Objectivist-Oriented School

Posted by Pecuniology 5 years, 6 months ago to Education
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Who here is interested in following the establishment of an Objectivist-oriented school, primarily for pupils who age out of Montessori? The curriculum is inspired by Peikoff's Why Johnny Can't Think and Jamin Carson's PhD dissertation "A Philosophical Analysis of Objectivist Education."


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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Notwithstanding what I posted in my earlier response to your comment here, it would be very interesting to line up as many Objectivist PhD-holders as possible into some kind of confederation. Any three of us could form a dissertation committee and confer K-PhD degrees.
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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    We are still in the very early stages of this. My first priority is to line up Montessori schools to partner with for the grade 6-12 pupils, and only later to begin ramping up for the transition to undergraduate degrees as the first cohort finishes the minimum necessary for a high school diploma.

    Ideally, we would set up our own undergraduate college, but that is really tedious.

    I've taught at a bottom-feeder private university, a Catholic liberal arts university, and a regional state university. While I avoid doing business with government, I have no illusions about the nobility of the private sector.

    Likewise, I chafe at the idea of operating as a non-profit. In the early years of my career, I worked with several Washington DC-area 'free market' think tanks that lived off the largesse of the productive. It wasn't so much the 'irony' of working for free-market beggars as the hypocrisy that made me leave within a few years to join the ranks of the Dot.Com moneypunk movement in the late 1990s.

    If this thing is to fly, then it will have to be on its own merits.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    While that is an inexpensive approach for you as a customer, realize that a producer, I have rejected the state-subsidized college system. I know that Ayn Rand hated sacrifice, but I have indeed sacrificed certain things in my professorial career so that I would not compromise on bowing down to the State Science Institute. I was once a postdoc at a national lab … before I read Atlas Shrugged. I did not want to become Dr. Stadler.
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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If the students are interested in pursuing technology degrees, sure.

    My first choice for undergraduate degrees is Charter Oak State College in Connecticut, which is part of the state university system in Connecticut and requires only two courses that are administered by the college: Orientation and Final Capstone. Everything else can be completed with AP, CLEP, and other standardized tests.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 5 years, 6 months ago
    When future Galts are ready to come to a university to complete their training, please direct them to me at Florida Tech. I will provide a combination of both the philosophy and the engineering for such students to be future Galts.
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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I am working on establishing such a school.

    It is a lot more tedious than "Let's rent a barn and put on a school."

    I started by reading Leonard Peikoff's Why Johnny Can't Think and Jamin Carson's PhD dissertation, "A Philosophical Analysis of Objectivist Education." Then, I drafted an educational manifesto, which I now have split into two works: 1) the core manifesto that relates directly to the rationale underlying the curriculum, and 2) the more general philosophical material that I am reworking as a young person's guide to life.

    Once this is complete, sorting out the bureaucratic details takes precedent. Fortunately for me, I am in Florida, where the state Department of Education is friendly toward alternative education and homeschooling.

    After the budgets are complete, promotion and pupil recruitment will be the primary activity before opening the doors.

    I would be particularly delighted, if other 'stole' my idea and set up similar schools, so that we all could network and cooperate.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 6 months ago
    Are you asking hypothetically or has such a school already been established?
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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A friend of mine teaches at one of the regional campuses of TAMU. The stories that he tells me about the deterioration of academic standards are heartbreaking.
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  • Posted by 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    A Classical education based on The Great Works is better than the mush that the kids are fed in public schools today. However, the justification for The Classics involves Appeals to Tradition, Authority, and Popular Sentiment: All the best minds since antiquity agree that The Classics have withstood the Test of Time.

    While this is fine for a conservative, it is not for an objectivist. For an objectivist, the curriculum's foundation must be on a single, objective reality and everything that that implies, as Ayn Rand described in detail in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.

    Peikoff and Carson focus on core subjects: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, General Science, History, and Literature. To this, I am adding Mathematics & Logic and Business.
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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 5 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    When I finished high school, I was accepted at any university in Texas without taking entrance exams. I had a 4.0 average.
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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 5 years, 6 months ago
    What was wrong with the classical educations we received before idiots started brainwashing our children? Think you can improve on what those of us over 80 received?
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