5 ms·

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 mostl

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?
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      > The resolution is that the teachers lay down rules about how the kids can play with legos. It looks like you didn't actually read to the end of the article, given that the resolution is that the teachers get the children to work out their own rules about the Legos that all of them feel is fair.
  - geoduck14 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. They ran psychological experiments on the children that spanned weeks or months. They deliberately incited them to see what would happen - without any direct guidance or approval from the parents. If I had found out my kids had been subject to these experiments, I would be livid
    - kortex 5y ago
      Something tells me the kind of parents sending their kids to a school that is this hands-on and committed to early childhood development, probably know what they are getting in to - in fact they probably seek it out.
  - disambiguation 5y ago
    > I'm actually impressed. Those are people that care about their job. This is literally the point of the article. They're showing their clients what a good job they're doing at instilling values and teaching life lessons. edit: i mistakenly said they're a private business, they're a non-profit.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    They took the easy top down approach. That’s not how power structures are challenged in real life. Useful skills would have been to help weaker kids challenge power structures and teach stronger kids to defend them. That’s real worlds useful skills
jollybean 5y ago
If it were merely a simple 'hey kids, shar' - or a simple re-org of playtime to make sure kids get to play, it'd be fine. The hypersensitive political contextualisation of this piece elicits the wrong outcomes and it's a totem for so much that is wrong today. We're constantly over analysing and injecting bits of politics into the situation. It's ridiculous. Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able to solve the 'lego problem' without much fuss. Now we are arguing about it 15 years later because these shenanigans are perennial.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  > Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able to solve the 'lego problem' without much fuss Do you have kids? Have you ever worked with kids? Helping kids to solve their conflicts is rarely “without fuss”. Even when there are only like 2–3 kids involved. Being “sane” and “reasonable” doesn’t go nearly as far as you might hope. (For that matter, the same goes for many office conflicts among groups of adults.)
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    I have 4 kids ages 6 and under. This is what you say: "You can't share the legos and play nice? That means that the legos are going away for tonight." "But we can share!!" "Ok, but this is your last chance." [kids play nicely or legos go away]
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      If you are lucky that works, but such conversations can also easily end with everyone in tears, “You don’t even like me!” “You don’t want me to have any fun!” “Everyone else was playing nice and it’s all your fault X!” etc. or various forms of subtle nastiness that goes under the radar and doesn’t disrupt the parents [which for some parents counts as mission accomplished]. In my house outcome depends substantially on whether kids (and parents) have had enough sleep the past few nights. Some of my childhood friends with “sane” and “reasonable” parents (and who themselves grew into lovely adults) were incredibly cruel to their younger siblings, but were smart enough about it that adults never noticed.

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?
  - crooked-v 5y ago
    > The resolution is that the teachers lay down rules about how the kids can play with legos. It looks like you didn't actually read to the end of the article, given that the resolution is that the teachers get the children to work out their own rules about the Legos that all of them feel is fair.
- geoduck14 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. They ran psychological experiments on the children that spanned weeks or months. They deliberately incited them to see what would happen - without any direct guidance or approval from the parents. If I had found out my kids had been subject to these experiments, I would be livid
  - kortex 5y ago
    Something tells me the kind of parents sending their kids to a school that is this hands-on and committed to early childhood development, probably know what they are getting in to - in fact they probably seek it out.
- disambiguation 5y ago
  > I'm actually impressed. Those are people that care about their job. This is literally the point of the article. They're showing their clients what a good job they're doing at instilling values and teaching life lessons. edit: i mistakenly said they're a private business, they're a non-profit.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  They took the easy top down approach. That’s not how power structures are challenged in real life. Useful skills would have been to help weaker kids challenge power structures and teach stronger kids to defend them. That’s real worlds useful skills

jollybean 5y ago

If it were merely a simple 'hey kids, shar' - or a simple re-org of playtime to make sure kids get to play, it'd be fine. The hypersensitive political contextualisation of this piece elicits the wrong outcomes and it's a totem for so much that is wrong today. We're constantly over analysing and injecting bits of politics into the situation. It's ridiculous. Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able to solve the 'lego problem' without much fuss. Now we are arguing about it 15 years later because these shenanigans are perennial.

jacobolus 5y ago
> Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able to solve the 'lego problem' without much fuss Do you have kids? Have you ever worked with kids? Helping kids to solve their conflicts is rarely “without fuss”. Even when there are only like 2–3 kids involved. Being “sane” and “reasonable” doesn’t go nearly as far as you might hope. (For that matter, the same goes for many office conflicts among groups of adults.)
- D13Fd 5y ago
  I have 4 kids ages 6 and under. This is what you say: "You can't share the legos and play nice? That means that the legos are going away for tonight." "But we can share!!" "Ok, but this is your last chance." [kids play nicely or legos go away]
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    If you are lucky that works, but such conversations can also easily end with everyone in tears, “You don’t even like me!” “You don’t want me to have any fun!” “Everyone else was playing nice and it’s all your fault X!” etc. or various forms of subtle nastiness that goes under the radar and doesn’t disrupt the parents [which for some parents counts as mission accomplished]. In my house outcome depends substantially on whether kids (and parents) have had enough sleep the past few nights. Some of my childhood friends with “sane” and “reasonable” parents (and who themselves grew into lovely adults) were incredibly cruel to their younger siblings, but were smart enough about it that adults never noticed.