PsychoPhil

You know, this whole thing is so idiotic I’m almost left speechless. Almost.

Why We Banned Legos
Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom

Children dug through hefty-sized bins of Legos, sought “cool pieces,” and bartered and exchanged until they established a collection of homes, shops, public facilities, and community meeting places. We carefully protected Legotown from errant balls and jump ropes, and watched it grow day by day.

After nearly two months of observing the children’s Legotown construction, we decided to ban the Legos.

We met as a teaching staff later that day. 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. Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation. We knew that the examination would have the most impact if it was based in engaged exploration and reflection rather than in lots of talking. 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. And it posed a challenge to the children: How might we create a “community of fairness” about Legos?

Blah blah blah blah blah blah BLAH! It goes on and like this throughout the article.Its actually quite painful to read at times and to be honest, quite difficult to believe at times as well:

And we visited Pike Place Market, the farmers and artisans market in downtown Seattle, and asked questions to provoke kids to think about ownership: Does a farmer own her produce? Or does the consumer own it?

Huh? They have these kids two hours a day and they’re doing field trips?

I was going to rip on a few more things in this article, but I just can’t stand it. I want to close the browser window its in and be done with it. I’ll wrap up with this; A description of the school given in the article:

he children, ages 5 through 9, come to Hilltop after their days in elementary school, arriving around 3:30 and staying until 5:30 or 6:00. Hilltop is located in an affluent Seattle neighborhood, and, with only a few exceptions, the staff and families are white; the families are upper-middle class and socially liberal.

So they teach these 8 year olds some pretty hard core socialist theories (including class power stuggles) and then send them home to their white, affluent, upper middle-class lives. But hey, its ok! Their parents are socially liberal! I’m sure their parents drive them home to their mini-mansions in the same model/color/year Land Rover and every other parent. And I’m sure that, just like lego-town, all the mini mansions are ‘public structures’ and they’re all ’standard sizes’. No parent in this socially liberal neighborhood would ever stoop to playing ‘keep up with the joneses’. No way. They live in a ‘community of fairness’.

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