Why a School Banned Legos

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/lego212.shtml

by kirubakaran • 18 years ago

64 90 18 years ago

rethinkingschools.org

davidw2• 18 years ago

Reminds me a bit of this:

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm

dkokelley5• 18 years ago

"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."

God help those children.

xirium• 18 years ago

I certainly didn't make coffee shops with Lego. However, it is political correctness to ban it. Lego is a very flexible toy which develops spatial skills and co-ordination. You can do whatever you like with Lego but these teachers don't like it because inequality can be projected onto it. I'd like to know what replacement is deemed more suitable.

Afton4• 18 years ago

I think you may have gotten bored and stopped reading. They got the lego back.

Afton4• 18 years ago

Does this mean you disagree? You believe that a class based capitalist society isn't unjust? Really? You think you have the same rights as anyone else in your society? Interesting.

You might think that a class-based capitalist society is the best option available, but that's a far cry from claiming that it is just and non-oppressive. The simple fact is that the statistically most likely way to be a rich person is to be born into a rich family. No one is saying that it's the only way, but if you want to lay odds its the way to bet. That's just? It plays havoc with the idea of a meritocracy.

The lesson that I understood that the kids were learning is that what you happen to have started out with doesn't give you inalienable rights. In other words, be sensitive to the fact that you got where you are _at least partially_ by luck. The rest is just figuring out what it means to be sensitive in this way.

There is another important lesson that I think the teachers missed (about how to handle the disenfranchisement that the Lego-less kids felt), but that's another story.

goofygrin2• 18 years ago

I certainly disagree.

Just because you weren't born into money doesn't mean you can't get there. That's the beauty of the free market, you have the OPPORTUNITY to succeed and get ahead.

If everyone and everything is the same, then why even bother doing anything better or trying?

Socialism scares me to no end because it is way easier to scream for support and get it than it is to actually make something out of yourself.

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to have to live in a world that is built for the LCD.

imsteve3• 18 years ago

Oh I see, jealousy will solve all economic problems.

corentin5• 18 years ago

I'm claiming that whatever I build with natural resources I find is mine. You happen to disagree with that statement. Fine. Now, tell me how you would practice what you preach (socialism, wealth redistribution, etc.) without attacking me (or using the threat of violence, which is practically the same thing) to steal my work (or part of it).

imsteve3• 18 years ago

What's your problem with property ownership? You want to make it so that if people actually work hard then everything gets taken from them anyway?

You're not talking about evening the score, you're talking about inhibiting people from ever getting ahead again.

noonespecial2• 18 years ago

Justice and fairness are very different things. Capitalism is just, it is not fair, especially to the lazy and the willfully ignorant.

Xichekolas4• 18 years ago

The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the least.

All it takes is a second to stop and realize that wealth is created, not taken. If it was all really taken, then where in the heck did we take it from? (I mean we as in the whole world.) The world is immensely more wealthy than it was a thousand years ago, and all that wealth was created by the hard work of all those generations. Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that.

I think this is generally an economic misunderstanding that a lot of people have. To them, it's "Every dollar Bill Gates has is a dollar less for everyone else, so that is unfair." In fact, PG made this argument much better than I can, here: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

That said, I did really enjoy how these teachers approached the art of teaching children. Challenging the children to examine and modify their own worldviews seems infinitely more effective than preaching to them about 'the right way.'

bouncingsoul3• 18 years ago

Ha, we wrote almost the exact same thing.

And I'm in Kansas City too... Weird.

brlittle4• 18 years ago

"The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the least."

I'm confused. Are you arguing that resources in the "real world" are not finite? So we'll never run out of indium, oil, fresh water, fertile soil, etc? Because if you are, that's a fascinating viewpoint, and almost completely at odds with reality.

"Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that."

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the "wealth" created by startups exists nowhere but on paper.

