
Why a School Banned Legos - kirubakaran
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/21_02/lego212.shtml
======
gojomo
In future episodes:

 _Why We Banned Names_ "Individual, parent-assigned names can make children
feel unique and special. We reassigned children names based on positive
concepts and numbers, such as Equality 7-2521, Democracy 4-6998, and Unanimity
7-3304. Only then did children learn that we are one in all and all in one,
there are no individuals but only the great we, one, indivisible and forever."
†

 _Why We Introduced Mandatory Handicapping_ "Some children's varied talents
and interests were causing disruption in the classroom. Each child was
assigned a handicap, such as a headset playing random noises to level
intelligence, ankle and wrist weights to offset strength, or masks to hide
excess beauty. Everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God
and the law. They were equal every which way." ††

† <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthem_>(novella)

†† <http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html>

~~~
topherclay
Here is the Vonnegut short story on the same subject made into a movie
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088>

------
dkokelley
"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._ "

God help those children.

~~~
Xichekolas
The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original
Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources
that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If
it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with
one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the
least.

All it takes is a second to stop and realize that wealth is _created_ , not
_taken_. If it was all really _taken_ , then where in the heck did we take it
from? (I mean we as in the whole world.) The world is immensely more wealthy
than it was a thousand years ago, and all that wealth was created by the hard
work of all those generations. Surely all the wealth creation done by startups
is evidence of that.

I think this is generally an economic misunderstanding that a lot of people
have. To them, it's "Every dollar Bill Gates has is a dollar less for everyone
else, so that is unfair." In fact, PG made this argument much better than I
can, here: <http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

That said, I did really enjoy how these teachers approached the art of
teaching children. Challenging the children to examine and modify their own
worldviews seems infinitely more effective than preaching to them about 'the
right way.'

~~~
brlittle
"The fundamental problem with their Lego trading game (and the original
Legotown) is that they assume capitalism involves a fixed amount of resources
that can only be traded. In reality, the resources are constantly growing. If
it was really a fixed-resource system, it would always end like Monopoly, with
one person owning everything, or owning enough to always be in power at the
least."

I'm confused. Are you arguing that resources in the "real world" are not
finite? So we'll never run out of indium, oil, fresh water, fertile soil, etc?
Because if you are, that's a fascinating viewpoint, and almost completely at
odds with reality.

"Surely all the wealth creation done by startups is evidence of that."

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the "wealth" created by startups exists nowhere but
on paper.

~~~
Xichekolas
Yeah, looking back now I wish I had written the first paragraph with the word
"wealth" instead of "resources." (Alas, the edit link has disappeared on me.)
So please, when you see the word resources in my post, mentally substitute for
me.

As for you second point, don't confuse money with wealth. Most startups have
_liquidation value_ (dollar value) only on paper, because there is no one to
buy them, but the product they create represents wealth to someone, even if
it's only one customer. If the startup doesn't create enough wealth for enough
people, it will probably die, in which case it won't be creating new wealth
anymore, but their product made someone's life better, even if only for a
short time.

------
corentin
This is one of the best articles I've read here.

Initially, when left alone, the kids had a free-market society: they owned the
resources (lego bricks) they found and exploited (stuff they built) but,
nonetheless, they weren't excluding people for the sake of it. Hard-working
and motivated kids had more power than other kids.

After months of hand-holding (I'm reluctant to say "brainwashing") by adults,
they ended up building a "perfect", planned socialist society where everything
was public and standard.

~~~
dpatru
It's interesting that the children, when left to themselves, solved their own
disputes peacefully through negotiation and a form of organically-grown
community law. They had no cause to complain about unfairness until the
teachers used arbitrary force to impose a solution that nobody wanted to a
problem that nobody recognized as a problem.

~~~
brlittle
I don't see that that's what happened at all. Apparently a fair portion of the
class was marginalized and basically kept from play. They were either subtly
or directly told that they weren't welcome in Legotown. The "smarter" kids
learned to hoard limited and valuable resources, and used that power to direct
what other kids could do.

It might have been "peaceful" in that setting, but take the teachers out of
the equation for an hour or so, and see how peaceful it is when the
marginalized kids realize they can force their way into the game by pushing
the hoarders around, or simply smash the buildings so _no one_ gets to play.

You think it wouldn't happen?

~~~
thaumaturgy
The article specifically mentioned that most of the kids simply chose not to
play the game, which is a choice with some obvious metaphors in adult society.
Only a few kids were explicitly asked to stay out, and the article doesn't
explain the circumstances behind that.

Quite simply, the students established their own meritocracy, which the
teachers replaced with a form of socialism.

That may indeed be a more peaceful solution, but I can't remember any age at
which that wouldn't have pissed me off. I used to play with Legos as a kid,
and Construxx, and even an old erector set. I probably would have been one of
the central kids in the story, one of the ones establishing rules and hoarding
(and bartering for) pieces. I had to share a room with my younger brother at
about that age, and that's exactly what we did.

I would have protested loudly at the change of rules, and then I would have
lost interest in playing with them altogether.

There were many better solutions to the problems developing in that game, but
the teachers chose instead to teach the kids that regardless of your skills,
interest, passion, or ability to barter, at the end of the day, everybody gets
the same thing.

