191–200 of 440 posts
I know people who worked there a few years after that article was written, and there was no such ban in place. I have to assume the ban was lifted shortly after it was put into place.
The article ends with the ban being lifted.
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What would "doing the walk" look like for these parents?
Not going out of their way to put their kids into ethnically and culturally homogeneous environments.
I think it’s more likely they didn’t go out of their way to put them in more diverse environments.
I think it would be interesting to make a system of 'natural disaster': have the kids (secret) vote ~once a week about whether existing structures should be taken apart and returned to the bins. After the kids leave that day, draw a random vote, and follow the votes prescription. If one child isn't having fun with the way resources are allocated, your structure is in jeopardy. Would create a strong incentive to compr…
Sounds like a good way to have the unpopular kids build destroyed every week.
I agree, specific builds would probably lead to unhealthy dynamics.
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Intervening when some of the kids are hogging all the pieces doesn't seem all that unreasonable, especially since, in this case, the adults noticed it was mostly older kids not letting any of the younger kids play with any of the pieces. That's not a healthy environment. That's literally the big man screwing over the little man.
If it were merely a simple 'hey kids, shar' - or a simple re-org of playtime to make sure kids get to play, it'd be fine. The hypersensitive political contextualisation of this piece elicits the wrong outcomes and it's a totem for so much that is wrong today. We're constantly over analysing and injecting bits of politics into the situation. It's ridiculous. Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able…
Do you have kids? Have you ever worked with kids? Helping kids to solve their conflicts is rarely “without fuss”. Even when there are only like 2–3 kids involved.
Being “sane” and “reasonable” doesn’t go nearly as far as you might hope.
(For that matter, the same goes for many office conflicts among groups of adults.)
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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.
School does not challenge beliefs. It teaches you not to do that at all, and to respect inefficient unreasonable government systems. U.S. schools don't even teach your basic constitutional rights. They intentionally block that because if people knew their 5th amendment rights the vast majority of policing wouldn't work. Public education, like many government pet projects, attract warm bodies, inefficiency, because th…
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For Pete’s sake these are children . You can’t just let the big ones walk all over the little ones.
That's what I'm saying! The children who are being walked on should be supported and given the ability to survive in their mini lego-world. If they're being walked on, but receive no help because "the system allows it" - what chance do they have?
Teaching bargaining will pay off dividends in these children's lives.
Wow. These people are truly demented. Teachers? No. Far from it. They are political activists living a delusion. What a terrible thing to do to children. 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 accident…
You're right, we should redistribute wealth!
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Sharing and taking turns is interpersonal generosity which works very well in the real world. Socialism and collectivism is enforced resource allocation typically requiring authoritarian rule which typically becomes oppressive when manifest in the real world.
except... it isn't? that's literally not what socialism or collectivism is. socialism is just the idea that "wealth" (or any substitute, like lego) should be owned by the community, and rules that bind that community should be made by a consensus of the members.
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> We also discussed our beliefs about our role as teachers in raising political issues with young children. We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity — whether we interceded or not. We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice > From our conversations…
I think you're conflating the fancy words put on it by the article-writer with the concepts as expressed by the children. On the conceptual level, all of that is entirely reasonable to see emerge from a group of broadly well-mannered kids.
* This came after the "points" game. Deciding to be collectivist makes sense, after a game that's designed to result in obviously unfair distribution of ownership. These kids are probably used to these kinds of object lessons: it sounds like this is the program's preferred method of teaching.
* They still wanted to make one huge LEGO Town. Thus, they need to come up with a plan for resolving conflicts, and it can't just be "I own it."
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except the children made the system. they decided on the rules that would apply to them. there is no "system" beyond their own agreement!
That's fine and would teach the kids about tyranny and how to overcome it. But isn't this about the teachers intervening? How are kids to fight against the teachers?
The teachers intervened in the situation (essentially issued an injunction) while organizing a forum to mediate a solution.
Also, just to be clear, adults must be tyrants where children are concerned - you can't logically bargain with emotionally immature humans. Occasionally somebody is going to get sent to the car or a time out.