14 ms·

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 ch

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's analogous to physical abuse. A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it's a violent crime, but also because children are especially vulnerable. They are smaller, weaker, and don'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/or reacting appropriately to seek justice via other means (e.g. retreating and calling the police). The teachers aren'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't really understand what's happening or what they can and should do about it.

someguydave 5y ago
agree, flag the article.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  What? How will that help?
- jdbernard 5y ago
  I'd rather not. As much as possible I want to avoid being in a filter bubble. This is an interesting article. If nothing else, it gives a lot of insight into the way a different set of people think. That's useful, even if I disagree with their principles and conclusions.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  No. Discuss the article. Reasonably, calmly, and keep it around so when people say "what evidence do you have that kids are being taught socialism in school" you can present this 2006 article among others, in a teacher's journal, as evidence that it's been that way for a while.
systemvoltage 5y ago
I feel the same. I live in Oakland and we have proposal for this type of curriculum: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I feel absolutely livid thinking that these people are out there to inject, indoctrinate and infect innocent minds of children with their disugsting view of the society. Children grow up wonderfully around the world, some 7 billion of us are here. There is no way this type of indoctrination has any proven benefit besides perpetuating their biases.
- MattRix 5y ago
  I didn’t read that entire document, but the parts I read actually seemed quite good. I think there are some perspectives there where it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction against it, but on closer inspection what they’re saying makes a lot of sense.
- khazhoux 5y ago
  I immediately recognized this article. I was surprised that parts of this were considered good ideas: SUPPORT STUDENTS TO RECLAIM THEIR MATHEMATICAL ANCESTRY • Intentionally include mathematicians of color. • Expose students to mathematicians of color, particularly women of color and queer mathematicians of color, both through historical examples and by inviting community guest speakers. • Teach students of color about their mathematical legacy and ancestral connection and mastery of math. • Honor and acknowledge the mathematical knowledge of students of color, even if it shows up unconventionally. • Give rightful credit to the discovery of math concepts by mathematicians of color. Reclaim concepts attributed to white mathematicians that should be attributed to mathematicians of color. Maybe I'm behind the times, but in pre-University math, there was zero discussion of actual mathematicians. Trigonometry, algebra, geometry -- these were concepts unattached to individual people or cultures. I strongly object to the notion that math should be personified in an effort to "dismantle white supremacy in math" (as this curriculum aims to do). Would love to hear opinions. If the idea is to encourage non-White kids to go into or connect with math, especially in districts with a large non-White student population, then great. But if the idea is that math curriculums today somehow teach kids that straight white men are superior, that's a bizarre implication.
slowmovintarget 5y ago
On the one hand, the kids had developed a system that excluded other kids from playing. Past generations would use this as an opportunity to teach sharing and taking turns. These teachers, on the other hand, took it as an opportunity to teach socialism and collectivism.
- a_shovel 5y ago
  I really want to know what you see the difference to be.
  - slowmovintarget 5y ago
    Sharing and taking turns is interpersonal generosity which works very well in the real world. Socialism and collectivism is enforced resource allocation typically requiring authoritarian rule which typically becomes oppressive when manifest in the real world.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ertjaet 5y ago
      except... it isn't? that's literally not what socialism or collectivism is. socialism is just the idea that "wealth" (or any substitute, like lego) should be owned by the community, and rules that bind that community should be made by a consensus of the members.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        It's a fine idea. Too bad it always results in collapse or starvation and then collapse.
        ertjaet 5y ago
        oh no we taught the kids to share and now they're starving and the classroom has collapsed
notriddle 5y ago
Intervening when some of the kids are hogging all the pieces doesn'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. That's not a healthy environment. That's literally the big man screwing over the little man.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I don't have a problem with telling kids they have to share if they can't work it out. I do have a problem with the 90% of the article that was about the teachers pushing their ideological beliefs on the children who defenseless against the adults indoctrinating them.
  - wkearney99 5y ago
    You clearly read your own bias into the article, because nothing about it rises to the 90% hype angle you're pushing.
