The article is exactly about teaching children to blindly accept hierarchy. The teachers tell them what they can play with and when, how they can play together, and why. Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?
I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it's good for the students to be politically indoctrinated because you agree, to some extent, with what the teachers are saying.
Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly. I think after-school teachers for young kids are there mainly to help socialize children and keep them busy while their parents work. I don't think it's their role to teach kids any particular ideology.
I'm almost questioning if we read the same article. To me, the wording of the article suggests that there was quite a bit of dialogue with the children and among the children, including active listening and encouragement of critical thinking. I never got the impression that there was coercion by the teachers and certainly nothing about it screamed "woke police".
It feels like you're largely reacting to the taking away of toys and trying to make it into a statement about politics, when frankly denying toys is a pretty common and mundane way of dealing w/ child misbehavior (e.g. notably many parents ground kids without video games etc)
As a parent of two kids, I can tell you that rather than dealing w/ clear cut black-or-white lines, you're almost always dealing with a looong slippery slope of behavior where actions subtly weave in and out of what one might consider bullying or otherwise unhealthy behavior. There's unhealthy behavior with intent, without intent, rationalizations, testing of waters, and all sorts of gray area stuff, and as adults it's our job to navigate that.
Your position about not taking on a "teaching" role can be seen as the philosophy of letting natural consequences run their courses as a learning opportunity for kids etc, but it can just as easily be construed as being the type of person that turns a blind eye to bulling, if one really wants to start getting into political escalation. But frankly, parent forums have enough nosey judgy drama and we don't need it here on HN too.
If anything, it's interesting (to me, anyways) that they talk about using several pedagogical techniques. I don't have a horse in the race as far as the kids in the article are concerned, but the ideas of the sorts of things one can use (or not use) to deal with unhealthy behavior is something I can apply to my family.
> I'm almost questioning if we read the same article. To me, the wording of the article suggests that there was quite a bit of dialogue with the children and among the children, including active listening and encouragement of critical thinking. I never got the impression that there was coercion by the teachers and certainly nothing about it screamed "woke police".
I mean, we don't exactly get to hear from the children themselves. we only get a self-congratulatory retrospective from one of the teachers. as you allude to in your own comment, "toys go away until you learn to play together nicely" is not exactly a new story in a child's world. I suspect at least some of the children were precocious enough to realize that the legos were not coming back until they gave some satisfactory answers in the "dialogues".
and by the way, I did read the entire article. it is overtly political.
> 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.
The thing for me is that I can vividly imagine an exact situation where this teacher would say this and I'd reply "that analogy is kind of a huge stretch but I think both agree there's an issue". And we'd move on because we both know that teacher is using colorful language for effect and that's not really the point of the conversation.
And the actual issue at hand is something I'd describe as a kid being "obliviously unfair". As I mentioned, it's a set of behaviors and attitudes that you know isn't cool but is very difficult to articulate why exactly.
Where I disagree with the article is that I wouldn't let what I consider to be oblivious unfairness to fester for months like some sort of experiment. Instead, I'd just make the executive decision to drop the diplomacy and just complain about the bad behavior right there and then.
You seem to have missed the section where they assigned point values to Legos and let the children create rules. The author clearly states that they had intended for the children to criticize the system for being unfair, but instead criticized the people within the system. The teachers wanted the children to challenge them, and they didn't!
And yes, at the end of the day, the teachers always have the final authority. Do you think it's a good idea for a group of children to never be told "no?"
> Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly
Every human interaction is politics. It's not just about leaders, governments, and parties - it's about who gets what, and when, in a world where we can't all get what we want. Managing how power and resources are shared is the fundamental idea of politics.
If you don't teach kids about politics, they will be lost in the world - unable to advocate or negotiate for themselves, understand the situations of others, or question the systems that have been built around them. This article describes children learning all that and more.
> And yes, at the end of the day, the teachers always have the final authority. Do you think it's a good idea for a group of children to never be told "no?"
And yes, at the end of the day, the party always has the final authority. Do you think it's a good idea for a group of proles to never be told "no?"
