| | Books-To-The-Schools is their best project in terms of the "leverage" it has. With limited amounts of money, Objectivist organizations have to consider how much leverage each dollar will get, what is its capacity to move the earth. In this case, there are several things to appreciate:
i) Books in the junior high to high school curriculum reach minds which are idealistic, just opening, have not yet been brainwashed with bad ideas. This reaches kids at exactly the right age of openness. In many cases, such is the brainwashing at lower levels, college is too late. Get them when they are young-est before become lefty, nihilist, jaded, postmodern...and while they are seeking heroes to build a life on. ii) The multiplier effect: each novel has multiple awareness and readership impact - it gets passed along to other students in the next class, to parents, talked about by teachers and principals. As a teacher, I can testify that schools are not isolated places, much less so than colleges. Everybody chatters. You have teacher word of mouth which speeds adoption by others, by school boards, parents getting the word, other teachers hearing of the books. Parents get intrigued. Better parents go out and get the book or read after or with kid. iii) Educators imitate other educators. Once something has become part of the educational canon in one place, that gets imitated elsewhere.
iv) Teachers are hungry, desperate for -anything- to keep the kids awake, open their minds to ideas and reading and discussion. And they instantly see that Anthem and Fountainhead do that. For a struggling teacher that very much trumps their own strong ideology (or lack of one).
Phil
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