  - bcrosby95 5y ago
    They were able to take a situation with an easy way out, and instead took the hard way out and were able to get a bunch of elementary school kids to mutually agree to a set of rules for fair lego play. I'm actually impressed. Those are people that care about their job.
    - ALittleLight 5y ago
      Disagree. One of the benefits of kids playing together is that they learn to settle their own problems. I would call it socialization, they learn to interact and negotiate with other people. There are costs to this. Sometimes the kids will fight or some kids will be left out and perhaps adults will need to intervene to get things back to a good baseline. But the benefits are that you become prepared to work, play, and live with other people - knowing that you won't always get your way, and it won't always be fair, but there are ways to handle it. In the story laid out by the article some kids are monopolizing the legos to the extent that other kids stop playing with the legos. Okay, so? That's good. They found a good solution - other people are using the legos, I will play with something else. Next month when the lego hogs move on to playing with other things, the kids who were playing with other things can go take the legos. Or maybe they won't, but that's okay too because not every niche is for every person all the time. The resolution is that the teachers lay down rules about how the kids can play with legos. They have to build their buildings to a standard size. The takeaway is that authority will tell you when you can play with your toys and how you can play with them and if you don't abide by the rules you don't get to play. Why is this a better lesson than letting kids play by themselves as much as possible?
cwkoss 5y ago
"visceral disgust" seems like such a superlative reaction to have at this. I didn't realize there was so much McCarthyist fear in the HN community. I wonder to what extent this is new, or if it has always been this way.
- cwkoss 5y ago
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  It is not new.
- munk-a 5y ago
  HN is a place that attracts professionals of a particular enough field that it has avoided any internal siloing (i.e. Subreddits). Within Tech you can see nearly every political view represented - within SV in particular you'll find a very strong neo-Libretarian movement that's sprung up (in part) due to opposition against taxation - this group in particular is quite strongly anti-socialist. It has (at least for the last five years while I've been here) always been this way - there is a very wide spectrum of humanity represented here.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Are you sure? When I talk about free markets, I usually get a strong net negative reaction here.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      In stats class in uni we spent a good deal of time discussing the issues with different types of polling. Internet polling was "newish" at that point and so there were interesting debates going on with whether it'd suffer from the same effects as other voluntary polls (TL;DR it does). When a poll is voluntarily responded to, even if the poll is eligible to the entire population you want to poll, you'll end up with some pretty heavy biases - first off the middle is always underrepresented - people who don't have strong feelings on a topic won't bother taking the time to reply and people who aren't familiar with the topic at all will generally (generally there are obviously people who reject this) decline to respond out of shame. So then you're left with the group of supporters and opposers - it turns out that, as a general rule, you should expect an across the board negative bias on any polls: if I asked "Is vanilla ice cream the best ice cream?" I'll end up getting a much stronger response from the people who disagree compared to those that affirm - when it comes to our attention things we don't like naturally draw more of our attention so that accounts for a decent part of the bias... Additionally the status quo tends to be underrepresented because people who are comfortable with the way things are are less likely to view broadcasting that belief as important... in general underdogs fight a lot harder. So, back to your point... when discussing anything on the internet, regardless of the forum, expect the responses to be unrepresentative of the population in general and instead be composed of a higher proportion of dissenters than actually exists. That all said, I do think HN has a notable left-lean. I think technology in general tends to underrepresent strongly religious individuals (there are exceptions: see larry wall) and the tech centers tend to congregate around educational centers which tend to be more liberal than the country as a whole. Lastly, HN prides itself on being (or aspires to be) a relatively politics free zone - so a large number of people will downvote comments just because they lean in either political discussion because they don't want the conversation to turn into a miniature scale representation of modern US politics. So yes, you get a strong reaction when advocating free markets just like other people get strong reactions when advocating socialist policies.
trs8080 5y ago
If you had actually read the article, you would know that this is a private after-school program whose participants are "upper-middle class and socially liberal." Your comment sounds like "MY values aren't being taught so this is child abuse!" Maybe some parents don'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. The teachers didn'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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- legitster 5y ago
