Who would have thought that kid dropping out of school and considering applying to seminary, deep in a collectivist cease pool of a frat house, would discover the most incredible book written, Atlas Shrugged? And who would have thought that such a kid would, upon reading that book, reject all of the faith-based, collectivist hogwash that was dished his way? Well, that is my story. It wasn't any easy process. Having been a fairly serious Christian up to that point, I couldn't immediately shuck off. I had to be confident that this new philosophy was real. I even immersed myself one last time in a church camp the summer after reading Atlas Shrugged just to see if these new ideas really had the grounding I thought they did. If I remained convinced of Objectivism even after spending 10 weeks among Christians, then I knew this philosophy could not be denied. Of course, those of you at home are probably sitting back thinking "Freaking idiot! Of course Objectivism can not be denied. Take a look at reality." And that's exactly what I did. After some reflection, I realized that my desire to attend seminary was to understand God precisely because I didn't understand the concept up to that point. Rand's arguments for rejecting faith sealed the deal. Without faith, there is no God. Period. End of discussion.
So after dropping out of school and taking a semester off, I re-enrolled in college and started my private eduation of Objectivism by purchasing every major Rand book I could find. The Fountainhead, We the Living, Anthem, and the 5 pack of non-fiction: Virtue of Selfishness, Philosophy: Who Needs It, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, The Romantic Manifesto, and For the New Intellectual. I also subscribed to the Intellectual Activist and starting getting online and reading all I could about Objectivism.
At was at this point, around 1997, that I learned about the Rand - Branden split and the Kelley - Peikoff split. At first my heart sank. How could such a joyous philosophy, so right in hundreds of ways, cause these explosive splits? It didn't make any sense. Certainly these heroes of mine had no conflicts of interest. Being committed to reality, I knew I had to wade into the arguments and make a judgment for myself. And this I did. I have little to say about the Rand-Branden split. Branden committed the biggest sin in Rand's eyes, he lied to and cheated on her. Rand wanted nothing more to do with him. Not much more to tell.
But the Kelley - Peikoff split involved a difference of philosophical issues. So, like a good trooper, I read through all the requisite articles "On moral sanctions", "A Question of Sanction", and "Fact and Value". I can't remember now if I read anything else, but it's likely I did if a search engine could find it. There are two things I noticed in reading these articles, a) Peikoff left a logical hole between judging ideas to judging individuals and b) the argument about whether Objectivism was open or closed seemed rather irrelevant. Let me explain these further.
I understood and agreed with Peikoff on everything he said about judging ideas, not just true and false, but good and bad (or evil). But, and this a big but, I could not find a logical connection between judging an idea as bad or evil, and its implications on judging a person bad or evil.
He says: "Just as every "is" implies an "ought," so every identification of an idea's truth or falsehood implies a moral evaluation of the idea and of its advocates."
Why does it apply to its advocates? Now, I'm not saying that it shouldn't, only that Peikoff's example of inherently dishonest ideas addressed a small portion of ideas. What about all other ideas that are false/bad? How do we judge the advocates of those ideas? This is the problem I had with his argument. There is a subtle shift of focus from judging an idea as evil to judging the person that holds inherently dishonest ideas as evil. I realize now that he is specifically reflecting on Kelley's example of academic Marxists, although at the time, I didn't see that. But even so, there was a hole as to how to judge individuals with mixed premises. How should I morally judge friends that were Christians, but are generally good, honest people? Their faith in God was harmful to their own life, but not directly harmful to mine. They treated me with respect and justice, and we had many enjoyable times playing games together, camping, going to bars for drinks, and talking about cars, football and women.
Surprisingly in hindsight, I didn't find any logical errors in Kelley's arguments, although I do today. The best I can come up with is that I committed sloppy thinking. I was good at following logical arguments, but bad at questioning the premises of the arguments. I didn't take the time to sufficiently challenge and fully understand what was really being said. I didn't ask myself what were the full ramifications of this idea if consistently held. I was young and hadn't been trained on how to think (damn public education). I also think I read more into his discussion of toleration than what was there.
On the open versus closed debate, I don't want to go into it here.
Besides the philosophic arguments between Peikoff and Kelley, I heard a lot of personal stories about how people who agreed with Kelley were virtually shunned by those who agreed with Peikoff, even if they had been good friends prior. That behavior seemed rather ridiculous. Now I'll admit I never verified any of those stories, but it was enough for me to be hesitant of any further interaction with ARI.
