# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/141 "2014-07-03T16:30:47Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > 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. Translation: “Only the people who agree with me understand Rand’s ideas, because if you understand, of course you’d agree with me.” ETA: Ninjaed by Czarcasm! ---
**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, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/142 "2014-07-03T16:33:15Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > Translation: “Only the people who agree with me understand Rand’s ideas, because if you understand, of course you’d agree with me.” > ETA: Ninjaed by Czarcasm! There’s got to be a name for this particular fallacy, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. ---
**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, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/143 "2014-07-03T16:40:14Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > There’s got to be a name for this particular fallacy, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Oxomatopoeia - an ism that sounds like contradictory beliefs? ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/144 "2014-07-03T16:47:18Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > There’s got to be a name for this particular fallacy, but I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Let’s call it “Czarcasm’s Fallacy!” Although, I haven’t noticed your being guilty of it too often. 😛 Maybe call it, “The Randian Delusion”: the notion that if people properly understood Ayn Rand, of course they’d agree with _your_ personal interpretation of the importance and relevance of her writing. I’ll just add that Rand’s ideas are _not_ hard to understand for either the layperson or philosopher. Some people just don’t agree with her camp followers–lack of agreement not necessarily indicating lack of understanding–and the poor quality of her writing as a novelist is obvious to anyone with an ounce of good taste in literature or philosophy. It’s true that some people have a reflexive reaction against her based only on what they’ve heard from detractors, without having read any of it themselves. But that sword cuts the other way, too. I’ve known more than one vocal proponent who clearly leapt onto cherry-picked parts of her writing only as filtered to them by others as well, and seem to have read little or none of it. I include especially those who somehow conveniently overlook the importance in Rand’s writing regarding the eschewal of religion and superstition. (Something I personally agree with, incidentally.) The hostility against Rand is mainly not directed towards her writing, per se, but rather toward her persistent, deluded missionaries, who can be irritating in their zealous belief that her hackneyed, naive, and poorly constructed ideas are the solution to all of humanity’s problems. Well at least for the enlightened ones. It just gets tiresome, as missionaries and witnessing can so often be. ---
**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, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/145 "2014-07-03T17:15:44Z")
Thomas More’s _Utopia_, Edward Bellamy’s _Looking Backward_ and B.F. Skinner’s _Walden II_ are taught as literature, and in Skinner’s case, light psychology fiction expounding on the idea of behaviorialism. They are varying degrees of good literature, but they are not philosophy. And I’m going to go one further. Plato’s _Republic_ is a description of the author’s personal fantasy of a perfect state that does not exist and can’t exist that illustrates why it can’t exist through obvious flaws, while edging around the problem of the definition and form/idea of justice: justice is making the best of an imperfect world where imperfection is the rule. Rand doesn’t make the literary mistake of having perfect characters (Mary Sue’s in modern parlance), she makes the moral mistake of inventing a personal fantasy moral system running those literary worlds where the fiction works out to morally justify her own extreme and narcissistic selfishness. Well, Flatland, a mathematical fantasy of two dimensional beings, does the same thing more logically successfully, but that doesn’t make it workable. You can draw pictures of unicorns with wings but that doesn’t make horses fly. It’s a fantasy. It’s an evil fantasy because it makes narcissist young people feel justified in not maturing. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/146 "2014-07-03T17:17:39Z")
> [@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. Not really. Just because something is found to be “not evil” doesn’t mean you have to like it. ---
**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, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/147 "2014-07-03T17:51:14Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > Translation: “Only the people who agree with me understand Rand’s ideas, because if you understand, of course you’d agree with me.” > ETA: Ninjaed by Czarcasm! Well, in the cartoon, **[The 24 Types of Libertarian](http://www.leftycartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/types_of_libertarian1.png)**, starting with **Naive** : _If the government would DISAPPEAR, everyone would act SENSIBLY and we’d all be able to get ALONG !_ and along with **Missionary** : _Man holding out copy of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” with wide eyes and bags under his eyes:YOU MUST READ THIS !_ there’s **Arrogant** : _Smiling woman with “explaining hands”: CLEARLY you’ve never READ the evidence._ ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/148 "2014-07-03T18:59:07Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Well, in the cartoon, **[The 24 Types of Libertarian](http://www.leftycartoons.com/wp-content/uploads/types_of_libertarian1.png)**… What I learned from this, is the best Libertarian is a stoned Libertarian. Makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![Subterraneanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Subterraneanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Subterraneanus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/149 "2014-07-03T19:25:06Z")
Because she was a terrible writer and a shit “philosopher.” The freshmen in my Intro classes can easily pick apart her execrable arguments with but a cursory understanding of informal fallacies. She appeals to a certain kind of strident and intellectually constipated personality I tend to associate with those who score high on dark triad tests. ---
**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, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/150 "2014-07-03T19:41:35Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Invariably the people who do not display reflexive hatred of Rand’s ideas, are the very few people who understand them. I’ll accept that there’s some truth to that, as long as we don’t understand “reflexive hatred” to include every form of contempt, much less disagreement. > [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Let’s be clear, Rand claimed that only she understood her “objectivism”, and none of her followers did. That right there is a reason her work shouldn’t be taught in schools: she’s no longer around to explain it properly. ---
**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, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/151 "2014-07-03T20:16:29Z")
If she couldn’t explain it properly when she was alive, then her ideas are nothing more than pseudo-intellectual masturbation for her, and meaningless drivel for everybody else. You can find more “meaning” and “truth” on the back of a Froot Loops box than you can in her novels. I have, unfortunately, read them all. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/152 "2014-07-03T20:39:20Z")