  > 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 Okay, after weeks of this, they all agreed that now everyone owns the legos together. Which is ironic given that they had power over their legos. Then the teachers took it away. Then the teachers gave it back. It sounds like the lesson here is to blindly accept hierarchical powers. We have to take the teacher's version of events here. But as a parent, it seems equally likely the students learned how to be performative until the teachers were satisfied enough with what they heard to give them their toys back.
  - trs8080 5y ago
    You should really read the article. A hierarchy formed where children were actively being regulated and excluded by other children. The teachers guided a conversation that allowed for everyone to participate equitably. Your last sentence says a lot. It's sad to expect your children to performatively participate in community but return to selfish behavior when it no longer benefits them.
    - 5y ago
legitster 5y ago
They spent WEEKS doing this! And did you get the part where all of their "sessions" with the kids were being recorded and analyzed? And the things they said were used against them in future lessons?
- ertjaet 5y ago
  "reflecting on things that you've learned is indoctrination, actually"
  - legitster 5y ago
    I'm not calling it indoctrination. But I am calling it a flawed and abusive-sounding methodology.
    - ertjaet 5y ago
      to clarify: > "We’d audiotaped the discussion so that we’d be able to revisit it during our weekly teaching team meeting to tease out important themes and threads. The children’s thoughts, questions, and tensions would guide us as we planned our next steps." is this what you're referring to? they recorded one initial discussion so the teachers could collaborate and think more about the best way to resolve this conflict. and honestly, it sounds like they taped it just because it was easier than having someone take meeting minutes. have you tried keeping up with 5-9 years-olds talking? it's exhausting.
fivestarman 5y ago
You think that taking toys away from kids when they aren't playing nicely is psychologically hurting them, and equivalent to physically beating them? This caused you visceral disgust? What world do you live in?
jacobolus 5y ago
> 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. 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.” This is hardly “indoctrination” any more than it is indoctrination to break up kids’ physical fights or stop kids from taking/breaking each-others’ stuff.
- legitster 5y ago
  If you read the article, this was a months-long series of forced conversations. I don't think it's comparable at all to normal intervention.
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    "A months-long series of forced conversations" is what interactive, non-lecture-based teaching looks like in the first place.
  - diputsmonro 5y ago
    Essentially all schooling is a series of forced conversations. I know a lot of kids who didn't want to talk about math or Shakespeare, but our society has decided that it's important for people to learn those things. It's definitely valid to question what those things should be, but some conversations need to be "forced" in order to educate children about things they don't know and likely won't discover easily for themselves.
- scotty79 5y ago
  Isn't emotional regulation and conflict resolution like half of what children are supposed to learn?
908B64B197 5y ago
> 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's analogous to physical abuse. It's a school district in Seattle. How many teachers do you think 5x'ed their net worth with the appreciation of their property alone in the last decade? How many of them voted no against public housing being built near their property? Private ownership doesn't look so bad anymore, does it!
analog31 5y ago
From what I gathered, only some of the kids were playing the way they wanted. In any event, letting the game continue would have been a political choice as well.
farmerstan 5y ago
The teachers are thinking they are “teaching” them about power, but what is clear to me is the only power is the power of the teachers to completely take away the Lego even though the kids didn’t want it. That complete lack of agency only teaches the kids “what’s the point? I have no control anyway.” Having them jump through hoops to appease the agenda of the teachers to eventually regain it back doesn’t change the fact the children know they have no agency ie power. The entire thing reeks of hypocrisy.
iRobbery 5y ago
Share the exact same thought, and it made me wonder dont these kids have legos at home which they play with, with siblings?
kazinator 5y ago
It's understandable that the children who had the vision for Lego Town felt that their "grand" concept to make something large and enduring took precedence over the other kids just playing around with Lego. All the adults had to do is get more Lego pieces so it didn't have to become a resource issue. I'm thinking, what else are these adults going to be up to next? Have three picture books in the class, and when seventeen kids fight over them, take away picture books? And villify the ones who were seriously trying to learn to read for daring to think they should have preferred access to the books?

