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I'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 amon

by lhorie 5y ago

I'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 "woke police". It feels like you'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/ child misbehavior (e.g. notably many parents ground kids without video games etc) As a parent of two kids, I can tell you that rather than dealing w/ clear cut black-or-white lines, you'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's unhealthy behavior with intent, without intent, rationalizations, testing of waters, and all sorts of gray area stuff, and as adults it's our job to navigate that. Your position about not taking on a "teaching" 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't need it here on HN too. If anything, it's interesting (to me, anyways) that they talk about using several pedagogical techniques. I don'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.

leetcrew 5y ago
> I'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 "woke police". I mean, we don't exactly get to hear from the children themselves. we only get a self-congratulatory retrospective from one of the teachers. as you allude to in your own comment, "toys go away until you learn to play together nicely" is not exactly a new story in a child's world. I suspect at least some of the children were precocious enough to realize that the legos were not coming back until they gave some satisfactory answers in the "dialogues". and by the way, I did read the entire article. it is overtly political. > Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
- lhorie 5y ago
  The thing for me is that I can vividly imagine an exact situation where this teacher would say this and I'd reply "that analogy is kind of a huge stretch but I think both agree there's an issue". And we'd move on because we both know that teacher is using colorful language for effect and that's not really the point of the conversation. And the actual issue at hand is something I'd describe as a kid being "obliviously unfair". As I mentioned, it's a set of behaviors and attitudes that you know isn't cool but is very difficult to articulate why exactly. Where I disagree with the article is that I wouldn't let what I consider to be oblivious unfairness to fester for months like some sort of experiment. Instead, I'd just make the executive decision to drop the diplomacy and just complain about the bad behavior right there and then.

by lhorie 5y ago

leetcrew 5y ago

> I'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 "woke police". I mean, we don't exactly get to hear from the children themselves. we only get a self-congratulatory retrospective from one of the teachers. as you allude to in your own comment, "toys go away until you learn to play together nicely" is not exactly a new story in a child's world. I suspect at least some of the children were precocious enough to realize that the legos were not coming back until they gave some satisfactory answers in the "dialogues". and by the way, I did read the entire article. it is overtly political. > Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.

lhorie 5y ago
The thing for me is that I can vividly imagine an exact situation where this teacher would say this and I'd reply "that analogy is kind of a huge stretch but I think both agree there's an issue". And we'd move on because we both know that teacher is using colorful language for effect and that's not really the point of the conversation. And the actual issue at hand is something I'd describe as a kid being "obliviously unfair". As I mentioned, it's a set of behaviors and attitudes that you know isn't cool but is very difficult to articulate why exactly. Where I disagree with the article is that I wouldn't let what I consider to be oblivious unfairness to fester for months like some sort of experiment. Instead, I'd just make the executive decision to drop the diplomacy and just complain about the bad behavior right there and then.