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 Halliburtons fingerprints all over it) I went back and finished the article:
A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Childrens 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.
Its important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building.
Equal? The same? Standard? Arent these the same types of bilge-tanks on the SS Chomsky who constantly harp on about were like snowflakes, were 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 dont believe me, try getting this school to meet you halfway on changing its curriculum.
As AL Gores copy of the liberal dictionary teaches us, we is always defined as you, not me.
Im off now to help my kids build a Lego unemployment office, a privately owned building of course, where well 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
I have a co-worker who's really into legos, especially where Star Wars items are concerned. I wonder what he'd think of this.
Bionicles? DON'T GET ME STARTED!!! The books, the DVDs, the posters, the t-shirts. And of course every parent has stepped on (bare footed) one left in the floor in the middle of the night--YEEOWWW, #@$%&!!! (see, I told you not to get me started)
My son is an evil capitalist, especially when it comes to Legos. don't give him any ideas! :)
We used to live in Minneapolis for our son's first seven years. LegoLand loomed large during every visit to the Mall of America. Picture a couple hundred kids vying for the best wheels to race their cars in the sample area. Chaos reigned!
I have to say I loved (most) every minute of it. We're due for a visit before he gets too old and jaded for the experience.
I must say, I'd love to see the look on the two teachers' faces mentioned in the article. "This is what Legos are about ladies. F-U-N, fun!" Of course sour communists would have none of that. :)
Did you see my #13?
Last August we went to the MOA and to the Lego store. Upon seeing it for the first time our son practically went into a trance. His dream now is to go to LegoLand (the amusement park) in California. I told him to wait for two more years for the one to be built here in Kansas City. He'll be twelve by then and maybe the mystique will have worn off. Right now he is so geeked up about Legos that I swear he goes into an altered state of consciousness when he plays with them.
Hmm... sounds like Crossing that Room. Though perhaps Tom Dickson could handle the Bionicles as he did Fifty-three toy cars.
Stalin would be so proud. (Of course, all the Legos would be stamped "Property of Comrade Stalin")
I would take a hammer to one of the teacher's Volvos since it would be my property as much as hers.
legoping
During the height of Stalin's reign of terror, in one of many efforts to control the minds of the Soviet people, particularly the children, toys made in the old USSR bore the inscription, "Thank you, Comrade Stalin for my glorious childhood." Like most propaganda, the sick joke was that what Russian children experienced during those dark years was not glorious, nor was it a childhood. By all accounts of those who actually survived the experience, it was a bare existence marked by exposure, malnutrition, disease, and want; most of which was government produced. Funny how this stark holocaust of human misery is rarely to never taught in schools anymore.
Doesn't surprise me, each brick costs less than a half a cent to make, and they almost sell for $.50 inside each package.
When I first saw this article, I thought of the automobile factory described in Atlas Shrugged that was run (into the ground) as a communistic endevour.
Awesome. Puts my measly building efforts to shame.
Don't tell your co-worker about the new Millenium Falcon Lego has just come out with. It's the biggest model Lego has ever made, (5000+ pieces) and costs a whopping $500!
I'm trying to figure out some way to be able to justify buying this myself.
Kids trapped at your local
public schools.
A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Childrens 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.
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.
Communist China's parliament has agreed landmark changes to the constitution that will protect private property for the first time since the 1949 revolution.
YET!
American teachers embrace old style communist logic in the class room as China embraces property rights as they build new cities.
Anyway this is a cool video:
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