Why we banned legos ...

Someone recently pointed me to this story (which you'll have to go read yourself) and I am posting a response I gave on a private list here. It's an interesting experiment, no doubt.

This is interesting, and not nearly as infuriating as I thought it was
going to be, but it's written in a manner that suggests that they are
not educating so much as indoctrinating. Sure, these kids came to the
experiencing with plenty of social hypnotism already but assuming for
a moment that they didn't, these teachers were looking in horror at
what appeared to be a natural progression and decided that it needed
to be stopped and rerouted entirely instead of trying to work within
the framework that the kids set up themselves. You can't just "ban"
the means of production and restart with communism, the world doesn't
work that way. They may have taught these kids an interesting lesson
about working together on a small team but they sure as hell didn't
teach them anything about what the world is like. This appears to be
a self-serving experiment using children as the test subjects.

> "Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have
> airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool
> pieces, because it's for public use."

Natural.

> A group of about eight children conceived and launched Legotown. Other
> children were eager to join the project, but as the city grew — and
> space and raw materials became more precious — the builders began
> excluding other children.

Also natural. They thought of it, they "owned" it, they procured the
resources - why exactly should they open up their vision to the
masses? There might be some good ideas out there but it could just
turn out to be a big mess where nobody's happy with the results.

> 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. The other children didn't complain much about this;
> when asked about Legos, they'd often comment vaguely that they just
> weren't interested in playing with Legos anymore.

"They'd often vaguely comment" - that statement is intentionally
implying that these kids were upset and lying when perhaps they just
found something else to do.

> a society that we teachers believe
> to be unjust and oppressive.

And yet your salary comes from your affluent, mostly white,
upper-middle class clientele. Interesting.

> Hilltop is housed in a church, and over a long weekend, some children
> in the congregation who were playing in our space accidentally
> demolished Legotown.

Good opportunity to teach kids about insurance, isn't it?

> From our
> conversations, several themes emerged.

Emerged? I doubt it. Several themes were drawn out.

> * Moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for:
>
> "We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.... We
> should all just have the same number of pieces, like 15 or 28 pieces."
>
> As teachers, we were excited by these comments.

I think it sounds ghastly and ridiculously naive.

> All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the
> Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his
> permission are allowed to change a structure.
> *
>
> Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.
> *
>
> All structures will be standard sizes.

Ugh.