I weep for the future
In a school, a bunch of eight year olds build a town of Lego’s. The town, as is the natural order of things, becomes capitalist with the kids trading Lego pieces and various kids owning various property and Lego’s and such. The teachers then freak out what with all this free market idealism and stuff. The teachers, as it always happens in these cases use the threat of authority to turn the kids into communists. I shit you not. The whole thing can be read here. Some themes they re-educated the kids about:
Collectivity is a good thing
Shared power is a valued goal
Moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for
And that is how we create kids that will grow up and vote for Obama.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Collectivity is a good thing
Err, it’s not? I can understand not wanting to become like the Borg, but I don’t see you running off and isolating yourself in a Montana compound somewhere…
Shared power is a valued goal
Err, it’s not? I guess we should finish the job and do away with the rest of those pesky checks and balances in the Constitution. We don’t need a president, we need a Supreme Emperor!
Moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for
Err, they’re not? Maybe not exactly equal access in all cases, but doesn’t libertarianism fall flat on its face if there exist groups of people without access?
I know you guys are huge fans of the law of the jungle and all that, but sheesh!
February 21st, 2008 at 3:21 pm
tgirsch, you do that a lot you know. You pick a few words and go all literal over them, and completely ignore the post.
Denial isn’t pretty.
What the teachers did was bullshit. There is a difference between teaching and indoctrinating. It is almost a little like child abuse.
What next, the required drum circle?
February 21st, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Yes, because the last thing we want to do is imbue our children with a sense of fairness. Heaven forbid!
I’m surprised you don’t go burn down CTW headquarters for spreading their communist “sharing is good” messages on Sesame Street.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Yes, because the last thing we want to do is imbue our children with a sense of fairness. Heaven forbid!
Teaching socialism is not “imbuing our children with a sense of fairness”.
They are eight years old. Another case for school vouchers.
February 21st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Boy you are right Uncle, this doesn’t look good.
More crap from these left coast hippies:
There will be a lot of confused kids because of these idiots. This kind of crap should wait until college. Liberal indoctrination is a serious issue when the kids are minors. I would be pissed if this crap happen to my kid.
This isn’t the role of the school. The school sure as hell isn’t teaching “neo-conservative” ideas.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Wait, I missed the part where the teachers told the kids that the government should own and control the means of industrial production. Perhaps you can help me out with that? If thinking “collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation” are good things makes one a “socialist,” then I guess I’m proud to be a socialist. Of course, if you want to bring up your kids to be individualist, isolationist, hoarding fascists, you’re certainly welcome to home school them to that end…
What should the teachers have done if the kids were building ultrasonic deterrence devices out of the legos?
February 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm
What should the teachers have done if the kids were building ultrasonic deterrence devices out of the legos?
Apply for a patent.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Prepare for the Great Leap Forward, young Pioneers!
Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.
We have formulated the next Five Year Plan, comrades!
February 21st, 2008 at 4:12 pm
By the way, since when are African-American school teachers from Milwaukee classified as “left coast hippies?” I’ve heard Midwestern blacks called a lot of things, but I gotta say, that’s a first…
February 21st, 2008 at 4:39 pm
I was referring to the hyperlink. Which you might click to learn more.
Milwaukee hippies are a little different from Seattle hippies.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
The handful of kids who developed the town, owned it-in that they owned the game, not the leggos. It involved an imagined use of scarce resources, prioritized by property rights, and clearly sparked debate among the kids over the advantages of having some “areas” for public use BEFORE the teachers intervened. Sadly the kids had no copyright protection for their game.
The good socialist teachers stepped in and did what socialism does-by “nationalizing”, then ending the game they destroyed something those kids created. Much like socialism, ending it didn’t make the rest of the class wealthier, it just made a few kids playing together poorer. Under the pretense of teaching about power, the instructors abused it. Hopefully they generated some resentment in those kids, who will always eye collectivists with suspicion.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Hopefully they generated some resentment in those kids, who will always eye collectivists with suspicion.
Amen.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
I suspect these teachers are the same kind of people that went on for years about making kids paint or draw within the lines, claiming that by doing this, the teacher would be stifling the child’s creativity.
Now, kids spontaneously organize a way to play their game of Legos and these teachers can’t act quickly enough to stifle creativity and inventiveness. I guess the desire to encourage creativity has it limits.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:03 pm
In fairness, these Seattle Socialists should also teach the by-products of the ‘large scale’ version of their favored philosophy. Walls, minefields and snipers to keep all the happy people from escaping “lego-land”, for example. Crippled economies. Mass graves. You know, the little things that made it so ‘special’.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:12 pm
…everybody in the class gets one leggo, and no more than two kids can play with them together. The remaining leggos stay in a pile guarded by the Collectivist Facilitator, who’s the teacher’s nephew.