~~~
brlittle
"Quite simply, the students established their own meritocracy, which the
teachers replaced with a form of socialism."

That is emphatically not what happened. What the kids discovered was that the
fastest and most aggressive kids (i.e. the ones who got to the bins first) got
the most desirable bricks/pieces. The spin you (and to be fair, most of us, me
included) are putting on it implies that children are miniature adults, which
isn't the case.

The role of the teachers (and recall that this is an after-school program) was
to create a place where all children had the opportunity to play and enjoy
themselves...not to allow the creation of an environment where some kids were
specifically excluded. Yes, they proposed a framework -- one entirely
appropriate to the setting. But in the end, most of the rules were created by
the kids themselves.

The end result was a more satisfying experience for _everyone_, not just the
fastest, biggest or smartest. In short, everybody does better when everybody
does better.

"We invited the children to work in small, collaborative teams to build Pike
Place Market with Legos. We set up this work to emphasize negotiated decision-
making, collaboration, and collectivity."

I'm hard-pressed to see how people find fault with this. Who doesn't want
their children to learn how to negotiate decisions and collaborate with
others?

"There were many better solutions to the problems developing in that game, but
the teachers chose instead to teach the kids that regardless of your skills,
interest, passion, or ability to barter, at the end of the day, everybody gets
the same thing."

But at the end of the day, everyone _didn't_ get the same thing. The only
thing everyone got was a chance to be a part of the play. Where they went with
that was up to them.

"I probably would have been one of the central kids in the story, one of the
ones establishing rules and hoarding (and bartering for) pieces."

Except you wouldn't have had to. By getting all the "cool pieces (windows and
such) you would have set yourself in possession of what everyone wanted. Plain
building bricks were not valued, simply because there were so many of them.
You wouldn't have needed to barter except in a very limited way. In short,
you'd be the one with all the marbles. That's not appropriate to the setting,
regardless of what spin adults might put on it.

------
bouncingsoul
Great, great article. I'm amazed that the teachers went through this exercise
with such rigor. It seems like a cool program.

That said, the ultimate lesson they implanted in these kids is flawed.

I'm sure they'd be thrilled if these kids ultimately grow up and demand
society be like the utopia they constructed in their after-school program. But
the whole thing stems on there being a finite amount of resources. In the
classroom, sure, there is a bucket of bricks – and that's all there is. But in
the real world wealth isn't a finite resource.†

The brick game is based on this flawed thinking: According to the game,
different colored bricks are worth different amounts, and the luck of your
initial draw determines how you rank. The kids are told they can trade (I
guess to make it seem more like capitalism?), but that's stupid because
there's nothing to gain by trading – who's gonna accept a 2pt brick for a 3pt
one?

So the kids are supposed to take away that wealth gets randomly, _unfairly_
distributed, and the only way to make things right is to _force_ the
undeserving to share their bricks.

But in real life you aren't stuck trying to trade your money for money: you
can attempt to trade wealth – wealth you can create. So a kid could offer back
scratches for 1pt bricks. Or agree to carry all of Liam's green bricks for a
couple interest bricks. Suddenly you're not limited by your initial draw.

And I think that's a very important lesson that these kids didn't get.

The article says these kids are upper-middle class, so it may not matter as
much, but imagine that these were poor kids. Here they've been taught that
they can only reach a certain random level of success, and to get any higher
will require resources be taken from some undeserving, rich bastard – which,
hey, some politician will make happen once in a while – but otherwise your
efforts to succeed are futile.

What a hopeless lesson.

