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.
Hey! I want their home, TV, car. It's better than mine. They've had it long enough. They need to shaaaaaare.
Usually their guilt is well-earned because they were born rich and never did anything useful with their wealth. My boss falls into that category.
My daughter had a *group project* at college and got a poor *group grade* because it bombed. She'd have been better off on her own, than with kids who wouldn't show up and do the work.
"The quotes from the school officials sound like the musings of mental patients"
yeah. They sound like they'd get along well with the unabomber.
This is absolute insanity.
Website describing the Lego chaingun. Too cool for words!
"Ann is co-author, with Fran Davidson, of That’s Not Fair: A Teacher’s Guide to Activism with Young Children"
whadya think?
do these teachers have kids of their own?
I'd like all those liberals to share their resources with me.
All structures will be standard sizes.
My house doesn't look like John Edwards yet.
First, the mushy thought process of education majors. (I know many wonderful teachers but.....)
Second, in their lego eutopia, some students will quickly figure out a way to manipulate all the others and the lofty headed teachers won't even realize what is happening.
Communism/socialism heralds the "equality" of all people. Some people are just more equal than others and they will always grab more luxuries, money, power, etc. I think the real point of pushing socialism is to empower the people pushing the hardest.
My boys love their Lego's. Many of them were mine when I was a kid. THey have a bunch of Star Wars fighter kits, but used other blocks to build and design their own fleet.
Never once did they build a community center, however, my ten year old once re-enacted Picketts Charge in Gettysburg with Lego's. It was pretty cool.
Of course, in honor of a friend of mine who was wearing a halo for a broken neck, my son made a halo with Tinker Toys. But his had integrated machine guns mounted to the top of the halo.
"The problem with stepping on your Lego is that it really hurts"
yes. i once banned legos for this very reason.
Legos everywhere - sore feet.
This article makes me feel like fighting communism by restocking.
How many more times do blinkin' idiots such as these have to screw around with socialism before finally Getting ItTM?
It Doesn't Work!
It Never Has Worked!
It Never Will Work!
What absolutely monstrous, obtuse idiots!
"turning smiles into scowls and open minds into closed alleys"
well put.
The parents may put up with this in Seattle, but not here in Lynchburg. Socialists LIVE to get into position to have an impact on our children, parents just have to speak up.
"Some people are just more equal than others"
some pigs too.
Nonsensical, psuedo-philosopical group-think jargon aside, what it boils down to is Lego Creations = Individual Creative Thinking.
Big-time crime to socialists.
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