*GAG* *HURL*
Posted on 03/28/2007 6:06:33 PM PDT by Nasty McPhilthy
Not long ago I started reading an article about a school that banned Legos. At first I thought it might be because they were discovered to contain trans-fats or emit second-hand smoke, but the reason was a little more Marxist than that.
My kids play with Legos on a fairly consistent basis, but little did I realize that the little interlocking colorful hunks of building plastic are actually teaching children about the evils of private property ownership. Cool!
So after I went out and purchased a few more tubs of the greedy capitalist-creating blocks — tools of the “vast right wing conspiracy” no doubt (this has Halliburton’s fingerprints all over it) — I went back and finished the article:
A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle. According to an article in the winter 2006-07 issue of “Rethinking Schools” magazine, the teachers at the private school wanted their students to learn that private property ownership is evil.
According to the article, the students had been building an elaborate “Legotown,” but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore “the inequities of private ownership.” According to the teachers, “Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.”
Not to mention the demolished Legotown was the perfect chance to show the kids what a city run by socialists and communists ends up looking like.
But, alas, after months of indoctrination by the feel-good Gestapo, the evil toys were allowed back in the presence of the students, with some caveats:
Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that “All structures are public structures” and “All structures will be standard sizes.” The teachers quote the children:
“A house is good because it is a community house.”
“We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.”
“It’s important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building.”
“Equal”? “The same”? “Standard”? Aren’t these the same types of bilge-tanks on the SS Chomsky who constantly harp on about “we’re like snowflakes, we’re all different” while Peter, Paul & Mary plays on a potato-powered radio in their Prius? If they are, it ends there.
The architects of “equal power” movements always make sure of one thing: Their amount of power is way more equal than yours — and if you don’t believe me, try getting this school to meet you halfway on changing its curriculum.
As AL Gore’s copy of the liberal dictionary teaches us, “we” is always defined as “you, not me.”
I’m off now to help my kids build a Lego unemployment office, a privately owned building of course, where we’ll pretend that “educators” such are standing in a Lego unemployment line until the second coming of Lego Lenin.
By banning everything personally threatening to the environment, social welfare and teachers unions, educators are better able to teach students what makes this country great: freedom
It's time for them to put down the crack pipe. They are getting too paranoid to thing rationally.
I think that I have my childhood Capitalist Construction Units in a box in the closet. Maybe I should go look for them...
ROFL
Laughable. Threaten one nickle of these clowns' income and watch them throw a hissy.
We should buy these kids Lego sets and tell them to ignore anything those flaming Communists say.
*GAG* *HURL*
I used to work for LEGO in Enfield Connecticut. We went from 80 molding machines to 145 molding machines while I was there training as a mold mechanic.
They are almost closed now, they outsourced to Mexico
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/
As they watched their elementary-age students playing with Legos, Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin saw some disturbing trends.
.
In the current issue they describe how some kids hoarded the "best" pieces, denied their classmates any access at all to the pretend town they were building, and displayed other undesirable behavior surrounding ownership and the social power it conveys.
Revolting beyond words.
Into their coffee shops and houses, 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. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
These children seemed to squirm at the implications of privilege, wealth, and power that "giving" holds. The children denied their power, framing it as benign and neutral, not something actively sought out and maintained. This early conversation helped us see more clearly the children's contradictory thinking about power and authority, laying the groundwork for later exploration.
As teachers, we were excited by these comments. The children gave voice to the value that collectivity is a solid, energizing way to organize a community — and that it requires power-sharing, equal access to resources, and trust in the other participants. They expressed the need, within collectivity, for personal expression, for being acknowledged as an individual within the group. And finally, they named the deep satisfaction of shared engagement and investment, and the ways in which the participation of many people deepens the experience of membership in community for everyone.
From this framework, the children made a number of specific proposals for rules about Legos, engaged in some collegial debate about those proposals, and worked through their differing suggestions until they reached consensus about three core agreements:
* 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.
With these three agreements — which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources — we returned the Legos to their place of honor in the classroom.
Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age. Those worldviews show up in their play, which is the terrain that young children use to make meaning about their world and to test and solidify their understandings. We believe that educators have a responsibility to pay close attention to the themes, theories, and values that children use to anchor their play. Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.
Pinko commie rat bastard f****** sacks of ****. If they came near my kids with their commie brainwashing, I'd murder them.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
Say it, brother. I wish I could say what I really think about those Communists...
Sending production facilities to Mexico obviously lowers the cost, but the savings definitely have not been passed along to the customer. Lego sets keep increasing in price. I know because I have a 10 yr old son and over the course of his life I have spent enough money on Legos that would buy about 2 yrs of tuition at Harvard.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/sept11/16_02/dear162.shtml
A teacher offers help with understanding how young children may react to tragedy and war.
Children are playing about and trying out violence. We've seen children intentionally break or damage other children's block and Lego constructions, something that hadn't happened until recent weeks. Gun play and "bad guy" play are ever-present at our school, and I've heard from some parents that they've seen their children take up gun play at home in new and startling ways. There's a recurring game in our classroom in which firefighters are trapped in a burning building and are hurt and killed before the rescue workers can reach them. Children build tall towers with blocks and knock them down, over and over and over. Children have begun to make poison foods in their play and feed them to bad guys; several days last week, children hunted down and captured bad guys, throwing them into the oven to "roast and cook and eat them for supper."
She sees this as a bad thing...
consider creating a new family ritual about peace, or love, or compassion, perhaps lighting a candle, singing a peace song, or inviting the folks gathered at the dinner table to share an image of beauty, an experience of kindness, or an expression of love.
GAG
Monitor gun play and "bad guy" play. This play provides children with a way to gain a sense of control and power; as I watched the children in my classroom capture, roast, and eat "bad guys" last week, I was struck by the power in their play: they captured and disarmed bad guys and swallowed their power, taking it into their bodies, conquering it absolutely. You might want to add new perspectives to his play about bad guys, hoping to shift him from one-dimensional understandings to an expanded sense of bad guys as fully human people. You can pose questions like: What does the bad guy's family do while he's fighting? How can you get the bad guy to listen to you?
The pile is soooooo thick.
each peace to children. Share stories of peace heroes. Continue to emphasize the importance of resolving conflicts in ways that honor the needs of everyone involved in the conflict. Talk about peace as an action, rather than as a passive absence of conflict.
Just wow. And there is more:
The Palestinian Uprising: A Primer: All settlements in the Occupied Territories violate international law and continuously infringe on Palestinian human rights. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying state from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. International humanitarian law prohibits permanent changes within an occupied territory that are not intended to benefit the local population.
And the rest of the filth,
War, Terrorism and Our Classrooms
Struggle Against Vouchers Continues in Milwaukee and Across Nation
Let's Talk About Sex: abortion is good, sex education is incomplete
I have to go invent a new purification ritual now, something that involves eating meat, cleaning guns, groping my wife, lifting heavy objects, etc.
* All structures will be standard sizes.
And what of the thinking child who asks what is the standard size and who determines it and how can they be on that committee? Probably sent to the psychologists office...
BTW, I love legos. They were an important part of my son's childhood and I sometimes built right along with him!
Yes, it turns my stomach. PC is evil.
This reminds me of the sci fi story which has the premise of society intentionally kills children which are too smart.
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