Posted on 07/25/2007 7:37:07 PM PDT by Lorianne
Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom ___
Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.
"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.
"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."
"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use."
Discussions like the one above led to children collaborating on a massive series of Lego structures we named Legotown. 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at rethinkingschools.org ...
“I stopped reading at this sentence:”
Same here.
“Is it believable for these children to sit through daily class meetings for five long, dreary months discussing such topics as collectivism and group dynamics?”
There’s no rest for the Lezbo Commu-Nazis.
Ah, but I think the following is even better:
“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 Founding Fathers are writhing in their graves.
Interesting read about how these three teachers are teaching socialism to America’s children. My God, they took the legos away from the kids for 5 months in order to teach the kids about socialist government! All they had to do was teach the kids to share to share the legos. Each kid could have gotten a variety of pieces to make their own structures, and then their could have been “public” legos for the “public” areas of town. Plus, they could have gone to Walmart (these socialists probably HATE Walmart) and bought a couple big boxes of legos to make the selection bigger.
If their goal was to teach about socialism, I'd say they did an outstanding job!
The first day or two, children created signs warning the other teams “Do Not Touch” their collaboratively constructed vegetable, fruit, and crafts stands.
Hey teacher! Our collaborating team collectively decided to build a butcher’s shop that specializes in processing wild game! Hey teacher! Are you alright?
Golly..what did they find when they dissected the li’l tykes’ brains?
NO one would be able to lift themselves out of disparity, leaving misery for all.
Do you mean like 1976-1980?
Now that sounds like a vibrant, thriving, fun community.
After nearly two months of observing the children's Legotown construction, we decided to ban the Legos.
OK kids, now you know what Socialism is.
Good gravy! Do you mean to say that these morons should have forgone a golden opportunity to massage their own egos by performing experiments on these 8 year olds like so many lab rats and just give them some Legos and let them have.....<gasp> FUN?
Surely you jest.
I remember a fifth grade teacher I played like a fiddle.
She was very seriously anti “booze.” After lunch, I would
show her an advertisement of people enjoying themselves, having a drink. Say something like, “Isn’t this awful?” She would launch into an hour to hour and a half tirade on the evils of booze, while we avoded having do classwork.
Sounds like these kids have learned the party line, and will be able to manipulate their communist puppet masters when needed.
It reads like a parody. I’m afraid that it isn’t.
Res Ipsa Loquitor.
On Christmas after our toddler flushed a handful and permanently plugged the toilet which we had to have the plumber replace obviously...:^)
When I was five, as soon as my dad left for work, my mom would
tell me to go play and lock the door so I couldn’t get back in.
Me and my friend from up the street would go play in the dairy fields, build a tumbleweed fort, set it on fire, catch crawdads in the sewer, jump on the back of the ice cream truck, throw rocks over the fence at the nudists partying around the pool in the next block, and usually get our butts blistered when our dads got home.
Garden Grove,CA was a nice place then.
Anybody who came up with groundrules like this and expected kids to follow them has never coached a 7&8 yo soccer or T-Ball team. Sounds like the scientists need to spend some time in the real world for a while before they start making observations that other people might actually act on.
/Bump for later reading
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