Why We Banned LEGOs

[Doug G.]

Came across the following on a friend's blog today, and I'd be curious to hear what the group mind makes of it:

Why We Banned Legos: Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom
www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/lego212.shtml

While I applaud the thought and careful consideration these teachers put into the lessons they imparted to their charges, they came to the table with some serious preconceptions of the result they wanted to demonstrate. Equally important, they failed to teach other important ideas because the memes they operated under excluded other possibilities. Couched in the language of science, this is anything but.

[Brad R. Torgersen]

You want to know the line from this that disturbed me?

"All structures will be standard sizes."

I'm enough of a pup that I was a LEGO fanatic as a child. And unless I was just weird, my desire with my LEGO creations was to always go bigger, more intricate, and more impressive from both a size and an artistic standpoint. I used to go to those "they made it from LEGO!" shows and be awe-struck by the 6-foot LEGO statue of liberty, the Mount Rushmore, the Space Shuttle hanging from the ceiling.

No, kids won't be doing those kinds of projects in preschool any time soon.

But if my 4 year old went to this school, I'd be not just a little creeped out that the program would be demanding "standard sizes" when the entire point (to my mind) of education is to teach children to push the envelope of their abilities and strive to go beyond anything "standard" in nature.

Sharing? It's a rule we all have to learn.

But this article makes this particular classroom environment seem so overly controlled and politicized, I'd be tempted to pull my daughter out.

[Doug G.]

Well, I'm not sure that particular line was terribly corrosive by itself - after all, it was just a suggested rule the kids came up with within the context of the exercise the teachers set for them. But I agree - these teachers are working from a very definite political viewpoint, one which the structure of their lessons is designed to emboss on the children to the exclusion of all others. It isn't even so much that I mind the collectivist ideal they're trying to peddle as much as I'm tweaked by the ideas their preconceived ideals exclude. Where is any mention of any sort of lesson of what the children can achieve through the 'investment' of their personal efforts? Sure, if certain kids are monopolizing the toy, then some sort of modification of the rules to increase fairness is in order. And I applaud the idea of making a teaching lesson out of the changes to convey both the ideas of fairness and the more subtle concepts of how some kids were being locked out of the play. But if some kid makes some outstanding Lego effort, surely it is a good lesson to him/her, and to all the others in the class, to acknowledge the achievement in some way before later returning the pieces to the general pool?