Heroic teacher?!

[Melissa2010B]

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/put-herself-between-the-children-and-the-gunman-heroic-1st-grade-teacher-died-after-hiding-stud

I'll only say this among Objectivists, where there's hope that some of you might understand, but this story makes me sick.

How is the altruistic self sacrifice of one's life, in an act of utter futility, to be considered "heroic"?!

She wasn't capable of defending herself, yet alone those children. She essentially threw her life away. Is that "heroic"?

If she'd been well trained and armed and had viciously fought to save her own life and defend those children, possibly even killing the attacker in the process, I would consider THAT heroic.

"There are two moral questions which altruism lumps together into one "package-deal": (1) What are values? (2) Who should be the beneficiary of values? Altruism substitutes the second for the first; it evades the task of defining a code of moral values, thus leaving man, in fact, without moral guidance.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

Hence the appalling immorality, the chronic injustice, the grotesque double standards, the insoluble conflicts and contradictions that have characterized human relationships and human societies throughout history, all under the variants of the altruist ethics.

Observe the indecency of what passes as moral judgements today. An industrialist who produces a fortune, and a gangster who robs a bank are regarded as equally immoral, since they both sought wealth for their own "selfish" benefit. A young man who gives up his career in order to support his parents and never rises above the rank of grocery clerk is regarded as morally superior to the young man who endures an excruciating struggle and achieves his personal ambition. A dictator is regarded as moral, since the unspeakable attrocities he committed were intended to benefit "the people", not himself." - Ayn Rand

[whYNOT]

I have a distaste for "heroic" being constantly tossed around by the media - it cheapens the concept, and anyway it differs in principle from the Objectivist "hero."

Is the pilot who safely lands a damaged aircraft, a hero, or a rational person behaving as a cool professional should?

In this case, it's hard to say whether this is media hyperbole. When self-sacrifice is lauded by society, they'll grab any possible opportunity to support it, after all.

But I'll suggest this: in the instant of threat and danger, any of us will reveal his true values.

His or her selfish values.

We can never know with certainty that the teacher threw her life away, willy-nilly, and it seems doubtful that she could've calculated anything, in the heat of the moment..

We can assume her charges, the pupils, were of high value to her, and that she acted selfishly - so morally - in her efforts to protect them. Secondly, she acted with respect for her job: as a professional.

So maybe the Press got this one right, if for the wrong reasons.

(As you indicate, not easy to put across outside O'ist circles)

Edited December 16, 2012 by whYNOT

[JASKN]

I think she was heroic. There was no guarantee that she'd die, and she knew the children were helpless. She cared for them and wanted to protect them. I read another story that had conflicting details with this one, so the entire thing could just be made up.

[bluecherry]

What I've read said it was the principal that died trying to stop the shooter. I agree with the above posts about this thread's topic.

Edited December 17, 2012 by bluecherry

[Dante]

I find it very unlikely that she simply didn't value or like her life that much, and thought this would be a good opportunity to just throw it away for little or no reason.

I find it much more likely that she took her responsibility (her chosen responsibility) as a guardian of these kids very seriously, and was willing to pay the ultimate price to preserve the integrity of that responsibility.

I think, particularly if you have kids whose safety you entrust to others every single day, that calling her a hero isn't a misuse of the term at all.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Dante
Clarity

[happiness]

In what I think was a podcast, even though I can't locate it on his site right now, Peikoff addressed the question of whether it would be moral for a teacher to throw himself in the line of fire to protect his students from a shooter. He said that such an act would indeed be he moral if the professor values the student enough.

Edited December 20, 2012 by happiness

[SapereAude]

http://www.theblaze....ter-hiding-stud

I'll only say this among Objectivists, where there's hope that some of you might understand, but this story makes me sick.

How is the altruistic self sacrifice of one's life, in an act of utter futility, to be considered "heroic"?!

She wasn't capable of defending herself, yet alone those children. She essentially threw her life away. Is that "heroic"?

If she'd been well trained and armed and had viciously fought to save her own life and defend those children, possibly even killing the attacker in the process, I would consider THAT heroic.

I think you may not understand the dynamics of crisis situations like these.

Sometimes, in the defense of others the best you may be able to do is to buy time.

Most mass shooters either surrender or commit suicide when confronted by a similarly armed person.

This woman cared about her job and cared about the children.

Knowing she could do nothing to stop the killer she bought some time for authorities to arrive.

As the children she protected survived, she was successful.

Heroic is a fair description for her rational choice to protect that which she valued.

[Reason_Being]

Well as a teacher you are entrusted with the safety and welfare of your students. When the children are in danger at school, it is the responsibility of teachers and staff to protect them.

I do believe that the teacher had a moral obligation to try to help those students in any way she could.

Whether there was even a remotely realistic chance of saving them, I don't know. Not having witnessed the events, this is only speculation on my part but something tells me that one kid with some guns is not an unbeatable adversary if you are an unarmed adult. Maybe she thought she had a chance to make it out alive, but failed in her attempt. If that were in fact the case, I do believe her hero status is warranted.

What do you suggest she should have done? Run out of the school with her students left inside with the killer?

Edited December 21, 2012 by Reason_Being

[Nicky]

If the article is accurate, her actions were heroic. And I don't think the word "hero", when referring to people who defend others' lifeand rights, is misused at all.

Fighting for rights, the way a soldier does, or fighting to save lives that are in immediate danger, the way a cop does (and the way the occasional teacher will do, in a crisis situation, to protect the lives of children she agreed to protect) are in fact selfish acts in defense of ones selfishly chosen values. Choosing those values is selfish, and so is acting to defend them.

Altruism is the sacrifice of one's own values for the values of others. And example of altruism would be the sacrifice of a special operator for the sake of a missionary who is in Afghanistan to further his own religious beliefs, not any cause worth fighting for (I'm sure we're all familiar with the story).

Edited December 21, 2012 by Nicky