How Schoolteachers Reprogram Budding Capitalists...

A group of schoolteachers in Seattle noticed that free exchange of LEGO toys within the classroom resulted in negotiation, barter and exchange, a vigorous level of activity and a lot of cooperation:

Discussions like the one above led to children collaborating on a massive series of Lego structures we named Legotown. Children dug through hefty-sized bins of Legos, sought "cool pieces," and bartered and exchanged until they established a collection of homes, shops, public facilities, and community meeting places. We carefully protected Legotown from errant balls and jump ropes, and watched it grow day by day.

Being properly-educated schoolteachers, they were, of course, ultimately horrified by the fact that some children ultimately collected more LEGOs than others and were thereby able to wield more influence over Legotown than some other children. This is, of course, unacceptable to left-wing mind, so the teachers undertook an extensive program to "intercede" so as to guilt the successful children into accepting that their "selfish" activities were wrong, and to nurture a sense of envy within the less-succesful children:

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We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity — whether we interceded or not. We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children's understandings from a perspective of social justice.

After first banning the LEGOs, the teachers set about to reprogram the children's free exchange mindset into a regulated communitarian way of thinking. They did this, in part, by making up a different game in which power was distributed completely arbitrarily:

In the game, the children could experience what they’d not been able to acknowledge in Legotown: When people are shut out of participation in the power structure, they are disenfranchised — and angry, discouraged, and hurt. ... The rules of the game — which mirrored the rules of our capitalist meritocracy — were a setup for winning and losing. ... Our analysis of the game, as teachers, guided our planning for the rest of the investigation into the issues of power, privilege, and authority that spanned the rest of the year.

After convincing the children that the arbitrary game was unfair, they then worked to convince the children that the arbitrary game was no different than what they were doing in the original Legotwon project. In other words, they worked to convince the children that they should have been unhappy playing the game they were originally playing. In any event, the teachers ultimately brought the LEGOs back, but only after convincing themselves that they'd engaged in sufficient brainwashing, and after instituting new rules to ensure that there would be an equality of outcomes.

Please understand: the linked article isn't some sort of mea culpa. They are actually proud of what they accomplished!

This, friends, is the kind of thing that goes on every day in public and private classrooms across the country. It has been going on to some degree ever since the radical leftists first took control of the nation's teachers colleges. I expect other "communitarian" teachers will be inspired by this story to replicate the "success" in their own classrooms.

h/t: John J. Miller @ NRO.

Posted by: Ragnar at 05:28 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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