Prrometheus4• 18 years ago

The ultimate resource is the creative human mind:

http://cafehayek.typepad.com/hayek/2008/02/a-tribute-to-ju.h...

imgabe• 18 years ago

Not only that but the Lego trading game completely warped the real dynamics of capitalism by assigning arbitrary external values to the different Legos. In reality, different things are worth different amounts to different people, and that's why it's worthwhile to trade them. At best they're teaching these kids to easily believe strawman arguments.

bocajuniors6• 18 years ago

natural resources are used in the process of creating wealth.they are not unlimited. america uses a lot more natural resources than it's entitled to(europe as well). and:if you make 200 k a year in a country where avg income is 500 k i'd say that your a lot worse off than if you make 100 k in a country where the average is 100 k

bocajuniors6• 18 years ago

some individuals are wealthy enough to pursue war. i really do think this is a very serious problem with unlimited capitalism. examples:al quaida,blackwater

wallflower4• 18 years ago

"Brown eyed people are dumb"

Good they didn't try Jane Elliot's famous and controversial "Brown eye/Blue eye" exercise in that classroom:

http://www.janeelliott.com/

wallflower4• 18 years ago

I had no idea an early childhood classroom could evolve into a Lord of the Flies scenario.

When we played our favorite game - peg ball in elementary school, we didn't think so deep. It was throw the ball against the wall and if you fumbled it/didn't catch it, run to the wall before you got pegged. I think these teachers are really imposing a Brave New World kind of lens on their microcosm of a world. Maybe it's just me I wasn't that self-aware, clued-in at their single-digit age (maybe not even now).

bocajuniors6• 18 years ago

i think it is quite clear that a purely capitalist society is unjust and oppressive.

thaumaturgy3• 18 years ago

There has already been some good conversation in this thread over that, which I think at the least means that it isn't quite clear at all.

snorkel• 18 years ago

Comrades,

The Lego bricks belong to the People! You are a friend of the Lego Revolution, are you not? I suspect you do not like our Cherished Leaders! Western ideas have poisoned you! Do not sit with us during the Snack Time Celebration! Our Great Teachers are watching you!

Also the clear Lego bricks are being collected by the People's Ministry of Security. Only Authorized Friends of the Revolution are allowed to use the clear Legos. To become an Authorized Friend you must donate cookies the People's Party Headquarters next to book shelf. DO NOT donate cookies to Headquarters of the People's Party, they are traitors, spies, and enemies of the Revolution! They must not be allowed to go play during Recess! This is the New Fairness.

Hail to our Great Teachers for teaching us the New Fairness!

- Comrade Jimmy

sspencer• 18 years ago

Man, I love legos. I (and Douglas Coupland, via Microserfs) think all good programmers were obsessed with them during at least one point in their lives.

dkokelley5• 18 years ago

I hear you about the lego(s).

I think I'm going to go and mess around with them for the next 4 hours.

corentin5• 18 years ago

This is one of the best articles I've read here.

Initially, when left alone, the kids had a free-market society: they owned the resources (lego bricks) they found and exploited (stuff they built) but, nonetheless, they weren't excluding people for the sake of it. Hard-working and motivated kids had more power than other kids.

After months of hand-holding (I'm reluctant to say "brainwashing") by adults, they ended up building a "perfect", planned socialist society where everything was public and standard.

socmoth• 18 years ago

it never says how food was distributed through lego town. and if i had to stand in line to get toilet paper. if their economy is any good. : )

dpatru2• 18 years ago

It's interesting that the children, when left to themselves, solved their own disputes peacefully through negotiation and a form of organically-grown community law. They had no cause to complain about unfairness until the teachers used arbitrary force to impose a solution that nobody wanted to a problem that nobody recognized as a problem.

brlittle4• 18 years ago

I don't see that that's what happened at all. Apparently a fair portion of the class was marginalized and basically kept from play. They were either subtly or directly told that they weren't welcome in Legotown. The "smarter" kids learned to hoard limited and valuable resources, and used that power to direct what other kids could do.

It might have been "peaceful" in that setting, but take the teachers out of the equation for an hour or so, and see how peaceful it is when the marginalized kids realize they can force their way into the game by pushing the hoarders around, or simply smash the buildings so _no one_ gets to play.

You think it wouldn't happen?

axod3• 18 years ago

How many more times sigh. The plural of Lego, is Lego. It's like Snow.

