And building a world where “all structures will be standard sizes.”
Every so often the Chief runs across an example of moonbats coming up with something so bizarre that it takes ones breath away. These gals up in latte-land have gone so far into left field that they’re no longer in the stadium.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the schools that have banned tag. Or dodgeball. Or stories about pigs. If so, you won’t be surprised to hear that the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle has banned Legos.
A pair of teachers at the center, which provides afterschool activities for elementary-school kids, recently described their policy in a Rethinking Schools cover story called “Why We Banned Legos.”
It has something to do with “social justice learning.”
In other words, communist indoctrination. This is NOT an exaggeration! It is a simple, factual description.
At Hilltop, however, the teachers strive to make them different. “We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity,” write Pelo and Pelojoaquin. “We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice. So we decided to take the Legos out of the classroom.”
The root cause of Hilltop’s Lego problem was that, well, the kids were being kids: There were disputes over “cool pieces,” instances of bigger kids bossing around little ones, and so on. An ordinary person might recognize this as child’s play. But the social theorists at Hilltop saw something else: “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.”
Wait…there’s more:
The root cause of Hilltop’s Lego problem was that, well, the kids were being kids: There were disputes over “cool pieces,” instances of bigger kids bossing around little ones, and so on. An ordinary person might recognize this as child’s play.
But the social theorists at Hilltop saw something else: “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. Pelo and Pelojoaquin continue: “As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.”
So they banned the Legos and began their program of re-education. “Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation,” they write.
Instead of practicing phonics or memorizing multiplication tables, the children played a special game: “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.”
The one redeeming feature of this is that this at least is not a government school running on tax dollars. The chilling part is to think that there are parents out there who are either willing to pay for this sort of indoctrination, or, are willing to dump their kids into this with no concern for what is actually happening to them.
The Chief’s not sure which is worse.
Looking on the website of this school indoctrination center the perpetrators of this make no bones about where they’re coming from.
WARNING! NAUSEATING CONTENT!
DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A STRONG STOMACH!
At Hilltop, we don’t plan our curriculum weeks or months in advance, as is typical in most child care programs. Instead, we grow curriculum in collaboration with children and their families.
We just go with the flow, can you dig it?
This approach is child-centered and inquiry-based. We observe children and take cues from them, providing stimuli and provocation to encourage exploration, analysis and reflection.
Why work to PLAN? We just do what the kiddies like to do.
Hilltop is a community of inquiry in which teachers, children and families learn with and from one another in the context of deep, respectful relationships.
Unless the some poor kid dares to build a non-standard sized Lego structure.
This educational approach provides fertile ground for risk-taking and the kind of collaborative work that helps all of us contribute to our community, without deeply compromising our own well being.
No DEEP compromising…they can THINK something…just don’t express it.
At Hilltop we do not have a final product in mind or a preconceived notion of how a curriculum investigation will unfold.
This way since there is no targeted outcome, any result is OK! No one can ever flunk!
We trust the inquiry and reflection process, in which children are offered the opportunity to explore their assumptions and theories, to provide us with an understanding of what next steps to offer children in the investigative process.
Let’s see…young skulls filled with mush…little experience, little formal learning, will be able to “explore their assumptions and theories” (presumably unless they show signs of incipient monopoly capitalism).
A THEORY in knowledge, is a broad explanation to account for a large body of proven and observed fact. Without previously learned factual content, there is no basis for forming a theory of anything.
Rather than working in isolation…
We don’t need no stinkin’ INDIVIDUAL achievement! (Anything rather than “working in isolation”!)
…children get to experience a diversity of ideas and perspectives that inform their rich collaborations.
Remember, diversity only goes so far! The Final Rules of the school’s sanitized Lego activity are:
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.
Everyone has access. Just remember that some are more equal than others.
All structures will be standard sizes.
…and tomorrow we will be ready for the age of the New Soviet Man!