Over the next 10 years, I hovered around the periphery of the Objectivist movement, interested in the philosophy, but also interested in doing and learning many other things. My involvement consisted of attending local clubs, attending a couple TOC summer seminars, reading (although rarely participating in) Objectivist discussion lists, becoming webmaster of the Daily Objectivist, and teaching at Camp Indecon, inspired by Objectivist Lorie Bugby. It was at the last that I meet Diana Hsieh, whom I had read about, but had never known personally. During that week of camp, I developed a friendship and a great deal of respect for her, as she was intelligent, honest, and just. So a year later, when I started reading on Noodlefood about her dissatisfaction with TOC, I took greater interest than I would have otherwise. If the problems with TOC were as serious as she portrayed them to be, then it was something I should look into myself.
This unfortunately happened around the same time I started my PhD. I was swamped with school work and, after a year, swamped in my home life with a new baby. But my PhD program also taught me the skills I need to re-evaluate the split in ways I was unable to 10 years prior. For the past 2 years, I've wanted to dig in to this old debate and see if I could make sense out of the arguments. Only now have I had a chance. That discussion while be completed shortly as part 2 in this series.
9.29.2006
9.19.2006
I see Paris, I see France...
Yesterday, I publicly disagreed with the Dean of our college.
For a bit of background: Our dean sponsors a PhD luncheon every year for all the PhD students in our college. I’ve never been one to turn down free food and it does give me a chance to ask our dean direct questions about our college and academia at large. I have to give him kudos for that. One of the topics brought up during the luncheon was the goals for the college. Obviously, this was important to the Dean as he spent the next 30 minutes talking about them. During the discussion about donations came the following exchange:
Dean: “Donors often give large sums of money to schools once they pass away”
Another Student: “Especially if they don’t like their kids”
Dean: “Actually the opposite, if do like their kids. We know what happens to kids that are left large sums of money. How many of you want a Paris Hilton running around?”
Silence for a few seconds.
Then slowly, with a sly smile, I raised my hand.
Now as you can imagine, everyone bust up laughing at that point with a few comments about how I was married…and that my wife was pregnant. The dean tried to clarify that he didn’t mean running around like that. However, no one bothered to ask why I raised my hand. They all assumed it was for eye candy (or more). The fact is they were all wrong. I would rather have 10,000 Paris Hilton’s running around in this world than have a Dean suggest that money corrupts. He was basically saying that the more money you give to your children, the worse the consequences. By implication, it’s morally wrong to let your children inherit your wealth when you die. Bullshit!
At best, the Dean’s remark was a half-truth. Giving someone unearned wealth can potentially lead to irresponsibility. However, irresponsibility is not caused by the wealth. The wealth just allows the irresponsibility to become more visible to the public. Raising your children to be rational, productive, and financially savvy will provide the best foundation for success in life. With this foundation in place, inheritance merely supplements their potential for success. It provides them with a springboard to more opportunities. The key is not whether or not a child receives inheritance, but whether or not they behave morally and take responsibility for themselves. This is the cause of the Paris Hiltons of the world. Not large amounts of money. The Dean's statement is just plain wrong.
For a bit of background: Our dean sponsors a PhD luncheon every year for all the PhD students in our college. I’ve never been one to turn down free food and it does give me a chance to ask our dean direct questions about our college and academia at large. I have to give him kudos for that. One of the topics brought up during the luncheon was the goals for the college. Obviously, this was important to the Dean as he spent the next 30 minutes talking about them. During the discussion about donations came the following exchange:
Dean: “Donors often give large sums of money to schools once they pass away”
Another Student: “Especially if they don’t like their kids”
Dean: “Actually the opposite, if do like their kids. We know what happens to kids that are left large sums of money. How many of you want a Paris Hilton running around?”
Silence for a few seconds.
Then slowly, with a sly smile, I raised my hand.
Now as you can imagine, everyone bust up laughing at that point with a few comments about how I was married…and that my wife was pregnant. The dean tried to clarify that he didn’t mean running around like that. However, no one bothered to ask why I raised my hand. They all assumed it was for eye candy (or more). The fact is they were all wrong. I would rather have 10,000 Paris Hilton’s running around in this world than have a Dean suggest that money corrupts. He was basically saying that the more money you give to your children, the worse the consequences. By implication, it’s morally wrong to let your children inherit your wealth when you die. Bullshit!
At best, the Dean’s remark was a half-truth. Giving someone unearned wealth can potentially lead to irresponsibility. However, irresponsibility is not caused by the wealth. The wealth just allows the irresponsibility to become more visible to the public. Raising your children to be rational, productive, and financially savvy will provide the best foundation for success in life. With this foundation in place, inheritance merely supplements their potential for success. It provides them with a springboard to more opportunities. The key is not whether or not a child receives inheritance, but whether or not they behave morally and take responsibility for themselves. This is the cause of the Paris Hiltons of the world. Not large amounts of money. The Dean's statement is just plain wrong.
