<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>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>jacobolus</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;the builders began excluding other children. Occasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn’t play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. [...] These negotiations gave rise to heated conflict [...] Kendra suggested a big cleanup of the loose Legos on the floor. The Legotown builders were fierce in their opposition. They explained that particular children “owned” those pieces and it would be unfair to put them back in the bins where other children might use them.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or to paraphrase: “A few of the kids were being jerks and it was making the other kids feel bad, and despite teachers repeatedly asking them to stop, they wouldn’t, so we decided (edit: after a lot of thought and discussion with the class) to take away the toy causing the trouble.”&lt;p&gt;This is hardly “indoctrination” any more than it is indoctrination to break up kids’ physical fights or stop kids from taking&amp;#x2F;breaking each-others’ stuff.</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>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>notriddle</author><text>Intervening when some of the kids are hogging all the pieces doesn&amp;#x27;t seem all that unreasonable, especially since, in this case, the adults noticed it was mostly older kids not letting any of the younger kids play with any of the pieces.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s not a healthy environment. That&amp;#x27;s literally the big man screwing over the little man.</text></comment>