COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

Several things bother me about using Rand in the college composition classroom:

1. Most university libraries in this state carry very little in the way of scholarly journals or articles that address the issues surrounding Rand's writing and her followers -- we have to apply for interlibrary loan in order to get any article from the Journal of Ayn Rand Studies -- most of the books available in our library are by Nathaniel Branden, who has to be taken with a grain of salt. I frequently resort to creating links on our class webpage to sites like this one -- in order to disseminate scholarly perspectives of her work to my students.

2. Colleagues of the Rand scholar/instructor often make rash assumptions about the character, politics, and mental stability of one who chooses to use the composition classroom as a forum for serious study of Rand and Objectivism. If I've heard it once, I've heard it a dozen times, "You must be crazy--you're gonna tackle that book in one semester?" People always assume I'm a Republican when they find out I have adopted Rand's novel for the classroom -- and most university folk are allergic to anything that isn't a Democrat. My colleagues and students assume that since I teach Rand in my classes, I subscribe wholeheartedly to her theories -- and that I'm a "Randian."

3. Once exposed to the novel, students blindly fall in love with Howard Roark -- and critical discussion, at times, comes to a standstill. Peter Keating and business majors don't stand a chance once this happens. Dominique typically becomes the 2-dimensional "bitch." Binaristic banter abounds in the classroom and in the halls before and after class. Reversing the effect of such "conversion" requires Herculean effort on the part of the instructor.

4. Invariably, students begin to develop Randian "cliques" outside the classroom that usually progress to mini campus-based Objectivism cults. In a moment, I'll explain why this type of activity offends me the most.

My first exposure to Rand was in high school -- many years ago -- when my 12th grade AP English teacher handed me a copy of the book and said, "Read this and write an essay on it -- you'll win a scholarship." Rebel that I was, I ignored her suggestion. When I finally read the book while searching for a "killer" novel to force on my underachieving college freshmen, I found the character of Howard Roark intriguing but ultimately too perfect; in my opinion, Rand had overshot her goal. In any case, I thought the substance of the book provided ample ammunition for heated discussions -- my favorite kind in the comp. classroom. Ultimately, I am interested in the process during which students cultivate the many constructed and/or subconscious voices contained within and the subsequent struggle to find an outlet through a variety of forms of writing. I saw Rand as a good "jumping off" place for the search for individual identity or lack thereof in students. What caught me off guard was the overwhelming tendency of students to instead internalize the individuals that Rand serves up in her novels -- and the evangelical machinations that take place among student Objectivist cult groups that blindly follow Randism while spreading "the word." My theory is that college comp/lit. instructors typically choose novels they love and that they (ostensibly) hope their students will love as well. However, I've never heard the musings of an English professor whose students loved the assigned novel(s) too much. It takes an innovative instructor to head off simplistic idolatry of work like Rand's.

-- Julie Gates, instructor, University of South Carolina (posted 2/6, 12:35 p.m., U.S. Eastern time)

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