Tichy• 18 years ago

Sounds like you had a hell of a lot of Lego as a kid ;-) (It was kind of hard to omit the s).

jamesbritt• 18 years ago

Well, when you're walking barefoot across the living room floor in the dark, and your kids did not pick up their toys, it's, "Ow! Damn! There are fucking Legos everywhere!"

axod3• 18 years ago

"There are fucking Lego bricks everywhere"

mhb• 18 years ago

There is no plural of Lego since it is an adjective (derived from the phrase "leg godt"). If you're taking the liberty of calling a Lego brand building block a "Lego", then it hardly seems reasonable to object to others calling more than one "Legos".

axod3• 18 years ago

"Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.'"

From the horses mouth.

My original comment was perhaps ambiguous. You don't say "a Lego". Just like you don't say "a snow".

"Some Lego" "A Lego set" "A Lego brick"

Say after me...

randrews2• 18 years ago

It sounds like most of the teachers' problems centered around the Legos being a zero-sum thing, where if I use all the cool pieces, then you can't.

I wonder if they would be as bothered by the inner-circle thing if the students were programming, instead? If I use some cool hack, then nothing prevents you from using it also (except me being too busy to teach you).

imsteve3• 18 years ago

Indeed.

gojomo• 18 years ago

In future episodes:

Why We Banned Names "Individual, parent-assigned names can make children feel unique and special. We reassigned children names based on positive concepts and numbers, such as Equality 7-2521, Democracy 4-6998, and Unanimity 7-3304. Only then did children learn that we are one in all and all in one, there are no individuals but only the great we, one, indivisible and forever." †

Why We Introduced Mandatory Handicapping "Some children's varied talents and interests were causing disruption in the classroom. Each child was assigned a handicap, such as a headset playing random noises to level intelligence, ankle and wrist weights to offset strength, or masks to hide excess beauty. Everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way." ††

† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_(novella)

†† http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

yters• 18 years ago

"Then we decided to combine all the classes."

topherclay2• 18 years ago

Here is the Vonnegut short story on the same subject made into a movie http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088

bouncingsoul3• 18 years ago

Great, great article. I'm amazed that the teachers went through this exercise with such rigor. It seems like a cool program.

That said, the ultimate lesson they implanted in these kids is flawed.

I'm sure they'd be thrilled if these kids ultimately grow up and demand society be like the utopia they constructed in their after-school program. But the whole thing stems on there being a finite amount of resources. In the classroom, sure, there is a bucket of bricks – and that's all there is. But in the real world wealth isn't a finite resource.†

The brick game is based on this flawed thinking: According to the game, different colored bricks are worth different amounts, and the luck of your initial draw determines how you rank. The kids are told they can trade (I guess to make it seem more like capitalism?), but that's stupid because there's nothing to gain by trading – who's gonna accept a 2pt brick for a 3pt one?

So the kids are supposed to take away that wealth gets randomly, unfairly distributed, and the only way to make things right is to force the undeserving to share their bricks.

But in real life you aren't stuck trying to trade your money for money: you can attempt to trade wealth – wealth you can create. So a kid could offer back scratches for 1pt bricks. Or agree to carry all of Liam's green bricks for a couple interest bricks. Suddenly you're not limited by your initial draw.

And I think that's a very important lesson that these kids didn't get.

The article says these kids are upper-middle class, so it may not matter as much, but imagine that these were poor kids. Here they've been taught that they can only reach a certain random level of success, and to get any higher will require resources be taken from some undeserving, rich bastard – which, hey, some politician will make happen once in a while – but otherwise your efforts to succeed are futile.

What a hopeless lesson.

† http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Prrometheus4• 18 years ago

My thought was this school had brilliant teachers teaching an evil lesson. I was shocked at the simplistic model that the teachers had of the world.

But then again, knowing your typical education major, perhaps I shouldn't have been.

iamwil• 18 years ago

This article surprised me. I thought it was going to be some news piece about how some school banned legos, like how some middle school banned dances.

Instead, it was an exploration on social and power dynamics between people through legos.