someguydave 5y ago

agree, flag the article.

CamperBob2 5y ago
What? How will that help?
jdbernard 5y ago
I'd rather not. As much as possible I want to avoid being in a filter bubble. This is an interesting article. If nothing else, it gives a lot of insight into the way a different set of people think. That's useful, even if I disagree with their principles and conclusions.
slowmovintarget 5y ago
No. Discuss the article. Reasonably, calmly, and keep it around so when people say "what evidence do you have that kids are being taught socialism in school" you can present this 2006 article among others, in a teacher's journal, as evidence that it's been that way for a while.

systemvoltage 5y ago

I feel the same. I live in Oakland and we have proposal for this type of curriculum: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11... I feel absolutely livid thinking that these people are out there to inject, indoctrinate and infect innocent minds of children with their disugsting view of the society. Children grow up wonderfully around the world, some 7 billion of us are here. There is no way this type of indoctrination has any proven benefit besides perpetuating their biases.

MattRix 5y ago
I didn’t read that entire document, but the parts I read actually seemed quite good. I think there are some perspectives there where it’s easy to have a knee-jerk reaction against it, but on closer inspection what they’re saying makes a lot of sense.
khazhoux 5y ago
I immediately recognized this article. I was surprised that parts of this were considered good ideas: SUPPORT STUDENTS TO RECLAIM THEIR MATHEMATICAL ANCESTRY • Intentionally include mathematicians of color. • Expose students to mathematicians of color, particularly women of color and queer mathematicians of color, both through historical examples and by inviting community guest speakers. • Teach students of color about their mathematical legacy and ancestral connection and mastery of math. • Honor and acknowledge the mathematical knowledge of students of color, even if it shows up unconventionally. • Give rightful credit to the discovery of math concepts by mathematicians of color. Reclaim concepts attributed to white mathematicians that should be attributed to mathematicians of color. Maybe I'm behind the times, but in pre-University math, there was zero discussion of actual mathematicians. Trigonometry, algebra, geometry -- these were concepts unattached to individual people or cultures. I strongly object to the notion that math should be personified in an effort to "dismantle white supremacy in math" (as this curriculum aims to do). Would love to hear opinions. If the idea is to encourage non-White kids to go into or connect with math, especially in districts with a large non-White student population, then great. But if the idea is that math curriculums today somehow teach kids that straight white men are superior, that's a bizarre implication.

slowmovintarget 5y ago

On the one hand, the kids had developed a system that excluded other kids from playing. Past generations would use this as an opportunity to teach sharing and taking turns. These teachers, on the other hand, took it as an opportunity to teach socialism and collectivism.

a_shovel 5y ago
I really want to know what you see the difference to be.
- slowmovintarget 5y ago
  Sharing and taking turns is interpersonal generosity which works very well in the real world. Socialism and collectivism is enforced resource allocation typically requiring authoritarian rule which typically becomes oppressive when manifest in the real world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ertjaet 5y ago
    except... it isn't? that's literally not what socialism or collectivism is. socialism is just the idea that "wealth" (or any substitute, like lego) should be owned by the community, and rules that bind that community should be made by a consensus of the members.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      It's a fine idea. Too bad it always results in collapse or starvation and then collapse.
      - ertjaet 5y ago
        oh no we taught the kids to share and now they're starving and the classroom has collapsed

notriddle 5y ago

Intervening when some of the kids are hogging all the pieces doesn'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. That's not a healthy environment. That's literally the big man screwing over the little man.

