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Nonetheless, I find it very concerning that multiple commenters here think, that trying to get children to share and play nice together is indoctrination/socialism/etc and that anything that isn't based on total self-reliance must be wrong.
I feel visceral disgust reading this article. It seems like the kids were playing with each other in a healthy way and the teachers interposed themselves to change how the kids were playing for political and ideological reasons. This is disgusting to me because I think it's analogous to physical abuse. A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it's a violent crime, but also because children are especially vul…
On the one hand, the kids had developed a system that excluded other kids from playing. Past generations would use this as an opportunity to teach sharing and taking turns. These teachers, on the other hand, took it as an opportunity to teach socialism and collectivism.
You mean (ridiculously simplified) taking turns and sharing?
There’s nothing inherently different between these things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indoctrination is when you're inculcated with a doctrine. That's not what happened with the children described in the article. But if you mean affecting children's values and social outlook, then indeed, teachers do that. Sometimes they do it unconsciously, in which case it's typically the prevailing social values, explicit and implicit, which children are imbued with; sometimes it's more conscious.
how is this not what happened here? children were playing with legos, adults step in and mandate how play should occur based on their observations and the values they think the kids should develop. the way they describe how the kids play with legos—looking for the "cool pieces", feeling ownership over things they built—is the default way that all kids end up playing with legos in a group setting. somehow we all turne…
The solution was simple: Every month we take everything apart. Sort the pieces into boxes. And cleanup. Then, we start the new month inventing new things.
Darn near 18 yeas ago one of my kids built a massive lego kit. He loved it. One day he was playing and accidentally dropped it. The thing exploded into a million pieces. He was about to explode into crying when I jumped in and said: Wow! That was awesome. At this point he wasn’t sure how to react, but he wasn’t crying.
That’s when I said: In life what matters isn’t what you do when everything is the way you like it, but the decisions you make when things go wrong. This is an opportunity to do that! We can either rebuild it or we can use our imaginations and build something cooler out of the pieces on the floor. Your choice.
Daddy, I want to build a huge dinosaur now.
To which I said: See, if what you built hadn’t broken we never would have thought of building a dino. Be happy, not sad.
We spent the next two weeks building a massive dinosaur.
About a month later he took it completely apart on his own and told me it was time to invent something else.
These people should not be teaching. They don’t belong anywhere near kids.
>We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded. Wealth redistribution is fun and games, until they take everything you have and also kill you and your family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_Romanov_famil...
Surely these teachers who reject private ownership share all their wealth and own as little as possible? Hierarchical authority as part of private ownership is especially hilarious as the teachers make brutal decisions like taking all of Legotown away. Disowning and redistribution requires the hardest and cruelest of authorities.
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I would rather my children go to a school that challenges our beliefs, because they may be wrong. I don't want the growing up parroting what I believe just because I believe it, they should come to their own conclusions.
Anyone banning legos in the name of equity values creativity and intuitive understanding of the interactions between physical objects less than their ability to brainwash their students, and thus has no business teaching children. The problem here isn’t challenging your beliefs, it’s blatant stupidity. My guess is the reality here is the legos were a source of conflict and so they got taken away. Just like many has o…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Children have had free play for millennia. Supervised play in after-school programs like the one described in the article is relatively new.
Children have also been bullied by other children for millennia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really want to know what you see the difference to be.
When I was in Cuba, the official maximum salary you could earn(e.g as a doctor or teacher or baseball player) was something like $20. People from the party earned more than $3000 through outside deals. I had also been in Norway that people call socialist but is actually quite capitalistic. Most socialists have an idealization of what collectivism "should be". They compare "real capitalism"(an implementation of capita…
If you want to compare it to communist autocracies, you'll need to at least tell us how they're at all related to each other.
This article is the best argument for unsupervised free play that I've seen. Adults have no business moralizing and interfering as children negotiate relationships on their own. It's developmentally important. Children who lack that experience will constantly look for authoritative arbiters of the relationships. That's the soil that societal authoritarianism grows in.
This is the best comment here. The most successful children in elementary school are the ones who have gone through those social conflicts in preschool and worked things out for themselves. Sometimes that means mental conflict, sometimes that means not engaging with your peers and then having to forgive, barter, trade, etc.
I feel visceral disgust reading this article. It seems like the kids were playing with each other in a healthy way and the teachers interposed themselves to change how the kids were playing for political and ideological reasons. This is disgusting to me because I think it's analogous to physical abuse. A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it's a violent crime, but also because children are especially vul…
If you had actually read the article, you would know that this is a private after-school program whose participants are "upper-middle class and socially liberal." Your comment sounds like "MY values aren't being taught so this is child abuse!" Maybe some parents don't agree with your values? Maybe they want their children to learn about cooperation and empathy instead of blindly accepting hierarchical power structure…
Okay, after weeks of this, they all agreed that now everyone owns the legos together. Which is ironic given that they had power over their legos. Then the teachers took it away. Then the teachers gave it back. It sounds like the lesson here is to blindly accept hierarchical powers.
We have to take the teacher's version of events here. But as a parent, it seems equally likely the students learned how to be performative until the teachers were satisfied enough with what they heard to give them their toys back.