9.14.2006
Unschooling
This post originally appeared on the Objectivist Parenting Yahoo group.
Let me start with a few definitions.
From dictionary.reference.com (there are several definitions for each word, but the one’s below most accurately represent how I use them)
Education - the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
Schooling - The process of being educated formally
Unschooling - a home-school education with the child taking the primary responsibility instead of a parentor teacher; also called child-directed learning, self-learning.
First off, let me state, that education, as defined above damn well better be one of the most important things in an Objectivist’s life, or the life of theirchildren. I only bring this up, because David makes two statements “Education is designed specifically to intercede in children’s value-driven lives with thevalues of the parents” and “I ask those who are dead-set for education to stand back for a moment…”, that do not follow from the definition I use andbelieve is the most proper sense of the term. The only sense I can make of David’s statement is that he is referring to “formal” education, what I define as schooling. Unschooling is a reaction against formal education.
Not that I’m trying to knock David, because he brings up several important points, the most critical to this discussion being: the first question we need to answer is not “which” formal educational program is best for our children, but do they need a formal education to begin with? But that begs the question, what does it mean to be formal? And does it necessarily imply coercion, as unschoolers claim? Being formal entails that an entity corresponds to some structure or form. So a formal education would entail an education that has some structure or form to it. So the next question I ask is “Is there any structure or form that education should employ?”
Productivity is important to happiness. But as a virtue, it must be learned. Children are not born knowing how to be productive. They do not know how to organize their thoughts, organize their time, or organize their belongings. They do not understand what it means to take responsibility for their actions.
From Super Nanny. She presents many interesting ideas to try in your own homes. One thing that she often uses is the family schedule. This schedule breaks down each day into manageable time periods. Jo Jo stresses that the schedule is not something written in stone, but is flexible to deal with changing circumstances. But what this schedule does is provide the children the framework for organizing smaller time periods. It provides them with a sense of empowerment because they know what is happening next, but also with the ability to organize their time to complete activities within certain timeframes. Certainly, any schedule must be flexible enough to accommodate exceptions, such as when a child is completely immersed in an activity, it is probably best to let them continue past the scheduled time. But the value of a schedule is in its ability to develop time organizational abilities and in its ability to present the world in an orderly, rational way, rather than by chaos. Being able to organize effectively one’s time is instrumental to increasing one’s productivity. A schedule is something that young children are incapable of making for themselves. They simply do not understand the concept of time. Yet…young children thrive under such structure. They become more productive, not less. A schedule is but one formalizing activity that can help develop productivity. But more importantly, it can be a formalizing activity that helps education.
For example, scheduling a time for reading, but letting the child read anything they want, whether it is comics, newspapers, novels, (as my wife inspired a friend’s kid with) a book about vomit, or (in David’s example) the Idiot’s Guide to Plumbing. The children learn an important skill (how to read) by reading about something interesting to them.
And this bring me to my second issue. “and as we all know, when the plumbers DO value that information (at age 8 or age 18 or age 38), they will learn it at warp speed” does not correspond with the facts that I’ve observed. The elasticity of the brain is greatest in young children. As we age, our ability to learn rapidly diminishes. I watch my 1 year old son learn new things every day that just blow my mind away. There is no way I could learn at my age as much as he does at his. Children can learn foreign languages in a couple weeks, where it would take adults months if not years to learn. The fact is, children can learn at warp speed, but adults cannot.
If children are lucky, they developed a firm foundation of knowledge and the proper skills for thinking so that they continue to learn fairly rapidly at 30. But children do not know of what a firm foundation of knowledge consists. They also have not learned the proper skills for thinking. Nor what skills are proper and which are not. Is this not a place where formal education can help? Cannot formal education offer students the tools and activities to learn about things that interest them, but learn about them in a way that builds the skills for increased rational thought and better judgment? These are rhetorical questions, because of course they can. That is exactly what something like the Montessori method provides.
Ultimately, I think unschooling is a reaction against the arbitrary rules from authority instigated by public schools (and even many private schools) about what to learn and how to learn them. While these rules can be coercive, that does not mean that all formal education is coercive. Applying a schedule to a classroom is not a coercive rule, but an instructional tool for teaching children how to organize their time and increase their productivity. As long as the schedule is not considered absolute, reifying the concept, it maintains its objective purpose.