I have to admit, as someone can see how the invisible hand works, I also reacted when I read that the teachers thought a capitalist society was unjust. But in their classroom, the situation arose because the amount of wealth, "cool lego pieces" were fixed, thus giving a zero-sum game. In the real economy, wealth is not fixed because peoples' needs expand, and is not a zero-sum game overall. I'd like to see the same experiment if kids could create their own types of pieces. I suspect the same power imbalance will arise where some kids can make cooler pieces than others, but that doesn't mean it can't change as some kids can get better over time.

So they brought back the legos, and I was thinking that they might end up with more communistic/socialistic rules due to the teachers, but then at the end the kids made up their own rules, and the article listed some of the rules that the kids came up with:

  * 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.

To me, it sounds remarkably like open source software. Translated, it's stuff we hear in OSS all the time:

  * Anyone can contribute patches, but only the maintainer and his trusted developers can commit the changes
  * (a bit of a stretch here, but) All bugs are shallow with enough eyeballs
  * Adhere to coding conventions you see in the code.  2 spaces for tabs, not 4.

Xichekolas4• 18 years ago

While I very much agree with your statement of the zero-sum problem (as I posted above), I interpreted the rules they came up with totally differently...

  * All structures are owned by the state, everyone can use them, but only the person living there is allowed to decorate.
  * Groups take priority over individuals.
  * Everything must be the same, lest anyone feel superior/inferior.

I think the lesson they taught kids was terrible (it's better if everyone is the same), but I liked the way they taught it by challenging the kids to examine their own assumptions. The problem was merely that the kids were examining them based on flawed premises, as you stated.

randrews2• 18 years ago

Yeah. I very much agree. So, the logical next question is, how would we use the same technique to teach kids better lessons?

  * Resources should go to whoever can make the coolest things with them.
  * Groups lead to compromises, great art is made by individuals.
  * People aren't equal. You can be unequal too, if you work hard.

tlrobinson• 18 years ago

4 space tabs FTW.

dkokelley5• 18 years ago

The problem with the last section of your post is that software and society don't necessarily work the same way (not the problem with your post, but the inherent problem in software and society in general).

Because of the nature of information, which is what software really is in the long run, making it free and encouraging public use/discrimination benefits the software in the long run (and also increases the wealth in society as noted by other's referencing PG's wealth essay).

With other physical forms of wealth (land, buildings, cars, etc...) socialistic principles do not apply in the same way. Encouraging privatization and individualism increases our wealth.

Capitalistic ventures and behavior results in the greatest net gain of wealth, while socialistic behavior results in the greatest gain of information. When information is used for capitalistic ventures in where the line gets blurry.

dfranke• 18 years ago

Kudos to the submitter, but I couldn't finish reading this. I got too sick to my stomach about half way through. What an absolutely perfect microcosm of how government makes society go to hell.

Edit: I guess now I have to retract my comment from the other day on the trolling thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117146

Suddenly that article doesn't seem so ludicrous anymore :-\

ruricolist• 18 years ago

The lesson itself is less troubling than these teachers' undertaking to shape the children's beliefs without any parental involvement or input--not, note, as part of a curricular course of study at a school, but in an after-school program at a children's center.

Still: If they'd done this to me as a kid, I'd have brought in one of my Lego pirate ships, sacked and plundered Legotown (Legograd?), and shared the booty with anyone who volunteered to join my crew.

dpatru2• 18 years ago

Murray Rothbard's essay, Society Without the State, http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard133.html, seems relevant here.

Prrometheus4• 18 years ago

I'll trade you my current anarchist reading for yours:

http://books.google.com/books?id=L_3I21lGS90C&dq=david+f...

noonespecial2• 18 years ago

Up next, the Eastern Lego Block. All blocks are the same, the cool pieces are banned, and all of the buildings look exactly the same! That way, all of the children can be equally bored with legos.

JeffL• 18 years ago

The cool pieces where all shot in the great purge.

Prrometheus4• 18 years ago

They're way ahead of you:

"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."

mike_yep_mike• 18 years ago

Awesome: "All structures will be standard sizes." Aweosme, awesome awesome. The solution is to kill creativity. Again, awesome! I mean, we already have too much creativity, and kids, they never have any anyway, and they can relearn it as they get older, cause everyone knows that as you get older you spend more and more time being creatie :rollseyes:

It is even better that "Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age." and that, in this case, they learnt the very valuable lesson that "doing anything different that might cause a fight, discomfort or even a whiff of unfairness is wrong".

