Journal pudge's Journal: Another Reason to Homeschool: Crackmonkey Teachers 16
OK, yes, this is not an actual school. And it is not public, but my aversion to school is not limited to public schools.
Check out these crackmonkeys, teaching their children that private property is evil, by using Legos.
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. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
These teachers vote to take away my property rights. This is the definition of injustice and oppression. And they are creating conformists to follow their illegitimate lead:
We
... discussed our beliefs about our role as teachers in raising political issues with young children. 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.
Bottom line: people who think that taking away basic human rights is "justice" have no business teaching children, or anyone else. They are thoroughly incapable.
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They start the collectivist indoctrination early.. (Score:2)
Write a letter? (Score:2)
Cool (Score:2)
Wow, what neat exploration. A good realization by the teachers, a great experiment, well worked-through, and a reasonable, highly educational outcome. My 4th-grade teacher did something similar, teaching economics by buying popcorn. It'd be neat to see a followup -- ask the kids in a few years what they remember about Legotown.
I geek out on this kind of thing. I'm the kind of guy who at one point got his niece and nephew to start playing the Prisoner's Dilemma for pennies and nickels, just to see what wou
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They said the children's "assumptions" were wrong. And that those assumptions "mirrored" those "of a class-based, capitalist society" which they found "unjust and oppressive." That's not indicting private ownership, it's indicting a society that's (a) class-based, and (b) capitalist.
You realize private ownership != capitalism, right? And that class-based capitalism != capitalism?
The "capitalist meritocracy" they refer to is one where the people with the most capital make the rules that let them keep the
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They said the children's "assumptions" were wrong. And that those assumptions "mirrored" those "of a class-based, capitalist society" which they found "unjust and oppressive." That's not indicting private ownership, it's indicting a society that's (a) class-based, and (b) capitalist.
You realize private ownership != capitalism, right? And that class-based capitalism != capitalism?
No, you are not reading enough. They went on to expound on some of these "assumptions."
The "capitalist meritocracy" they refer to is one where the people with the most capital make the rules that let them keep the most capital.
That's simply not true. They talked about the inherent "inequities of private ownership." They did not limit their attack on a "capitalist meritocracy" to that.
And where did they say all structures should be public? I think you're the one on the crack pipe. :) They said that a classroom of 8-year-olds came up with that rule for dealing with Legos. They said not a word endorsing that as being the right rule for their classroom ...
No. Keep reading. They said that principle and the others "distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources." And before you say, that is merely "exploration," remember they earlier said "we want to take
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(Skipping over a bunch of stuff, to try to get to what I think is important and interesting ;)
They quite clearly approved of these rules as Right, and private ownership as Wrong.
That's not clear at all from the article. My personal guess is that it was carefully written to be neutral on this question because the authors had differing views or did not want to impart their views for whatever reason.
The article also mentions, without comment, that the kids formalized the "If it has my name on it, I own it" theory of ownership. That's a rule that may work fine for 8-year-olds but the autho
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They quite clearly approved of these rules as Right, and private ownership as Wrong.
That's not clear at all from the article.
I disagree. I agree it is not explicit, but I believe it is clear.
I think private property is one of the greatest ideas humanity has ever come up with.
Sure. But you do not say anything about "the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded."
Your quote is awkward because you ripped it from its context. The "it" was Legotown If so, then they wrote it incorrectly. The grammar requires that "it" refers to "private ownership." I strongly disagree with your interpretation.
"Private ownership" in Legotown was inequitable
They wrote that private ownership itself is inequitable. Your interpretation is incorrect, unless they wrote what they did not mean to write, which seems unlikely.
OK, so you jumped to conclusions about the authors' views (and some of your journal commenters did too, I see).
Why?
Why did you? You did, directly above, in th
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But that's not what happened. Liam, and his co-hegemon Kyla, voluntarily added rules that forced themselves to share the wealth. After the next round, there were three hegemons. The Gini coefficient [wikipedia.org] went down!
The teachers didn't expect this because they are used to our grownups' environment, where the rich invariably make rules to help themselves get richer. So their game that was intended to instruct the kids actually ended up schooling the adults! Why?
It's really easy for kids to do something like this with toys that have been handed out to them by someone else. To extrapolate that this will stay with them forever and be a huge eye opener is pretty silly though. I think the teacher's are again reading too much into it as well.
Things will be far different when we're talking about reality and having to first earn the equivalent lego blocks and then seeing others that didn't earn theirs now want to "trade" for some of what you did work for.
This exercise
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Just to interject here, I, David Blackstone, personally happen to be the most radical libertarian (you probably thought I was just an abstract ideal!), and I do not, in fact, agree. But I'm mostly interjecting to be disagreeable...
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They also seem to have no problem lying to the kids:
which is bull.. they al
Saw this awhile back (Score:2)
here [lewrockwell.com], which linked to a different account (is it the same story?). But yours is more revealing, letting us hear from the teachers themselves. Wow!
frick (Score:2)
my wife still gets the NEA magazine and the ideas in there are amazing. Amazingly stupid I mean. "Think of the children!" "If we all work together we can all rise above our circumstances." "Society needs to and can solve everyones problems if we just work hard enough at it" crap all of it.
jason