ALittleLight 5y ago
I don't have a problem with telling kids they have to share if they can't work it out. I do have a problem with the 90% of the article that was about the teachers pushing their ideological beliefs on the children who defenseless against the adults indoctrinating them.
- wkearney99 5y ago
  You clearly read your own bias into the article, because nothing about it rises to the 90% hype angle you're pushing.
- bcrosby95 5y ago
  They were able to take a situation with an easy way out, and instead took the hard way out and were able to get a bunch of elementary school kids to mutually agree to a set of rules for fair lego play. I'm actually impressed. Those are people that care about their job.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Disagree. One of the benefits of kids playing together is that they learn to settle their own problems. I would call it socialization, they learn to interact and negotiate with other people. There are costs to this. Sometimes the kids will fight or some kids will be left out and perhaps adults will need to intervene to get things back to a good baseline. But the benefits are that you become prepared to work, play, and live with other people - knowing that you won't always get your way, and it won't always be fair, but there are ways to handle it. In the story laid out by the article some kids are monopolizing the legos to the extent that other kids stop playing with the legos. Okay, so? That's good. They found a good solution - other people are using the legos, I will play with something else. Next month when the lego hogs move on to playing with other things, the kids who were playing with other things can go take the legos. Or maybe they won't, but that's okay too because not every niche is for every person all the time. The resolution is that the teachers lay down rules about how the kids can play with legos. They have to build their buildings to a standard size. The takeaway is that authority will tell you when you can play with your toys and how you can play with them and if you don't abide by the rules you don't get to play. Why is this a better lesson than letting kids play by themselves as much as possible?

cwkoss 5y ago

"visceral disgust" seems like such a superlative reaction to have at this. I didn't realize there was so much McCarthyist fear in the HN community. I wonder to what extent this is new, or if it has always been this way.

cwkoss 5y ago
fknorangesite 5y ago
It is not new.
munk-a 5y ago
HN is a place that attracts professionals of a particular enough field that it has avoided any internal siloing (i.e. Subreddits). Within Tech you can see nearly every political view represented - within SV in particular you'll find a very strong neo-Libretarian movement that's sprung up (in part) due to opposition against taxation - this group in particular is quite strongly anti-socialist. It has (at least for the last five years while I've been here) always been this way - there is a very wide spectrum of humanity represented here.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Are you sure? When I talk about free markets, I usually get a strong net negative reaction here.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    In stats class in uni we spent a good deal of time discussing the issues with different types of polling. Internet polling was "newish" at that point and so there were interesting debates going on with whether it'd suffer from the same effects as other voluntary polls (TL;DR it does). When a poll is voluntarily responded to, even if the poll is eligible to the entire population you want to poll, you'll end up with some pretty heavy biases - first off the middle is always underrepresented - people who don't have strong feelings on a topic won't bother taking the time to reply and people who aren't familiar with the topic at all will generally (generally there are obviously people who reject this) decline to respond out of shame. So then you're left with the group of supporters and opposers - it turns out that, as a general rule, you should expect an across the board negative bias on any polls: if I asked "Is vanilla ice cream the best ice cream?" I'll end up getting a much stronger response from the people who disagree compared to those that affirm - when it comes to our attention things we don't like naturally draw more of our attention so that accounts for a decent part of the bias... Additionally the status quo tends to be underrepresented because people who are comfortable with the way things are are less likely to view broadcasting that belief as important... in general underdogs fight a lot harder. So, back to your point... when discussing anything on the internet, regardless of the forum, expect the responses to be unrepresentative of the population in general and instead be composed of a higher proportion of dissenters than actually exists. That all said, I do think HN has a notable left-lean. I think technology in general tends to underrepresent strongly religious individuals (there are exceptions: see larry wall) and the tech centers tend to congregate around educational centers which tend to be more liberal than the country as a whole. Lastly, HN prides itself on being (or aspires to be) a relatively politics free zone - so a large number of people will downvote comments just because they lean in either political discussion because they don't want the conversation to turn into a miniature scale representation of modern US politics. So yes, you get a strong reaction when advocating free markets just like other people get strong reactions when advocating socialist policies.

