she is saying. This could be a hit alternative pop song, titled _Amazing_: \*Right after you say that you don’t assume that the reason people don’t follow Rand is because they just don’t understand what she is saying, you say that people don’t follow Rand because they just don’t understand what she is saying.\* Do you need an agent? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/135 "2014-07-03T14:43:47Z")
I honestly don’t get this entire thread. The American canon if filled with deeply thoughtful and provocative writers. Why on earth would you spend any time on second tier writer with an axe to grind.? If must have political philosophy debates in high school why not debate Rawls, Novak and Walzer? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/136 "2014-07-03T14:47:43Z")
> [@CheshireKat](#): > > This could be a hit alternative pop song, titled _Amazing_: > > \*Right after you say that you don’t assume > that the reason people don’t follow Rand > is because they just don’t understand > what she is saying, > > you say that people don’t follow Rand > because they just don’t understand > what she is saying.\* > > Do you need an agent? 🙂 It does sound a bit like a _TMBG_ tune, doesn’t it? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/137 "2014-07-03T15:03:48Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > As a libertarian you would like the government to indoctrinate the youth of the nation into your belief system?. No. I’m just not surprised that the libertarian belief system wasn’t taught in my public schools. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/138 "2014-07-03T15:14:35Z")
> [@HeyHomie](#): > > No. I’m just not surprised that the libertarian belief system wasn’t taught in my public schools. Maybe because there aren’t even enough hours in a school year to properly teach the political systems that actually exist in real life? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/139 "2014-07-03T16:10:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Maybe because there aren’t even enough hours in a school year to properly teach the political systems that actually exist in real life? And that work? 😛 ---
**Author:** ![mr.jp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/48db29/32.png) [@mr.jp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mr.jp)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/140 "2014-07-03T16:28:33Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > Maybe, but does that view need to be taught in high school? No it was just a sort of general defence. I don’t think it should be taught in school. Or I guess it could if the teacher likes to, but in that case, just a single chapter or something. That’s sufficient anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078.md?page=8)