<story><title>Why We Banned Legos (2006)</title><url>https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/cover-story-why-we-banned-legos/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>The article is exactly about teaching children to blindly accept hierarchy. The teachers tell them what they can play with and when, how they can play together, and why. Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?&lt;p&gt;I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it&amp;#x27;s good for the students to be politically indoctrinated because you agree, to some extent, with what the teachers are saying.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly. I think after-school teachers for young kids are there mainly to help socialize children and keep them busy while their parents work. I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s their role to teach kids any particular ideology.</text></item><item><author>trs8080</author><text>If you had actually read the article, you would know that this is a private after-school program whose participants are &amp;quot;upper-middle class and socially liberal.&amp;quot; Your comment sounds like &amp;quot;MY values aren&amp;#x27;t being taught so this is child abuse!&amp;quot; Maybe some parents don&amp;#x27;t agree with your values? Maybe they want their children to learn about cooperation and empathy instead of blindly accepting hierarchical power structures and divisions that emphasize the individual over community, which our school systems currently teach as a default.&lt;p&gt;The teachers didn&amp;#x27;t interpose themselves -- they brought a conversation to the children after the town was accidentally destroyed. Through weeks of conversation, the children created a set of rules that benefited everyone, including the children who were previously excluded.</text></item><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>I feel visceral disgust reading this article.  It seems like the kids were playing with each other in a healthy way and the teachers interposed themselves to change how the kids were playing for political and ideological reasons.  This is disgusting to me because I think it&amp;#x27;s analogous to physical abuse.&lt;p&gt;A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it&amp;#x27;s a violent crime, but also because children are especially vulnerable.  They are smaller, weaker, and don&amp;#x27;t know what options are available to them.  Hitting an adult is bad, but not as bad, because an adult is more capable of defending themselves and&amp;#x2F;or reacting appropriately to seek justice via other means (e.g. retreating and calling the police).&lt;p&gt;The teachers aren&amp;#x27;t physically abusing the children, but they are psychologically hurting the children by taking away their toys and forcing them to play the way the teachers want rather than the way the kids want.  If the teachers think their politics are important, they should discuss politics with consenting adults, not prey upon children who won&amp;#x27;t really understand what&amp;#x27;s happening or what they can and should do about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lhorie</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m almost questioning if we read the same article. To me, the wording of the article suggests that there was quite a bit of dialogue with the children and among the children, including active listening and encouragement of critical thinking. I never got the impression that there was coercion by the teachers and certainly nothing about it screamed &amp;quot;woke police&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;It feels like you&amp;#x27;re largely reacting to the taking away of toys and trying to make it into a statement about politics, when frankly denying toys is a pretty common and mundane way of dealing w&amp;#x2F; child misbehavior (e.g. notably many parents ground kids without video games etc)&lt;p&gt;As a parent of two kids, I can tell you that rather than dealing w&amp;#x2F; clear cut black-or-white lines, you&amp;#x27;re almost always dealing with a looong slippery slope of behavior where actions subtly weave in and out of what one might consider bullying or otherwise unhealthy behavior. There&amp;#x27;s unhealthy behavior with intent, without intent, rationalizations, testing of waters, and all sorts of gray area stuff, and as adults it&amp;#x27;s our job to navigate that.&lt;p&gt;Your position about not taking on a &amp;quot;teaching&amp;quot; role can be seen as the philosophy of letting natural consequences run their courses as a learning opportunity for kids etc, but it can just as easily be construed as being the type of person that turns a blind eye to bulling, if one really wants to start getting into political escalation. But frankly, parent forums have enough nosey judgy drama and we don&amp;#x27;t need it here on HN too.&lt;p&gt;If anything, it&amp;#x27;s interesting (to me, anyways) that they talk about using several pedagogical techniques. I don&amp;#x27;t have a horse in the race as far as the kids in the article are concerned, but the ideas of the sorts of things one can use (or not use) to deal with unhealthy behavior is something I can apply to my family.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why We Banned Legos (2006)</title><url>https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/cover-story-why-we-banned-legos/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>The article is exactly about teaching children to blindly accept hierarchy. The teachers tell them what they can play with and when, how they can play together, and why. Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?&lt;p&gt;I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it&amp;#x27;s good for the students to be politically indoctrinated because you agree, to some extent, with what the teachers are saying.&lt;p&gt;Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly. I think after-school teachers for young kids are there mainly to help socialize children and keep them busy while their parents work. I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s their role to teach kids any particular ideology.</text></item><item><author>trs8080</author><text>If you had actually read the article, you would know that this is a private after-school program whose participants are &amp;quot;upper-middle class and socially liberal.&amp;quot; Your comment sounds like &amp;quot;MY values aren&amp;#x27;t being taught so this is child abuse!&amp;quot; Maybe some parents don&amp;#x27;t agree with your values? Maybe they want their children to learn about cooperation and empathy instead of blindly accepting hierarchical power structures and divisions that emphasize the individual over community, which our school systems currently teach as a default.&lt;p&gt;The teachers didn&amp;#x27;t interpose themselves -- they brought a conversation to the children after the town was accidentally destroyed. Through weeks of conversation, the children created a set of rules that benefited everyone, including the children who were previously excluded.</text></item><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>I feel visceral disgust reading this article.  It seems like the kids were playing with each other in a healthy way and the teachers interposed themselves to change how the kids were playing for political and ideological reasons.  This is disgusting to me because I think it&amp;#x27;s analogous to physical abuse.&lt;p&gt;A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it&amp;#x27;s a violent crime, but also because children are especially vulnerable.  They are smaller, weaker, and don&amp;#x27;t know what options are available to them.  Hitting an adult is bad, but not as bad, because an adult is more capable of defending themselves and&amp;#x2F;or reacting appropriately to seek justice via other means (e.g. retreating and calling the police).&lt;p&gt;The teachers aren&amp;#x27;t physically abusing the children, but they are psychologically hurting the children by taking away their toys and forcing them to play the way the teachers want rather than the way the kids want.  If the teachers think their politics are important, they should discuss politics with consenting adults, not prey upon children who won&amp;#x27;t really understand what&amp;#x27;s happening or what they can and should do about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>diputsmonro</author><text>You seem to have missed the section where they assigned point values to Legos and let the children create rules.  The author clearly states that they had intended for the children to criticize the system for being unfair, but instead criticized the people within the system.  The teachers &lt;i&gt;wanted&lt;/i&gt; the children to challenge them, and they didn&amp;#x27;t!&lt;p&gt;And yes, at the end of the day, the teachers always have the final authority.  Do you think it&amp;#x27;s a good idea for a group of children to never be told &amp;quot;no?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly&lt;p&gt;Every human interaction is politics.  It&amp;#x27;s not just about leaders, governments, and parties - it&amp;#x27;s about who gets what, and when, in a world where we can&amp;#x27;t all get what we want.  Managing how power and resources are shared is the fundamental idea of politics.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t teach kids about politics, they will be lost in the world - unable to advocate or negotiate for themselves, understand the situations of others, or question the systems that have been built around them. This article describes children learning all that and more.</text></comment>