trs8080 5y ago

If you had actually read the article, you would know that this is a private after-school program whose participants are "upper-middle class and socially liberal." Your comment sounds like "MY values aren't being taught so this is child abuse!" Maybe some parents don'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. The teachers didn'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.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
legitster 5y ago
> 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 Okay, after weeks of this, they all agreed that now everyone owns the legos together. Which is ironic given that they had power over their legos. Then the teachers took it away. Then the teachers gave it back. It sounds like the lesson here is to blindly accept hierarchical powers. We have to take the teacher's version of events here. But as a parent, it seems equally likely the students learned how to be performative until the teachers were satisfied enough with what they heard to give them their toys back.
- trs8080 5y ago
  You should really read the article. A hierarchy formed where children were actively being regulated and excluded by other children. The teachers guided a conversation that allowed for everyone to participate equitably. Your last sentence says a lot. It's sad to expect your children to performatively participate in community but return to selfish behavior when it no longer benefits them.
  - 5y ago

legitster 5y ago

They spent WEEKS doing this! And did you get the part where all of their "sessions" with the kids were being recorded and analyzed? And the things they said were used against them in future lessons?

ertjaet 5y ago
"reflecting on things that you've learned is indoctrination, actually"
- legitster 5y ago
  I'm not calling it indoctrination. But I am calling it a flawed and abusive-sounding methodology.
  - ertjaet 5y ago
    to clarify: > "We’d audiotaped the discussion so that we’d be able to revisit it during our weekly teaching team meeting to tease out important themes and threads. The children’s thoughts, questions, and tensions would guide us as we planned our next steps." is this what you're referring to? they recorded one initial discussion so the teachers could collaborate and think more about the best way to resolve this conflict. and honestly, it sounds like they taped it just because it was easier than having someone take meeting minutes. have you tried keeping up with 5-9 years-olds talking? it's exhausting.

fivestarman 5y ago

You think that taking toys away from kids when they aren't playing nicely is psychologically hurting them, and equivalent to physically beating them? This caused you visceral disgust? What world do you live in?

jacobolus 5y ago

> 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. 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.” This is hardly “indoctrination” any more than it is indoctrination to break up kids’ physical fights or stop kids from taking/breaking each-others’ stuff.

legitster 5y ago
If you read the article, this was a months-long series of forced conversations. I don't think it's comparable at all to normal intervention.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  "A months-long series of forced conversations" is what interactive, non-lecture-based teaching looks like in the first place.
- diputsmonro 5y ago
  Essentially all schooling is a series of forced conversations. I know a lot of kids who didn't want to talk about math or Shakespeare, but our society has decided that it's important for people to learn those things. It's definitely valid to question what those things should be, but some conversations need to be "forced" in order to educate children about things they don't know and likely won't discover easily for themselves.
scotty79 5y ago
Isn't emotional regulation and conflict resolution like half of what children are supposed to learn?

908B64B197 5y ago

> 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's analogous to physical abuse. It's a school district in Seattle. How many teachers do you think 5x'ed their net worth with the appreciation of their property alone in the last decade? How many of them voted no against public housing being built near their property? Private ownership doesn't look so bad anymore, does it!

analog31 5y ago

From what I gathered, only some of the kids were playing the way they wanted. In any event, letting the game continue would have been a political choice as well.

farmerstan 5y ago

The teachers are thinking they are “teaching” them about power, but what is clear to me is the only power is the power of the teachers to completely take away the Lego even though the kids didn’t want it. That complete lack of agency only teaches the kids “what’s the point? I have no control anyway.” Having them jump through hoops to appease the agenda of the teachers to eventually regain it back doesn’t change the fact the children know they have no agency ie power. The entire thing reeks of hypocrisy.

iRobbery 5y ago

Share the exact same thought, and it made me wonder dont these kids have legos at home which they play with, with siblings?

kazinator 5y ago

It's understandable that the children who had the vision for Lego Town felt that their "grand" concept to make something large and enduring took precedence over the other kids just playing around with Lego. All the adults had to do is get more Lego pieces so it didn't have to become a resource issue. I'm thinking, what else are these adults going to be up to next? Have three picture books in the class, and when seventeen kids fight over them, take away picture books? And villify the ones who were seriously trying to learn to read for daring to think they should have preferred access to the books?