SEA private school bans Legos to teach socialist lessons about property ownership

[davebg 0]

While I applaud the teachers for trying to show the children that sharing is good and hoarding all the best pieces is bad, teaching children that private property ownership is evil is...well...evil.

This ought to revive Supermike's manlove of me. :wub: 

Hey, Supermike, if you want to pay for a subscription to read the entire original article, be my guest.  The article I posted is good enough for me.

Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.

 

A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle. According to an article in the winter 2006-07 issue of "Rethinking Schools" magazine, the teachers at the private school wanted their students to learn that private property ownership is evil.

 

According to the article, 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."

 

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

 

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

 

At the end of that time, 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."

 

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

 

Given some recent history in Washington state with respect to private property protections, perhaps this should not come as a surprise. Municipal officials in Washington have long known how to condemn one person's private property and sell it to another for the "public use" of private economic development. Even prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, which sanctioned such a use of eminent domain, Washington state officials acting under their state constitution were already proceeding full speed ahead with such transactions.

 

Officials in Bremerton, for example, condemned a house where a widow had lived for 55 years so her property could be used for a car lot, according to the Institute for Justice. And Seattle successfully condemned nine properties and turned them over to a private developer for retail shops and hotel parking, IJ reports. Attempts to do the same thing in Vancouver (for mixed use development) and Lakewood (for an amusement park) failed for reasons unrelated to property confiscation issues.

 

The court's ruling in Kelo, however, whetted municipal condemnation appetites even further. The Institute for Justice reports 272 takings for private use are pending or threatened in the state as of last summer. It's unclear if Legos will be targeted. But given what's being taught in some schools, perhaps it's just a matter of time.

 

http://www.techcentralstation.com/

[jerryskids 6,799]

My kids go to a private school. Most of the parents are fairly wealthy, having built successful businesses and careers. I presume it is the same at most private schools. This kinda crap would last about a nanosecond at our school; how can the parents let this continue?

[wiffleball 4,790]

How do you know this story is even legit?

You do this kind of sheet CONSTANTLY.

You read an article on the web, copy and paste it, with no verification or backup. You just took this guy's story and spread it further with absolutely no confirmation.

 

That's scary to me as well. What if it isn't true? What if this story is no where near whan this ONE article says?

 

Your gullibility as times really makes me fearful for what the rest of America is swallowing out there.

 

 

Just saving SuperMike some typing...

[Boz/BoFan 0]

Phuckin liberals. They wont stop until we a are USSR 1920. Each time we put up ONE story like this the libs here reply to each ONE as if its isolated and forget about the collective 150 stories they have replied to telling us we are over reacting. This country needs to wake up, some very strange sh!t is going down.

[Cdub100 3,909]

Sounds like they are getting them ready to be future neo-con republicans.

[Electric Mayhem 35]

Do they also show what happens when the student that sits on his ass gets the same Legos® as the student that does more work?

[wiffleball 4,790]

Irony:

 

 

Blathering on about economic equality and social justice at an elitist school that charges $1200 a month and only offers their services to a handful of applicants that they personally select.

 

 

Or is it:

 

Teaching that all buildings are public buildings and should be the same size while breathlessly announcing on their website that they've found a location to build their new privately held, expanded facility in which to teach these concepts.

 

 

[Vikings4ever 550]

Do they also show what happens when the student that sits on his ass gets the same Legos® as the student that does more work?

Of course not, no one would ever sit on his ass while others work hard. People are inharently (sp?) good.

 

[Electric Mayhem 35]

Irony:

Blathering on about economic equality and social justice at an elitist school that charges $1200 a month and only offers their services to a handful of applicants that they personally select.

Or is it:

 

Teaching that all buildings are public buildings and should be the same size while breathlessly announcing on their website that they've found a location to build their new privately held, expanded facility in which to teach these concepts.

 

nice

 

I wonder what would happen if the parents were told that in order to expand the study and really 'drive it home', they were going to build and equip the new facility using the specs of the 'average' school in the district?

 

Of course not, no one would ever sit on his ass while others work hard. People are inharently (sp?) good.

 

 

I'm a good person. As good as they get I think. But if you told me that no matter what I did I would live in a certain house and have a certain income and have the certain stuff - I would be hard pressed to find the will to go to work every day.

[wiffleball 4,790]

This gets better and better:

 

 

Anne Fiske-Zuniga - Who is the Co-Chairperson of the Board of Directors of this elitist-socialist indoctrination tank, is also the Deputy Director of the Seattle Transportation Department. This woman decided it would be safer to remove the crosswalks & signage from local neighborhoods. Two weeks later, a 12 Y.O. boy was killed at one of those intesections.

 

 

 

nice

 

I wonder what would happen if the parents were told that in order to expand the study and really 'drive it home', they were going to build and equip the new facility using the specs of the 'average' school in the district?

 

 

...and to further eliminate the mindset of economic elitism, kids from the worst part of Seattle would replace half of the students in the program...

[Voltaire 5,316]

It rarely happens but, I just couldn't finish reading this article. I got about a third of the way. Some things are so stoopid they make my eyes hurt.

[Blitzen 0]

Welcome to the Hilltop community...Building on the wonders of childhood, but not with evil Lego blocks!

[Toro 1]

private school

 

Who gives a crap? Let them teach communism all they want.

[supermike80 1,911]

This gets better and better:

Anne Fiske-Zuniga - Who is the Co-Chairperson of the Board of Directors of this elitist-socialist indoctrination tank, is also the Deputy Director of the Seattle Transportation Department. This woman decided it would be safer to remove the crosswalks & signage from local neighborhoods. Two weeks later, a 12 Y.O. boy was killed at one of those intesections.

...and to further eliminate the mindset of economic elitism, kids from the worst part of Seattle would replace half of the students in the program...

 

 

Not that is interesting. Why did she feel that was safer? :curious:

[akaoni 0]

Who gives a crap? Let them teach communism all they want.

 

I'm with Toro in this one. It's a private school, if the parents want to send their kids to a school with a left wing agenda let them.

 

And to those who think this is yet another step in the country moving in the direction of Socialism, I would bet that in public schools you get a lot more teachers trying to teach my kids to accept Jesus than to accept Marx...

[Boz/BoFan 0]

I'm with Toro in this one. It's a private school, if the parents want to send their kids to a school with a left wing agenda let them.

 

And to those who think this is yet another step in the country moving in the direction of Socialism, I would bet that in public schools you get a lot more teachers trying to teach my kids to accept Jesus than to accept Marx...

 

They are not smart enough to teach Marx but they are one in the same. Heyzeus would probably be a commie if alive today. All teachers are idealists (its what compels them to feel that they have to be the ones to tell others what to do or who to be) and almost inherently socialist, its why they teach, and someone who professed as loud and often as god jr. would probably be even more so.