Mentioning Froot Loops in a thread which deals (however tangentially) with Rabid Randites\* strikes me as somehow appropriate. On topic, by my sophomore year in high school I had become a compulsive reader, so when I came across a copy of Anthem it became a logical next victim. For such a short book I found it a terrible slog. Even after almost 50 years I’m left with an impression of turgid style, utter pretentiousness, and misogyny (the male character got to choose his own name, but the female character had to take the name he gave her). As for the rest of her works, I think I’d prefer a leftover _Weekly World News_ that’s been used to wrap fish. \*I’ll let someone else do the honors. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/153 "2014-07-03T20:45:30Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > That right there is a reason her work shouldn’t be taught in schools: she’s no longer around to explain it properly. If only she understood it, as she apparently claimed\*, can it be said that she _ever_ explained it properly? But to me this seems like a joke. Oh, it’s really profound and true, if only you understood! Which, nobody but her did. Yep. Brilliant. If there was a concept in her head better than her own explanations or as proselytized by her followers since she became worm food, such as to form a coherent philosophy that can hold an ounce of water for ten seconds, I’ve not read it or heard it. And there’s no shortage of Randian disciples on the Intertoobs and Facebook. (Og, spare me from Facebook proselytizing of any stripe!) \*Wouldn’t mind a cite for this assertion… ---
**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, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/154 "2014-07-03T22:09:29Z")
> [@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. Yes, but I clarified that it’s not an assumption. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/155 "2014-07-03T22:31:16Z")
> [@Knorf](#): > > If only she understood it, as she apparently claimed\*, can it be said that she _ever_ explained it properly? But to me this seems like a joke. Oh, it’s really profound and true, if only you understood! Which, nobody but her did. I think Joyce said something similar about Ulysses. Which we don’t study in high school either because its frankly incomprehensible without some fairly advanced college English behind you. But Joyce proved over and over again that he really could write prose very well - so when he wrote a book meant to confund (which of course, he didn’t - confund being a made up word that came along after Joyce had died, but its appropriate) people took it as a serious challenge rather than a rant. ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/156 "2014-07-03T22:31:36Z")
Why is Hitler not taught in schools? ---
**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, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/157 "2014-07-03T22:34:25Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > I’ll accept that there’s some truth to that, as long as we don’t understand “reflexive hatred” to include every form of contempt, much less disagreement. > > That right there is a reason her work shouldn’t be taught in schools: she’s no longer around to explain it properly. That and if you announce you understand it enough to explain it well enough that others should understand, you are contradicting the source (The Fountainhead) and announcing to the world that you are emotionally immature and can’t empathize with others. But hey, it worked for Steve Jobs, Dick Cheney and Mitt Romney. ---
**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, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/158 "2014-07-03T22:44:09Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > 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. > > [Ayn Rand, sociopathic politics « Left Blog](http://leftsolutions.wordpress.com/ayn-rand-sociopathic-politics/) Going to a private journal entry is just you reaching for something that’ll make her look as bad as possible. You don’t know what the context is, you know that it’s not meant for public consumption, and it could be anything - thinking aloud or reflecting on the nature of selfishness. She has, in print, repudiated the sort of concept that you wish to ascribe to her "Introduction,” The Virtue of Selfishness, ix > [@](#): > > The Objectivist ethics holds that the actor must always be the beneficiary of his action and that man must act for his own rational self-interest. But his right to do so is derived from his nature as man and from the function of moral values in human life—and, therefore, is applicable only in the context of a rational, objectively demonstrated and validated code of moral principles which define and determine his actual self-interest. It is not a license “to do as he pleases” and it is not applicable to the altruists’ image of a “selfish” brute nor to any man motivated by irrational emotions, feelings, urges, wishes or whims. > > This is said as a warning against the kind of “Nietzschean egoists” who, in fact, are a product of the altruist morality and represent the other side of the altruist coin: the men who believe that any action, regardless of its nature, is good if it is intended for one’s own benefit. Just as the satisfaction of the irrational desires of others is not a criterion of moral value, neither is the satisfaction of one’s own irrational desires. Morality is not a contest of whims ---
**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, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/159 "2014-07-03T22:49:08Z")
To be clear - I do not think of Rand’s philosophy as a great achievement of any sort. I think it is deeply flawed in its premise of man as a rational being who can have an objective code of ethics, and thus flawed and inapplicable. But I agree with her characterisation of her work - “My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.” , and I see nothing evil or worthy of hatred or contempt in it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078/160 "2014-07-03T23:02:50Z")
> [@bldysabba](#): > > Going to a private journal entry is just you reaching for something that’ll make her look as bad as possible. You don’t know what the context is, you know that it’s not meant for public consumption, and it could be anything - thinking aloud or reflecting on the nature of selfishness. Precisely. **Panache** was correct in that trying to defend AR on this message board is like banging your head against a wall. Someone always comes along with some snippet that a friend of theirs once read somewhere that said AR pulled the legs off frogs just for shits and giggles. I, personally, like _The Fountainhead_. I find Objectivism to be, among other things, unscientific. It’s not something i would choose to run my life by. But evil? No, I’m not seeing evil except for 1) made up things about it or 2) definitions of evil that I don’t accept (eg, people use her philosophy as an excuse to be assholes!!). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-ayn-rand-not-taught-in-schools/692078.md?page=9)