A world full of grey houses that are exactlty the size, shape and dimension is such a great political vision, and one well worth striving for.

So thank you, Ann Pelo, thank you so very much for making my vision of uniform, drab, uncreative existence such a possibility!

mattmaroon• 18 years ago

It all goes back to the unnatural concept of fairness that adults force upon children. It's a harmful, artificial construct that damages them throughout their lives.

I'd rather my kid learn that if he wants some of the legos, he's going to have to figure out how to get them, through diplomacy, outsmarting the others, etc. The children on the outside either didn't try hard enough, or weren't smart enough.

Eliezer• 18 years ago

You want to make something that someone wants? Fine, I want a way to throw up on these teachers over the Internet.

dusklight• 18 years ago

To me the most interesting part of the article was the paragraph that describes how some of the kids gave up:

"During the trading game, a couple of children simply gave up, while others waited passively for someone to give them valuable pieces. Drew said, "I stopped trading because the same people were winning. I just gave up." 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."

It reminds me of one of the most terrible sins that my mother inflicted on me when I was a child -- she taught me that things are supposed to be fair. She taught me the fairy tale that we have these things called "inalienable rights", such as freedom and justice and that kind of thing. She taught me that I was entitled to these "rights" and, implicitly, she taught me that I didn't have to do any work to earn these rights or to keep them.

She taught me, in very much the same way that the teachers taught these kids, that when there is injustice or inequity, I didn't have to do anything about it. All I had to do was whine about it and cry, and some higher power (like the teachers in this case) would come over and pat me on the head and fix it for me.

The truth is freedom and justice are not "rights". They are privileges, fought and earned by our ancestors, paid for by their tears and blood. We in the western world have grown so complacent in our corpulence that we just expect these things to be handed to us.

I would be much happier if, instead of making things fair for the "disenfranchised" kids, they had helped the kids see the advantages of their despair -- how having things stacked against them means that they have been given a chance to create a new way to win against greater odds, something the "rich" kids did not have and would never have.

The truth is the world does not owe us anything and we shouldn't expect otherwise. It is up to us to MAKE our place in the world, not sit and wait for it to be given to us.

Afton4• 18 years ago

Thank you for that thoughtful response. While I suspect we disagree on many points, I too think that dealing directly with the disenfranchisement would have been a more important lesson/exploration.

wallflower4• 18 years ago

In another context (e.g. a film documentary) this could also be fascinating.

TheTarquin• 18 years ago

Double You Tee Eff.

Please, PLEASE tell me this is a joke. Please? Anyone? Someone tell me these people aren't for real.

... Crickets

C'mon, letting me believe that this article is anything but satire would make me feel uncomfortable. And THAT would be WRONG . . . .

topherclay2• 18 years ago

Short vonnegut story which i believe relates.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html

also, made into a decent film

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088

zoltz• 18 years ago

Interesting point, aside from capitalism/wealth/zero-sum etc:

The game created a classic case of cognitive disequilibrium: Either the system is skewed and unfair, or the winners played unfairly. To resolve this by deciding that the system is unfair would call everything into question; young children are committed to rules and rule-making as a way to organize a community, and it is wildly unsettling to acknowledge that rules can have built-in inequities. So most of the children resolved their disequilibrium by clinging to the belief that the winners were ruthless — despite clear evidence of Liam and Kyla's compassionate generosity.

The game was patently unfair, so why did the children blame the winners rather than the system? I suspect there is a general tendency among people (not only children) to blame other people, as opposed to abstract causes. That's more important here than any positive commitment to rules and rule-making.

thaumaturgy3• 18 years ago

As you say, systems are abstractions, and people are tangible. It takes a greater maturity to be able to look at a system and find fault with it, rather than with the people involved in the system. There are a lot of adults walking around that never reach that particular maturity, and certainly it's not something you'd see in a lot of 8-year-olds.

Being able to blame a person for something comes back to a peculiar kind of satisfaction: you can confront the problem!

Zarchne• 18 years ago

I keep thinking what these kids really needed to learn was to put their toys away.

Why a School Banned Legos

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