Posted on 03/27/2007 6:03:10 AM PDT by Uncledave
Banning Legos And building a world where “all structures will be standard sizes.”
By John J. Miller
Perhaps you’ve heard about the schools that have banned tag. Or dodgeball. Or stories about pigs.
If so, you won’t be surprised to hear that the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle has banned Legos.
A pair of teachers at the center, which provides afterschool activities for elementary-school kids, recently described their policy in a Rethinking Schools cover story called “Why We Banned Legos.” (See the magazine’s cover here.)
It has something to do with “social justice learning.”
My vision of social justice for children of elementary-school age is as follows: If you’re tagged, you’re it; if the ball hits you, you’re out; and pig stories are fun, especially when told over microwaveable hot dogs.
But I try to keep an open mind, so I read the article on why Hilltop banned Legos.
As most aficionados know, Legos are made by a Danish company. The company name comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well. “Lego became a national treasure and one of the strongest brands in the toy industry,” wrote The Economist last year. “Its colorful bricks are sold in over 130 countries: everyone on earth has, on average, 52 of them.”
In their Rethinking Schools article, teachers Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin describe how the kids at Hilltop built “a massive series of Lego structures we named Legotown.” I sensed that something was rotten in the state of Legotown when I read this description of it: “a collection of homes, shops, public facilities, and community meeting places.”
My children have spent a large portion of their young lives playing with Legos. They have never, to my knowledge, constructed “community meeting places.” Instead, they make monster trucks, space ships, and war machines. These little creations are usually loaded with ion guns, nuclear missiles, bunker-busting bombs, force-field projectors, and death-ray cannons. Alien empires have risen and fallen in epic conflicts waged in the upstairs bedrooms of my home.
Perhaps kids in Seattle, under the careful watch of their latte-sipping guardians, are different. But I don’t think so.
At Hilltop, however, the teachers strive to make them different. “We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity,” write Pelo and Pelojoaquin. “We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice. So we decided to take the Legos out of the classroom.”
The root cause of Hilltop’s Lego problem was that, well, the kids were being kids: There were disputes over “cool pieces,” instances of bigger kids bossing around little ones, and so on.
An ordinary person might recognize this as child’s play. But the social theorists at Hilltop saw something else: “The children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.”
Pelo and Pelojoaquin continue: “As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.”
So they banned the Legos and began their program of re-education. “Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation,” they write.
Instead of practicing phonics or memorizing multiplication tables, the children played a special game: “In the game, the children could experience what they’d not been able to acknowledge in Legotown: When people are shut out of participation in the power structure, they are disenfranchised — and angry, discouraged, and hurt. ... The rules of the game — which mirrored the rules of our capitalist meritocracy — were a setup for winning and losing. ... Our analysis of the game, as teachers, guided our planning for the rest of the investigation into the issues of power, privilege, and authority that spanned the rest of the year.”
After “months of social justice exploration,” the teachers finally agreed it was time to return the Legos to the classroom. That’s because the children at last had bought into the concept that “collectivity is a good thing.” And in Hilltop’s new Lego regime, there would be three immutable laws:
All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.
Lego people can be saved only by a “team” of kids, not by individuals.
All structures will be standard sizes.
You can almost feel the liberating spirit of that last rule. All structures will be standard sizes? At Hilltop Children’s Center, all imaginations will be a standard size as well: small.
I absolutely hate it for the reasons laid out here by you and the other FReepers on this thread.
Holy cow.
If I had kids in that school I would pull them out asap.
That is sickening.
I remember when I got my MBA, I had to do a lot of group. And in every group, I was the only native English speaker, so guess who ended up having to write all the papers?
The tuition at Hilltop:
Preschool
Class Classroom
Size
Ratio 4 – 5 Days/Week 3 Days/Week
Rainbow Room 10 1:5 $1185 $950
Sunlight 18 1:6 $1135 $910
Mountain 14 1:7 $1135 n/a
River 7 1:7 n/a $910
School Age:
Schedule 4 – 5 Days/Week 3 Days/Week
Before and After School $475 $380
After School $395 $315
Before School $295 $235
Financial aid is available, but enrollment using state aid is limited because the state just don't provide enough money.
"Hilltop strives to provide financial assistance to as many families as possible. Available financial assistance is determined during the annual budgeting process.
DSHS Child Care Subsidies
Hilltop is eligible to receive DSHS child care subsidies. However, because the reimbursement rate from the State of Washington is only 50-60% of our tuition, we limit the number of spots available for children receiving this subsidy. For more information on receiving a DSHS subsidy, please go to the Division of Child Care and Early Learning website. Please contact Hilltop at 283-3100 or by email to find out if there are any available openings for children receiving DSHS subsidy."