The above provides a basis for a formal education, a.k.a. school, that is not coercive. And it demonstrates that a formal education, if objectively designed, can be in the best interest of the child, both morally and practically.
Let me start with a few definitions.
From dictionary.reference.com (there are several definitions for each word, but the one’s below most accurately represent how I use them)
Education - the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
Schooling - The process of being educated formally
Unschooling - a home-school education with the child taking the primary responsibility instead of a parentor teacher; also called child-directed learning, self-learning.
First off, let me state, that education, as defined above damn well better be one of the most important things in an Objectivist’s life, or the life of theirchildren. I only bring this up, because David makes two statements “Education is designed specifically to intercede in children’s value-driven lives with thevalues of the parents” and “I ask those who are dead-set for education to stand back for a moment…”, that do not follow from the definition I use andbelieve is the most proper sense of the term. The only sense I can make of David’s statement is that he is referring to “formal” education, what I define as schooling. Unschooling is a reaction against formal education.
Not that I’m trying to knock David, because he brings up several important points, the most critical to this discussion being: the first question we need to answer is not “which” formal educational program is best for our children, but do they need a formal education to begin with? But that begs the question, what does it mean to be formal? And does it necessarily imply coercion, as unschoolers claim? Being formal entails that an entity corresponds to some structure or form. So a formal education would entail an education that has some structure or form to it. So the next question I ask is “Is there any structure or form that education should employ?”
Productivity is important to happiness. But as a virtue, it must be learned. Children are not born knowing how to be productive. They do not know how to organize their thoughts, organize their time, or organize their belongings. They do not understand what it means to take responsibility for their actions.
From Super Nanny. She presents many interesting ideas to try in your own homes. One thing that she often uses is the family schedule. This schedule breaks down each day into manageable time periods. Jo Jo stresses that the schedule is not something written in stone, but is flexible to deal with changing circumstances. But what this schedule does is provide the children the framework for organizing smaller time periods. It provides them with a sense of empowerment because they know what is happening next, but also with the ability to organize their time to complete activities within certain timeframes. Certainly, any schedule must be flexible enough to accommodate exceptions, such as when a child is completely immersed in an activity, it is probably best to let them continue past the scheduled time. But the value of a schedule is in its ability to develop time organizational abilities and in its ability to present the world in an orderly, rational way, rather than by chaos. Being able to organize effectively one’s time is instrumental to increasing one’s productivity. A schedule is something that young children are incapable of making for themselves. They simply do not understand the concept of time. Yet…young children thrive under such structure. They become more productive, not less. A schedule is but one formalizing activity that can help develop productivity. But more importantly, it can be a formalizing activity that helps education.
For example, scheduling a time for reading, but letting the child read anything they want, whether it is comics, newspapers, novels, (as my wife inspired a friend’s kid with) a book about vomit, or (in David’s example) the Idiot’s Guide to Plumbing. The children learn an important skill (how to read) by reading about something interesting to them.
And this bring me to my second issue. “and as we all know, when the plumbers DO value that information (at age 8 or age 18 or age 38), they will learn it at warp speed” does not correspond with the facts that I’ve observed. The elasticity of the brain is greatest in young children. As we age, our ability to learn rapidly diminishes. I watch my 1 year old son learn new things every day that just blow my mind away. There is no way I could learn at my age as much as he does at his. Children can learn foreign languages in a couple weeks, where it would take adults months if not years to learn. The fact is, children can learn at warp speed, but adults cannot.
If children are lucky, they developed a firm foundation of knowledge and the proper skills for thinking so that they continue to learn fairly rapidly at 30. But children do not know of what a firm foundation of knowledge consists. They also have not learned the proper skills for thinking. Nor what skills are proper and which are not. Is this not a place where formal education can help? Cannot formal education offer students the tools and activities to learn about things that interest them, but learn about them in a way that builds the skills for increased rational thought and better judgment? These are rhetorical questions, because of course they can. That is exactly what something like the Montessori method provides.
Ultimately, I think unschooling is a reaction against the arbitrary rules from authority instigated by public schools (and even many private schools) about what to learn and how to learn them. While these rules can be coercive, that does not mean that all formal education is coercive. Applying a schedule to a classroom is not a coercive rule, but an instructional tool for teaching children how to organize their time and increase their productivity. As long as the schedule is not considered absolute, reifying the concept, it maintains its objective purpose.
The above provides a basis for a formal education, a.k.a. school, that is not coercive. And it demonstrates that a formal education, if objectively designed, can be in the best interest of the child, both morally and practically.
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