I supported the elimination of the Department of Education in 1980 (From its beginning.).

The longevity of our Republic, and quite possibly the “free world,” has become wholly dependent on the wholesale destruction of our failed government schools.

We can begin by returning God to the classrooms and the kitchen tables…

that I have ever read. The beauty of Rand’s essays is how fresh and relevant they remain to this day.

I might be still pushing the socialist-union screed.

Although Atlas Shrugged was her crowning literary achievement, so much of her other writings are equally important. Specifically, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

Thanks for the post, Vassar. I had forgotten about The Comprachios.

there are classes on the evil White man being taught to Hispanics. It is the evil in the classroom that parents must fight daily. They think they are so slick teaching our children liberalism to use against us but we are on to them and we teach them Conservatism is the future of this great Country!

BTW Vassar, that is a pretty ghoulish excerpt of her writing but the truth is in there.

She had an excellent analysis of the human mind and interaction with society. But this is telling:

Does a child learn to identify, to categorize, to integrate
his experiences and thus acquire the self-confidence needed to develop a long-range
vision? Or does he learn to see nothing but the immediate moment and the feelings
it produces, never venturing to look beyond it, never establishing any context but an
emotional one, which leads him eventually to a stage where, under the pressure of
any strong emotion, his mind disintegrates and reality vanishes?

As children grow, even to the stages of adolescence, they are very susceptible to external messages. Their own ego strengths and identity are being formed during these years, then solidified. So, the messages given are very important. Not only that, but this is also the way they are desensitized to moral concerns and behaviors.
IMO, not only is the first 6-7 yrs of development important, but in adolescence some of this can be reworked, repaired, or further destruction can occur. That is why young people are so susceptible to the advertisers, the entertainment world, and the video game universe. At a most vulnerable age, they are being influenced.

Y’all best be completely and one-hundred percent on top of your kids’ schools and what’s going to be said in classrooms tomorrow and going forward.

that was enlightening

I like Rand’s writing. Her style can be difficult at times and I have to keep a dictionary handy, but she had a LOT of insight.

I haven’t finished reading all of the essay yet, but it sounds much like our modern day idea of “acclimation” that is used as a technique in behavioral modification theory.

apparently to prove the point that the Leftists have been trying to control the mind of our children forever. That’s a fact.

Ayn Rand was an atheist, and coined the term “objectivism.” In other words, if something wasn’t in your face, or provable by science, it didn’t exist, including God. All of her writings were based on that premise.

With the essay you link to, on page six, one of her paragraphs include-

“He does not know what to do; he is told to do anything he feels like. He picks up a toy; it is snatched away from him by another child; he is told that he must learn to shatre. Why? No answer is given. He sits alone in a corner; he is told that he must join others. Why? No answer is given. He approaches a group, reaches for their toys and is punched in the nose. He cries, in angry bewilderment; the teacher throws her arms around him and gushes that she loves him.”

Rand talks about the will of the pack.

For me, this is Rand shouting out for the omnipotent individual. As an atheist, she apparently doesn’t acknowledge that God has any say, nor should he in any discussion about morality amongst the human race, because there is no absolute proof that he ever existed.

There were some arguments that home schooled children lacked the abilities of being socialized with other children, probably by the left. Many of us socialize our dogs for God’s sake, so that they have an ability to interact and know that there really is an interactive society, with other beings in society. Rand purports that the child needs alone and quiet times, that is true. The amount of alone time that children should have needs to be monitored.

Rand talked about the Will of the Pack, as though it was a negative. I’d prefer to concentrate on the Will of the People, before I’d accept Rands scripts for our society.

….why atheists bother to care. Simplistically speaking, they should have no “issues”. But they appear to be useful on occasion. Wasn’t it Christopher Hitchens who argued the campaign against Saddam Hussein was…..righteous?

I had a good funk going on here.

She’s not as easy or enjoyable to get through as Chesterton either.

Man’s spirit is the reason these “incidents” are the exception not the rule. We are not machines.

“The state did not assume as much power sending men to the stake as it did sending them to the elementary school.” – G. K. Chesterton

I’m still traveling in Tulsa tonight NM by Friday.
Will try to read your Cain pieces later.

Asimov came from behind the curtain as a great writer (fiction) that also included perceptive glimpses at human nature. Atheist to the core as well.

As the Jesuit and Hitler and Stalin and others have said. Give them the children for a few years and it cannot be undone.

“To make you unconscious for life by means of your own brain, nothing can be more ingenious.” Rand

Even understanding the nature of the prison she died in captivity.

Have not seen this essay before. Thanks.

acquainting me with Rand’s essay. I wasn’t able to read it in a timely way, but I’m printing it so that I can finish it and make notes. School choice is important to me. I voted for Pete Hoekstra in our gubernatorial primary, partly because he was endorsed by a homeschoolers legal defense group (I don’t homeschool, but know people who do) and he seemed like the best person to bring about more school choice (as well as being conservative on other issues). The Rand essay is meaty reading, but worth the effort. Thank you.