MediaWatch: Seattle School Bans Lego

[Recluce]

I'm not sure if the teachers were preaching Utopia or Communism. Either way, they were teaching kids that the world was one way when it most certainly is another way. They may strive to have a more "fair" world, but telling kids that it IS is simply creating children that are unprepared for the real world. I guess it just gets more and more liberal the farther north you move up the coast, eh?

[Mike Viper]

That's a load of Bull. Excuse the word. I know exactly where this is comming from, read this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ch ... s_call_for

I fell sorry for those kids, both in mine and your article. Honestly, they wil go insane. What the heck are the adults thinking in both situations anyway?

[kelderic]

That's a load of Bull. Excuse the word. I know exactly where this is comming from, read this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ch ... s_call_for

I fell sorry for those kids, both in mine and your article. Honestly, they wil go insane. What the heck are the adults thinking in both situations anyway?

Dude, this is not real, read the last few lines. It's the Onion.

Kelderic

[LORD DOOM]

If the teachers are that enamoured with equality of outcome I hope they give every kid an A.

Ah, a good point! And, at which time many students will cease to care about working for that grade, as many workers in the Soviet Union did, causing even more problems.

Then they should give them all C's :Þ

[Dunechaser]

There's liberal, which I am, and then there's stupid, which is what it seems my fellow Seattle citizens at this school are...

From a teaching perspective, I can't imagine that taking away children's toys is an effective way of teaching them about macroeconomics...

Clearly, there's value in public education. You don't get taught silly nonsense like this.

[Jacob C.]

Politics aside, I think adults should just let kids be kids instead of trying to manipulate them into believing some weird poltical philosophy regarding private property.

Whats our world coming too?

[ottoatm]

This story is false guys.

The Onion is not a real newspaper - they are kind of like a "Daily Show" for the newspaper... which means they are trying to be a fake and funny news show.

Observe

That said, it's nice to see LEGO fans have the proper level of outrage at such an idea as taking away children's bricks.

EDIT>> Hmm... but after checking Athos's original post, I'm not so sure myself whether it is false or real! I can only hope that it's false...

[LORD DOOM]

"This story is false guys." - Ottoatm

You sure it's false? Could it perhaps be based on actual events? Not that I really care, because alas...it has very little effect on me personally. Never the less, it's a parody newspaper, not a tabloid. It could be an exaggeration of a real story.

[gambort]

If the teachers are that enamoured with equality of outcome I hope they give every kid an A.

Ah, a good point! And, at which time many students will cease to care about working for that grade, as many workers in the Soviet Union did, causing even more problems. I could go on, but I think most of us here agree that this is more or less...well how did Steve put it?... ...Oh right B.S! (am I to assume that is the legal jargon...

I think you're getting the USSR confused with the USA here. If there was one thing the USSR was very thorough about it was education. In the USA however (and other Western democracies to varying extents) you get grade inflation based on modern educational practises, league tables and other competitive markers.

Tim

[Athos]

I think the story is legit. It lacks the pervasive humor of an Onion style parody piece and that last portion of the article is more in the style of a real report.

Steve

[Lonan]

I think the story is legit. It lacks the pervasive humor of an Onion style parody piece and that last portion of the article is more in the style of a real report.

Steve

Ditto. Just to clarify: The Department of H&HS obviously didn't release a directive encouraging parents to quash their kids imaginations. The Onion is not a real newspaper. As stated above it is a parody newspaper. However, the article about the Seattle school was not from the Onion. It has all the trappings of an actual story.

And lets not get carried away debating the pros and cons of our respective systems of government. I think that, no matter what political philosophy you subscribe to, we can all agree that using LEGOs as leverage to force a child to believe as you do is uncool. Unless you belive that LEGOs rock. Which I do. And if that's the case, why would you be taking away a kid's LEGOs?

Can't we all just...get along?

[gambort]

I think the story is legit. It lacks the pervasive humor of an Onion style parody piece and that last portion of the article is more in the style of a real report.

Steve

It's legit insofar as it is intended to be read seriously. As far as journalistic accuracy and neutrality goes it's about as far from legit as possible. I'm willing to bet that the actual situation at the school differs significantly from that described in the extremely dodgy article quoted here. Here's a brief synopsis of the original article... note the entirely different interpretation in the one quoted here.

Which goes to show you should always read carefully, check sources and check the author of an article.

Tim

[davee123]

Ok, first off, they didn't actually *ban* Lego. Not by my reading, anyway. Here's a summary of the original article:

"Why We Banned Legos

As they watched their elementary-age students playing with Legos, Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin saw some disturbing trends.

In the current issue they describe how some kids hoarded the "best" pieces, denied their classmates any access at all to the pretend town they were building, and displayed other undesirable behavior surrounding ownership and the social power it conveys.

So the teachers banned Legos, and worked with the kids to surface the issues raised by the ways they had been using the popular building blocks."

They had a problem with kids being selfish and not sharing.

Of course, the TCS Daily's article appears to have an incredibly severe slant towards communist and anti-capatalist ideals. Who knows how far it actually went in the classroom. Hopefully the teachers weren't going as far as the sensationalism in the TCS Daily story. But who knows? It would definitely be enlightening to read the original article.

DaveE

[Sibley]

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

This bit made me think, "Where'd you get all those grey bricks?"

[The Blue Knight]

Our schools (in the US at least) have suffered from liberal domination of thought for three decades. While there's nothing wrong with liberal thought per se, liberal thought only, to the exclusion of conservatism is wrong and inexusable. I have many liberal friends (and family) and we can get along just fine. I respect their opinions and they respect mine, because we can articulate ourselves. But we're adults, these are little kids, and this lesson is far beyond their grasp. I have a heartfelt loathing for indoctrination of this sort. And to be clear, I would condemn it had an example come from the conservative angle as well. These teachers (if this is true) are fortunate one of my children was not in their class.

The problem in our education media, by and large (and news media and entertainment media), is that it is oppressed by liberal ideology, with no counter point allowed. These teachers (again, if the article is real) want to promote equality of society, but not of thought. I would be OK with teaching (older) children the cons of private ownership, as long as two reasonable and rational criteria are met. First, the pros of private ownership are also explored, and second, the students are intellectually mature enough to make up their own mind. If you only preach, oops, teach one closed-minded ideology your society will destroy itself from within. The 20th Century has an excellent example from each of the political extremes; Nazi Germany (extreme right), and the Soviet Union (extreme left). Both extremes are oppressive and unjust. How oddly ironic that the teachers decry the "oppression" of private ownership, yet have no issue with the oppression that their single-minded world view imposed upon the kids. Actually, it's called hypocrisy.

Clear thinking, level-headed people must advocate balance. Our world needs both liberal and conservative ideals in order to survive. They are each one-half of a greater whole. Whenever one side wins out, everyone loses until balance is restored. Eastern philospohy calls this yin and yang, while Western philosophy calls it good and evil (which are relative to your position of course). Balance people!

I hope none of these kids equate our beloved LEGO bricks with class warfare. How sad that would be, talk about an injustice!

Of course this is not new. It was Orwell in "Animal Farm" who warned us a half century ago that, "all animals are equal. Some are just more equal." Harrison Bergeron, where are you???