Oh, and no milk and cookies until 20% of the class starves off.
February 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Old news, Uncle. Where’ve you been?
February 21st, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Wheeeeeeeee! That was fun! Remember # 9, any Tennesseean who calls someone else a socialist has to look up from TVA’s warm tit to do so.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
# Lego people can be saved only by a “team” of kids, not by individuals.
So, many Lego People will die waiting for a team of kids to gather together, read the by-laws and Rules of Teams, elect a Representative… because an individual has no merit or power in their tiny, ugly, little Socialist world….
Also: “All structures are public structures.”…. “Hey, lets build a WALL – East Germany here we come!”
February 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
So tgirsch, if someone exerts enough power to force you into sharing you wife, that’s a good thing? Cooperation is always good? Always? Really?
Access is good thing, I’ll give you that. But when rules are enforced to make them all outcomes equal, someone was just robbed of his talent, or harder work, or greater investment. That’s a good thing?
Send me your bank account numbers and passwords and we’ll sit down and determine how to collectively share equal access to the moderation of distribution of resources in a display of imbued fair play.
No need to thank me. I believe you deserve a chance to show you mean what you say and are true to your stated principles. I am just glad I’ll be able to help you.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Collectivity is a good thing
Shared power is a valued goal
Moderation and equal access to resources are things to strive for
Does that mean that the government is going to sell us its used M-16’s and 1911’s? Oh, I forgot, principles are only meaningful when they are applied to Marxist goals. Sorry, Comrade. I was shamefully trying to empower myself.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Remember # 9, any Tennesseean who calls someone else a socialist has to look up from TVA’s warm tit to do so.
I see, we are all closet socialists. How foolish of me.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
“I see, we are all closet socialists. How foolish of me.”
You aren’t in the closet. Every time you flip on the Steely Dan and pop open a beer, you right there, out in the open.
Not me though. I buy my energy needs on the open market. If gas is cheaper with SuezEnergy I get it from them else I get it from the local gas concern. If electricity is a penny cheaper a kilowatt from a third party, rather than PSE&G, I get it from them. I do miss all of that subsidization that you get down there. Makes life easy.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I dunno. Maybe about the same time as a hippie’s profession or the color of his skin became relevant to whether he is a hippie or not? I will grant you that Milwaukee is a long way from the left coast, though, and for a liberal, one out of three ain’t bad.
February 21st, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Two out of three. School teachers are “the establishment, maaaan!”
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 am
Nah, hippies are the establishment now, as they have been ever since “trust no one over 30” became “trust no one under 50.”
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:51 am
THAT was horrible. It made my skin crawl. “..which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets..” “Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age.” This statement was especially illustrative of the “teachers'” blindness:”When the teaching staff met to reflect on the Lego trading game, we were struck by the ways the children had come face-to-face with the frustration, anger, and hopelessness that come with being on the outside of power and privilege” The indoctrinators could not tell that this frustration came because of the ARBITRARY AND UNFAIR rules of the TEACHER. When the kids worked on the LEGOS before, ithe rules were done by the kids. God forbid one kid did better than another.
Their “teaching” technique was straight out of communist re-education.
As someone that hopes to go into teaching, this will be my BAD EXAMPLE.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:51 am
Teachers warping little minds is an old story. The teachers were wrong and the little kids were right. It is a shame the teachers didn’t learn anything.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
Sounds like any other corporate “team building” workshop I’ve ever been forced to attend. Legos would have been a bonus.
Anyway, I’d rather live in a future populated by kids raised to share and be fair than a bunch of separatist killers or tyrants.
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:20 am
Anyway, I’d rather live in a future populated by kids raised to share and be fair than a bunch of separatist killers or tyrants.
That is confusing, do you mean you support what the teachers did?
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 am
I laughed outloud at that. So true. Say, have you seen my cheese?
February 23rd, 2008 at 4:13 am
Anyway, I’d rather live in a future populated by kids raised to share and be fair than a bunch of separatist killers or tyrants.
R. Neal, are you really silly enough to believe that is an either/or?
Yours must really be an empty existence.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
And I’d rather live in either than be personally butt-raped by Mike Tyson, have both limbs ripped off slowly and painfully, and then be burned beyond recognition. Your point?