† <http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

~~~
Prrometheus
My thought was this school had brilliant teachers teaching an evil lesson. I
was shocked at the simplistic model that the teachers had of the world.

But then again, knowing your typical education major, perhaps I shouldn't have
been.

------
dusklight
To me the most interesting part of the article was the paragraph that
describes how some of the kids gave up:

"During the trading game, a couple of children simply gave up, while others
waited passively for someone to give them valuable pieces. Drew said, "I
stopped trading because the same people were winning. I just gave up." 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."

It reminds me of one of the most terrible sins that my mother inflicted on me
when I was a child -- she taught me that things are supposed to be fair. She
taught me the fairy tale that we have these things called "inalienable
rights", such as freedom and justice and that kind of thing. She taught me
that I was entitled to these "rights" and, implicitly, she taught me that I
didn't have to do any work to earn these rights or to keep them.

She taught me, in very much the same way that the teachers taught these kids,
that when there is injustice or inequity, I didn't have to do anything about
it. All I had to do was whine about it and cry, and some higher power (like
the teachers in this case) would come over and pat me on the head and fix it
for me.

The truth is freedom and justice are not "rights". They are privileges, fought
and earned by our ancestors, paid for by their tears and blood. We in the
western world have grown so complacent in our corpulence that we just expect
these things to be handed to us.

I would be much happier if, instead of making things fair for the
"disenfranchised" kids, they had helped the kids see the advantages of their
despair -- how having things stacked against them means that they have been
given a chance to create a new way to win against greater odds, something the
"rich" kids did not have and would never have.

The truth is the world does not owe us anything and we shouldn't expect
otherwise. It is up to us to MAKE our place in the world, not sit and wait for
it to be given to us.

~~~
Afton
Thank you for that thoughtful response. While I suspect we disagree on many
points, I too think that dealing directly with the disenfranchisement would
have been a more important lesson/exploration.

------
iamwil
This article surprised me. I thought it was going to be some news piece about
how some school banned legos, like how some middle school banned dances.

Instead, it was an exploration on social and power dynamics between people
through legos.

I have to admit, as someone can see how the invisible hand works, I also
reacted when I read that the teachers thought a capitalist society was unjust.
But in their classroom, the situation arose because the amount of wealth,
"cool lego pieces" were fixed, thus giving a zero-sum game. In the real
economy, wealth is not fixed because peoples' needs expand, and is not a zero-
sum game overall. I'd like to see the same experiment if kids could create
their own types of pieces. I suspect the same power imbalance will arise where
some kids can make cooler pieces than others, but that doesn't mean it can't
change as some kids can get better over time.

So they brought back the legos, and I was thinking that they might end up with
more communistic/socialistic rules due to the teachers, but then at the end
the kids made up their own rules, and the article listed some of the rules
that the kids came up with:

    
    
      * 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.
      * Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.
      * All structures will be standard sizes.
    

To me, it sounds remarkably like open source software. Translated, it's stuff
we hear in OSS all the time:

    
    
      * Anyone can contribute patches, but only the maintainer and his trusted developers can commit the changes
      * (a bit of a stretch here, but) All bugs are shallow with enough eyeballs
      * Adhere to coding conventions you see in the code.  2 spaces for tabs, not 4.

~~~
Xichekolas
While I very much agree with your statement of the zero-sum problem (as I
posted above), I interpreted the rules they came up with totally
differently...

    
    
      * All structures are owned by the state, everyone can use them, but only the person living there is allowed to decorate.
      * Groups take priority over individuals.
      * Everything must be the same, lest anyone feel superior/inferior.
    

I think the lesson they taught kids was terrible (it's better if everyone is
the same), but I liked the _way they taught it_ by challenging the kids to
examine their own assumptions. The problem was merely that the kids were
examining them based on flawed premises, as you stated.

~~~
randrews
Yeah. I very much agree. So, the logical next question is, how would we use
the same technique to teach kids better lessons?

    
    
      * Resources should go to whoever can make the coolest things with them.
      * Groups lead to compromises, great art is made by individuals.
      * People aren't equal. You can be unequal too, if you work hard.

------
dfranke
Kudos to the submitter, but I couldn't finish reading this. I got too sick to
my stomach about half way through. What an absolutely perfect microcosm of how
government makes society go to hell.

Edit: I guess now I have to retract my comment from the other day on the
trolling thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117146>

Suddenly that article doesn't seem so ludicrous anymore :-\

------
randrews
It sounds like most of the teachers' problems centered around the Legos being
a zero-sum thing, where if I use all the cool pieces, then you can't.

I wonder if they would be as bothered by the inner-circle thing if the
students were programming, instead? If I use some cool hack, then nothing
prevents you from using it also (except me being too busy to teach you).

~~~
imsteve
Indeed.

------
mike_yep_mike
Awesome: "All structures will be standard sizes." Aweosme, awesome awesome.
The solution is to kill creativity. Again, awesome! I mean, we already have
too much creativity, and kids, they never have any anyway, and they can
relearn it as they get older, cause everyone knows that as you get older you
spend more and more time being creatie :rollseyes:

It is even better that "Children absorb political, social, and economic
worldviews from an early age." and that, in this case, they learnt the very
valuable lesson that "doing anything different that might cause a fight,
discomfort or even a whiff of unfairness is wrong".

A world full of grey houses that are exactlty the size, shape and dimension is
such a great political vision, and one well worth striving for.

So thank you, Ann Pelo, thank you so very much for making my vision of
uniform, drab, uncreative existence such a possibility!

------
noonespecial
Up next, the _Eastern_ Lego Block. All blocks are the same, the _cool pieces_
are banned, and all of the buildings look exactly the same! That way, all of
the children can be equally bored with legos.

