Letter From a Chicago School Kindergarten Teacher

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Jones,

This letter is to report to you on an incident that occured in class involving your son, Max.

Today another student, Tommy, came to school hungry, with no snack.  When snack time came Tommy cried, and said something about his father losing his job in the recession.

Max offered to share his snack with Tommy.

I'm sure you are as shocked as I was.  It was a blatant case of "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need" type thinking.  And that's Socialism, or worse, and cannot be tolerated.  Needless to say, I put a stop to it immediately.  Why it didn't occur to Max to get some labor out of Tommy, or at least a promise to repay, I just don't know.

I wish I could say that was the end of it.

But then Max started crying, too. Not only that, he suggested that every child in the class give Tommy something.  He said that even the littlest bit from everyone would be enough to help Tommy right now, and that any one of them might not have a snack on some other day.  That maybe some had more than they were going to eat, and that it wasn't fair that they all had snacks and Tommy didn't.

I can only imagine how disturbed you must be to learn that Max was advocating taxation and redistribution of wealth.  And not one word about the virtues of competition or the invisible hand of the market.

I had to make him stand in the corner.  For the rest of the day.  With no snack.  And to promise to try and be a more rationally self-interested economic actor in the future.  Hopefully this sort of behavior will not occur again.

Sincerely,

Herbert Steadfast, MBA
Kindergarten Teacher
Ayn Rand Elementary School

  ¶ 11:48 AM