So I assume that you have never told your child no before, then? When they want to touch a hot stove, eat an entire gallon of ice cream, or paint on the walls, you give complete deference to them, because to restrict them in any way would be an unforgivable infringement of their intrinsic liberties, is that right?
Context matters - situations dont become identical just because you can switch out a few nouns to make an edgy analogy.
Absolutely, and the context here is that these teachers have the absolute authority to say no and impose their will on children in pursuit of their indoctrination.
It’s hardly edgy: given their expressly stated goals, it’s alarmingly relevant.
The natural power structure emerged in the beginning but once established only an act of God could reset it and even when reset it would naturally reform. The kids didn’t get any tools to challenge and improve their position in the the structure which is really the only thing that matters.
Everything is physics is more correct, but that doesn't mean kids in an art program need to be learning about quantum dynamics. It strikes me as a leap in logic to say "Everything is politics, therefore we need to indoctrinate young children according to my progressive left politics."
I'd be curious to see what exactly you object to about the "indoctrination", given that the actual process here (if you avoid panicking at the mere presence of words like "privilege" in the narration) amounted to good critical thinking lessons around topics like "what does it mean to own something" and "what does it mean to be powerful", then getting the children to talk to each other and work out what they all felt were fair rules about sharing use of the Legos.
> given that the actual process here ... amounted to good critical thinking lessons
It clearly, expressly, and obviously was not. The definition of indoctrination is:
> the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
But sure, I can explain what I find objectionable about the indoctrination.
From the actual article, this was not 'critical thinking lessons'. It was carefully manipulated by the adults around them to push them to a particular set of beliefs, i.e. indoctrination. E.g.:
> mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.
They disagree with the 'society' the children built, and want to impose their values on it instead.
> We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded.
Perfect: the children are in emotional distress, this is prime time to indoctrinate. Never let a crisis go to waste, right?
> Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.
Expressly stating their intent to impose a set of views on these kids, not teach them to derive their own values.
> We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice.
And again expressly stating their intent to impose their views on the kids.
> “We don’t want to rebuild Legotown and go back to how things were. Instead, we want to figure out with you a way to build a Legotown that’s fair to all the kids.”
You don't get your Legos back unless you organize them in a way we agree with. More than that: you need to come up with an option that's satisfying to us. It's grotesque.
> Our intention was to create a situation in which a few children would receive unearned power from sheer good luck in choosing Lego bricks with high point values
Imposing their (provably false in this case) views on how power is derived, again, except even more subversively via a 'game'.
> Carl: “I don’t like that winners make new rules. People make rules that are only in their advantage. They could have written it simpler that said, ‘Only I win.'”
Immediately proceeding this quote, the author lauded two children for making rules that were clearly more 'fair'. Note that they did not correct Carl here, because the children hadn't fully adopted their views yet.
> To make sense of the sting of this disenfranchisement, most of the children cast Liam and Kyla as “mean,” trying to “make people feel bad.”
The lack of self-awareness here is startling. But I guess not strictly an opposition to their methods here.
> The game created a classic case of cognitive disequilibrium: Either the system is skewed and unfair, or the winners played unfairly.
Or, you know, the system is fair and the winners won while the losers lost. But, again, a digression.
> As teachers, we were excited by these comments.
"Our indoctrination was working!"
> Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.
Their definition of equality. And there was no democracy involved in any of this. It was forced upon them from a small group of dictators (the teachers) and they were manipulated until they were indoctrinated to accept it.
I'd guess you haven't been in a role to teach kids. They need to be taught. If not a doctrine you believe in, then it will be something horrific that they come up with themselves. The Lord of the Flies was a documentary.
> Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?
This is an anti-intellectual anti-parenting garbage take. These are 8 year olds.
> Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly
Except you already do when you support school curricula that preach the righteousness of Manifest Destiny, whitewash the civil rights movement, extol the virtues of capitalism, hierarchy, and "rugged individualism," etc etc etc.
I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it's good for the students to be politically indoctrinated because you agree, to some extent, with what the teachers are saying.
Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly. I think after-school teachers for young kids are there mainly to help socialize children and keep them busy while their parents work. I don't think it's their role to teach kids any particular ideology.