Appears that attending Hilltop itself is not based on any sense of "community", but rather is determined by the amount of bucks you have. Furthermore, the school is located in the Queen Anne area of Seattle, and even states its purpose is to serve only the residents of that very exclusive community.
"Hilltop was founded in 1971 to provide child care for the families of Queen Anne."
Hypocrites.
My daughter is in Middle school and she cringes when she hears "group project".
She has experienced the same thing both of your College students have.
On both projects she did most, if not all of the work and got little recognition for it.
Needless to say her grade suffered because of it.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW!
For 45 years, America was in an undeclared War with foreign forces that expounded what these "teachers" are indoctrinating children in, and there seems very little being done about it.
In two days, I will be linking an essay on "Egalitarianism" as a social menace, at my Web Site. For anyone who wants to see what the actual effect of the strange thinking of these teachers is apt to be on their innocent victims, see-- The Greatest Mischief Ever Wrought.
This sort of corruption of youth is more than just outrageous. It is morally the equivalent of indoctrinating them into sexual deviancy. Come to think of it, haven't Leftists in West Coast education been doing that also, under heading of "Sex Education" or "Diversity" or some such?
Conservatives need to stand up and fight those who would change community thinking, by manipulating the youth. It almost doesn't matter the particular issue. It is never right for "teachers" to deliberately seek to change family values. And that is precisely what is involved here. And it is not rendered one whit more holy by reason of the fact that the particular family values, happen to be those that have made the Good Life possible for Western Nations, over the Centuries.
William Flax
Don't get me started on group reports. What a VILE concept. Like being chained at the waist to a non-swimmer and tossed overboard.
hahaha, perhaps you can post directions for that online. And send it to preschool groups. It will save a generation of those poor boys.
One measley kilobuck per month is not that much for many a Marin County parent.
You are mixing apples and oranges with your mission statements.......public schools are different than private schools. The school in this article is a private school, not a public school.
LOL!! Appropriate analogy for our family. My two oldest are lifeguards and my youngest will be getting certified as soon as she can.
Group grades along with group punishment are real pet peeves of mine. Punishing a group because of the bad behavior of one kid under the guise of *peer pressure will take care of it* only fosters resentment and anger. Plus it gives an inordinate amount of control to the disrupter over everybody else. He'll just cause trouble in order to ruin it for everyone else. For him the reward of seeing the innocent party get punished too is enough for him to act up. He's going to get in trouble either way, but the more he can take down with him gives him enough satisfaction to be worth it.
As far as group grades, my youngest's math teacher lets the kids work on tests together. On one of the more recent tests, kids who didn't know the subject material at all got A's because they were with other kids who knew the material. Kids getting grades they didn't deserve, that way, too.
The same principle applies. The only difference is that parents may have a civil (not absolute) right to send their children to privately funded nonsense schools like this. Our present system of government-provided schooling violiates both civil and absolute rights of freedom of religion and education.
That doesn't surprise me, but I was making the point of the tuition because in a previous thread about this school so many people automatically assumed it was a public and not a private school.
I don't see it the same way as you do. This is a private school, the parents have specifically chosen to send their children to it, and considering the cost of tuition, I would have to assume they are aware of what is being taught.
This would be perfect if the parents of these spoiled brats followed through in real life and denied these children all the things their money can buy for them at the malls, so as to teach the same lesson. I'd love to be fly on the wall when the child is trying to get the latest Gameboy module out of daddy at the mall or to get mommy to buy the latest fad in athletic footwear.
What are the chances?
Pelo and Pelojoaquin?
Our present system of government-provided schooling violiates both civil and absolute rights of freedom of religion and education.
I disagree with you. I am perfectly free to send my child to a non-government-provided school, that I chose to send her to a public school does not violate that right in the least.
Did you see this comment about the Washington State public schoo system on Best of the Web?
Life Imitates 'The Simpsons'
From "Whacking Day," an episode of "The Simpsons," which first aired April 29, 1993:
Principal Skinner: So, what's the word down at One School Board Plaza?
Superintendent Chalmers: We're dropping the geography requirement. The children weren't testing well. It's proving to be an embarrassment.
Skinner: Very good. Back to the three R's.
Chalmers: Two R's, come October.
From the Seattle Times, March 26, 2007:
State lawmakers appear on the verge of dumping the math and science sections of the 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL), and replacing them with a very different kind of test.
The idea is to do something about the fact that so few students pass the math and science sections.
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