In this lecture on ethics in education, Ayn Rand describes the role of Romantic art in a young person’s development of normative concepts and a “moral sense of life,” as well as the moral and psychological consequences of the disappearance of Romantic art from modern Western culture.

Rand touches upon such subjects as:

• The source of the false dichotomy of “the practical versus the moral”
• How conventional morality has placed the field of ethics itself in a bad light
• The process by which an idealistic child can come to fear and repress his emotions
• The harm done by modern philosophy, education and culture to men’s moral development

An article based on this lecture was published in The Objectivist Newsletter in March 1965 under the title “Art and Moral Treason” and was later anthologized in The Romantic Manifesto (1971).