~~~
Prrometheus
They're way ahead of you:

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.... We should all
just have the same number of pieces, like 15 or 28 pieces."

------
ruricolist
The lesson itself is less troubling than these teachers' undertaking to shape
the children's beliefs without any parental involvement or input--not, note,
as part of a curricular course of study at a school, but in an after-school
program at a children's center.

Still: If they'd done this to me as a kid, I'd have brought in one of my Lego
pirate ships, sacked and plundered Legotown (Legograd?), and shared the booty
with anyone who volunteered to join my crew.

------
zoltz
Interesting point, aside from capitalism/wealth/zero-sum etc:

 _The game created a classic case of cognitive disequilibrium: Either the
system is skewed and unfair, or the winners played unfairly. To resolve this
by deciding that the system is unfair would call everything into question;
young children are committed to rules and rule-making as a way to organize a
community, and it is wildly unsettling to acknowledge that rules can have
built-in inequities. So most of the children resolved their disequilibrium by
clinging to the belief that the winners were ruthless — despite clear evidence
of Liam and Kyla's compassionate generosity._

The game was patently unfair, so why did the children blame the winners rather
than the system? I suspect there is a general tendency among people (not only
children) to blame other people, as opposed to abstract causes. That's more
important here than any positive commitment to rules and rule-making.

~~~
thaumaturgy
As you say, systems are abstractions, and people are tangible. It takes a
greater maturity to be able to look at a system and find fault with it, rather
than with the people involved in the system. There are a lot of adults walking
around that never reach that particular maturity, and certainly it's not
something you'd see in a lot of 8-year-olds.

Being able to blame a person for something comes back to a peculiar kind of
satisfaction: you can confront the problem!

------
axod
How many more times _sigh_. The plural of Lego, is Lego. It's like Snow.

~~~
mhb
There is no plural of Lego since it is an adjective (derived from the phrase
"leg godt"). If you're taking the liberty of calling a Lego brand building
block a "Lego", then it hardly seems reasonable to object to others calling
more than one "Legos".

~~~
axod
"Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.'"

From the horses mouth.

My original comment was perhaps ambiguous. You don't say "a Lego". Just like
you don't say "a snow".

"Some Lego" "A Lego set" "A Lego brick"

Say after me...

~~~
bouncingsoul
But you _can't_ say _some Lego_ according to what you just quoted.

The point of that quote is to (show an attempt to) protect trademark. Like how
Google asks people not to use _Google_ as a verb, Lego is asking people not to
use _Lego_ as a noun. It's not establishing pluralization rules.

Anyway, I say _legos_ and always have.

------
Eliezer
You want to make something that someone wants? Fine, I want a way to throw up
on these teachers over the Internet.

------
mattmaroon
It all goes back to the unnatural concept of fairness that adults force upon
children. It's a harmful, artificial construct that damages them throughout
their lives.

I'd rather my kid learn that if he wants some of the legos, he's going to have
to figure out how to get them, through diplomacy, outsmarting the others, etc.
The children on the outside either didn't try hard enough, or weren't smart
enough.

------
dpatru
Murray Rothbard's essay, Society Without the State,
<http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard133.html>, seems relevant here.

~~~
Prrometheus
I'll trade you my current anarchist reading for yours:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=L_3I21lGS90C&dq=david+f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=L_3I21lGS90C&dq=david+friedman+the+machinery+of+friedman&ots=YGFYngvxc5&sig=FNwFi3vLdhqfsJeWo0UCzFd58VM&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?q=david+friedman+the+machinery+of+friedman&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official&client=firefox-a&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-
thumbnail&pgis=1)

------
davidw
Reminds me a bit of this:

<http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-07.htm>

------
topherclay
Short vonnegut story which i believe relates.

<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/hb.html>

also, made into a decent film

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-175006468841636088>

------
TheTarquin
Double You Tee Eff.

Please, PLEASE tell me this is a joke. Please? Anyone? Someone tell me these
people aren't for real.

... _Crickets_

C'mon, letting me believe that this article is anything but satire would make
me feel uncomfortable. And THAT would be WRONG . . . .

------
sspencer
Man, I love legos. I (and Douglas Coupland, via Microserfs) think all good
programmers were obsessed with them during at least one point in their lives.

~~~
dkokelley
I hear you about the lego(s).

I think I'm going to go and mess around with them for the next 4 hours.

------
wallflower
In another context (e.g. a film documentary) this could also be fascinating.

------
Zarchne
I keep thinking what these kids really needed to learn was to put their toys
away.

