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Why We Banned Legos (2006)

rethinkingschools.org

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Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#271

Post by [deleted] »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #66
ALittleLight wrote: post #45

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#272

Post by peddling-brink »

ALittleLight wrote: post #150
trs8080 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The article is exactly about teaching children to blindly accept hierarchy. The teachers tell them what they can play with and when, how they can play together, and why. Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it? I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it's good for the students to be politi…

I'd guess you haven't been in a role to teach kids. They need to be taught. If not a doctrine you believe in, then it will be something horrific that they come up with themselves. The Lord of the Flies was a documentary.

> Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?

This is an anti-intellectual anti-parenting garbage take. These are 8 year olds.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#273

Post by matthewaveryusa »

> “Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes,” said Oliver. “Then it’s fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it’s for public use.”

Im going to call BS on an 8 year old using the term “public use” that’s such an abstract complicated thought. At best it was parroting.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#274

Post by freeflight »

cwkoss wrote: post #204
Breazy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A man with a sword extolling the virtues of cooperation, empathy, and duty.

It is hilarious and horrifying that people will read a story about teaching kids the importance of sharing and decry it as a slippery slope towards mass genocide.

Also in-line with comparing mask-mandates to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

Makes me wonder if this kind of hyperbole is just the natural outcome after decades of politics labeling all kinds of situations the "Next Nazi Germany" [0] or "Worse than Hitler" [1], often to justify foreign intervention.

Maybe Godwin's law actually predates the Internet.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-33603620080515

[1] https://apnews.com/article/c456d72625fba6c742d17f1699b18a16

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#275

Post by lordloki »

Inityx wrote: post #218
solveit wrote: post #21

> We didn’t want simply to step in as teachers with a new set of rules about how the children could use Legos, exchanging one set of authoritarian rules with another. Ann suggested removing the Legos from the classroom. This bold decision would demonstrate our discomfort with the issues we saw at play in Legotown. I have no words. How oblivious do you have to be to put these sentences together in this order?

Those sentences are not contradictory... Dictating new rules for an activity and taking time away from the activity to reflect on it are absolutely not the same thing.

They are both authoritarian.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#276

Post by farmerstan »

ALittleLight wrote: post #45

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…

The teachers are thinking they are “teaching” them about power, but what is clear to me is the only power is the power of the teachers to completely take away the Lego even though the kids didn’t want it. That complete lack of agency only teaches the kids “what’s the point? I have no control anyway.”

Having them jump through hoops to appease the agenda of the teachers to eventually regain it back doesn’t change the fact the children know they have no agency ie power. The entire thing reeks of hypocrisy.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#277

Post by mwcampbell »

trs8080 wrote: post #269
mwcampbell wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I agree with what the teachers were trying to do, but I also would be more convinced that they had actually succeeded if they had discussed the situation and the rules without ever taking the toys away.

When dealing with children ages 5-9, it is sometimes important to remove an emotional catalyst in order to calmly reflect and have a productive conversation. The Legos were removed, a conversation occurred over several weeks, and the Legos were reintroduced when the conversation resolved.

Still, it leaves the teachers open to criticisms like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30393372

Maybe that matters more in a message board discussion like this one than it does to the actual people involved. Then again, getting buy-in from adults is necessary if a new approach to teaching is going to be replicated on a large scale.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#278

Post by baryphonic »

This reads almost like the plot of a South Park episode.

To recap: Under capitalism, kids(!) get to make cool stuff out of Legos even though the norms are not always fair. Socialist teachers decry this unfairness. After a crisis, they successfully dismantle the unfairness, but only via brute force confiscation, which they execute only after decrying such authoritarianism.

The lesson I learned: Evidently, the socialist intelligentsia has no ability or willingness to produce fairness alongside other goods, either because the problem is inherently extremely difficult (perhaps impossible), or because intelligentsia socialists are generally untalented people, or because each of these socialists has invested so much of her personal resources and effort toward crushing capitalism that she has excluded any thought or concept of how to promote more fairness and cooperation along with producing other goods.

I imagine at least a few of the poor kulak^H^H^H^H^Hkid citizens of Legotown learned the same thing.

Re: Why We Banned Legos (2006)

#279

Post by farmerstan »

trs8080 wrote: post #87
ALittleLight wrote: post #45

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…

The teachers DID interpose themselves. They removed the legos after the Legotown was damaged even though the kids didn’t want that. Only after months of jumping through hoops and patting themselves on the shoulder did the kids get the Lego back.

There are easier ways of teach kids how to share without not only depriving them of toys but making them feel utterly powerless over a random event and having the teachers unilaterally decide to take away the Lego. It wasn’t taken away from some particularly egregious event, it was an accident and the kids wanted to fix things but the teachers response was to show the kids had no agency or power in the decision at all. Way to show the kids what true power is!

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