And Now Teacher Will Take Your Legos and Give Them to Pfizer
Kerry Howley | February 28, 2007, 1:32pm
Over at TCS Daily, Maureen Martin relates a private Seattle school's impromptu lesson in property rights:
...The students had been building an elaborate "Legotown," but it was accidentally demolished. The teachers decided its destruction was an opportunity to explore "the inequities of private ownership." According to the teachers, "Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.
The children were allegedly incorporating into Legotown "their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys." These assumptions "mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society -- a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."
...Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:
"A house is good because it is a community house."
"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."
Whole thing here.
Guy Montag | February 28, 2007, 3:23pm | #
I am curious. Does this mean that the ACLU thinks you are the "Enemy of the State" or that you think the ACLU is?
Actually, the C in ACLU was a hammer and sickle. A subtle way of pointing out what the founder stood for.
So Guy, what's you proposed solution considering that a) a well educated populace is necessary for an industrialized country and b) this is a private school? If anything, the parents and the school encourage this sort of thinking otherwise, they would get rid of the teachers. There's no union for them to work at.
Interesting string of assumptions that neither of us know is true or false (other than it is a private school), so I will ignore them.
I'm assuming you were schooled, did you gain your knowledge despite your education?
Quite a bit of it actually. I am always amazed at folk who have the idea that nothing can be learned outside of school. I can actually build my own computers and restore my own car without ever having attend a single class on either!
Also, I was reading much more challenging works on my own in the second grade than the "Sam and Ann" reading packages that we were given.
Also, do you know anyone, in any industry that does not believe they're being paid enough? I have a friend that works for a big fancy consulting firm gets paid well over a $100K and makes a valid point on why he is underpaid.
Sounds like you went or teach at this private school that you are defending.
I know plenty of people who
wish that they were paid more, but precious few who think they should be paid more than their current salary, but continue to sit at the same desk without trying to improve their own situation. The latter are called slackers and whiners.
The rest of us know that we accepted an offer that pay is but one component of.
I suggest that your whining slacker frined get his resume out to a firm that will pay him more for slacking and whining than what he is paid now, seek more responsibility for more pay, or negotiate better.
Now, I will say that I am being taxed far too much. My employer might be able to pay more if they were not taxed so much too.
h-dawg | March 1, 2007, 12:26am | #
"But in this example, the teachers are merely exposing the kids to ideas that are very unpopular in our society and thus are unlikely to be presented most anywhere else. That's how you develop critical thinkers, not by sheltering them and only teaching that ideas that you personally adhere to are the only ones worth considering."
This reminds me of the shit I'm facing in sending my kids to "elite" private schools in NY. That comment was almost verbatim what I heard from one of my son's teachers as his justification for why he was teaching a blatantly Marxist version of history. He said that he assumed that they were getting the "capitalist version" from their families. My jaw dropped.
I said, "You mean families from Manhattan's Upper West Side--a place where the most common bumper sticker reads 'Impeach Bush?'"
"Yeah," he said, as if I somehow proved his point.
As it turns out, my kids have a college professor for a dad. I wasn't sure that teenage boys were subject to any sort of indoctrination by their parents, but mine somehow picked up economic logic. Here was, I swear to god, a conversation they had at the dinner table the other night.
Younger brother: It seems criminal that our history department gets away with teaching this communist bullshit. It's like they're ripping us off.
Older brother: I'm not worried about it.
YB: Why not. I know you don't believe any of it.
OB: Of course not. I just figure it gives us a competitive advantage.
YB: You mean because our peers minds are being poisoned?
OB: Yeah.
YB: And you're figuring that these are the kids we'll be competing with when we're older.
OB: Competing with them? I expect to be hiring them before they even figure out what competition is.
YB: Except the one's that inherit daddy's business. (Note: my kids are among the non-chauffered set who have little chance of inheriting anything more than used furniture.)
OB: As long as they can keep them. Those who can't compete, I'll eventually own them, too.
YB: Except that the losers will outnumber you. What if they just vote away your gains to themselves, their friends, and the people who vote for them?
OB: I guess I'll have to get rich enough to buy them off, too.
YB: That sounds pretty...mafia.
OB: Well, if it gets bad enough, that's what our other passports are for.
I'm thinking of sending that dialogue to my kid's history teacher and saying, "Damn it, you were so right."
