Yesterday, my husband sent me a link to an article on why a school banned legos. This article came from Rethinking Schools Online and I will warn you, it is a very long article.
Basically, it is about an afterschool program. The children started building lego town. They would bargain for pieces, they built a variety of buildings, and they became possessive. The town stayed up for several weeks and the teachers noted that other children were being rebuffed. They were told they couldn't play with the Legotown because it belonged to the kids who had been working on it. Apparently, instead of complaining to the teachers or instead of the teachers stepping in (as they obviously saw what was going on), the kids who weren't allowed to play with the Legos acted like they didn't really want to play anyway.
This continued until an unforeseen tragedy occured(and I can't help but wonder how long it would have continued. It seems to me the teachers were using these kids as part of an experiment.) Anyway, the accident was some other children from church were allowed into the room to play and Legotown was destroyed (much as if Godzilla had come through).
Why A School Banned Legos...
http://www.melissaomarkham.com/2008/02/why_a_school_banned_legos.html
So then the teachers felt this would be a great learning opportunity and took the Legos away while trying to come up with a way to make the children see the inequity of some having the power and others not. They had teacher meetings and long conversations with the children. I admire the fact that they wanted to let the children have a say in the matter. But I feel like the teachers had already decided what they thought the outcome should be and that they focused on the parts that went along with their philosophy of sharing ane equality.
For instance, the teachers set up a trading game. They wanted to show the children about how things beyond our control could affect some having power and others not (I guess this is reflective of the people born to wealthy families in our society). Anyhoo...the teachers assigned points to the legos and then passed around the lego bucket and told each of the children to pick out 10 legos. They didn't tell them about the points thing. Most children picked a variety of colors. Well one child picked 8 out of 10 green (and apparently, they were the last 8 in the box) because green was his favorite color. Well, the teachers then told the children that the legos were worth points and through trading their goal was to end up with the most points. All of the legos were worth varying points - the more common the color, the less the points. The green ones were worth 5. The winner would get to choose the rules for the next round.
First of all, what child in their right mind would ever trade a green one? And for that matter, if you had a four point one, you certainly wouldn't trade it for a two point one or even a three point one. Even young children can figure that out pretty quickly. So to me it seems the game was a bit stupid, but I digress. Well two children had the higher scores, obviously the one with 8 green legos was one of those. They each got to make a rule. And they made great ones!
One child said that you had to trade at least one time during a round. So eventually he would be out of green legos if no other rule was made.
The other child said that it would be necessary that if you had more than one green lego, you had to trade.
These two children felt they had an unfair advantage and they wanted to fix the rules so that other kids would get a chance. Sure enough at the end of the round, there were three high scorers. Unfortunately the havenots complained about how the ones who had didn't want to share. Did the teachers commend the first two winners for making rules that would ultimately have them down to just one green lego? Did they point that out to the other children? Not according to the post I read.
Instead they focused on the feelings of the disenfranchised and talked about how some children dropped out of the game altogether because they didn't think they would ever win. To me this reflects society as a whole - there are those who even when there are opportunities will sit down and give up because the opportunities seem to hard, there are others who will try and will eventually better their situation and there are those who have who reach out to those who have not. I get frustrated at the people who point to the people who have a lot of money and the people say they don't do enough with it. Yet these same people are usually givers in a big way, if for no other reason than to help offset taxes. Look how much the Gates family has spent on getting immunizations to people in Africa.
At any rate, I digress again. By the end of weeks and weeks of discussion with the kids on power and equality, the legos were brought back into the classroom. The children were encouraged to work in small groups and the idea of ownership was discouraged.. Each kid had a lego person and that lego person could live in different houses or play in different buildings. However only the builder of a building could make changes to the building unless you had permission of the builder. Does that make sense? The teachers are happy because the kids went through this long process and figured out on their own the value of sharing and working together.
Now, call me stupid if you would like (well, I would prefer you didn't, it might hurt my feelings), but most children figure out pretty quickly the value of sharing. It comes when you don't share, then the person you don't share with has something you want to play with and they decide not to share because you didn't share with them initially. I applaud the teachers for wanting to bring the kids into the decision making, but to me it would have been more constructive to have stepped in when they noticed the problem, not waiting until Godzilla had done the hard work for them.
I don't understand why when this 'you can't play' stuff started, the teachers didn't gather the kids together and say something like "The legos are here for everyone's use. We can either start putting the buildings you make away every day, you can let others play in your lego town or you take turns for periods of a week(in other words this week XYZ get to do what they want with the legos and next week, ABC get a turn, and the next week, DEF...) Then the children would have still had some choice in the matter, the children still good have played with their friends and built their cool structures and enjoyed them, and everyone would have had a turn.
I also am very frustrated that it seems the teachers didn't applaud the first two rule makers in the trading game for making rules that would ensure they wouldn't always be the winners. To me, this is a great thing on those kids part because they could certainly have made rules that would have meant they kept the green legos they had, but they did not.
So, there, I have spouted off quite a bit on this subject and I shall shut up now (aren't you glad?). I encourage you to read the story yourself because you may see it differently than I did.
Who knew legos could be so controversial!?
If you have watched the 'newer' Star Trek series, then you are aware of the term "holodeck" and "holosuite". These are rooms that the people of the future can go into for a variety of purposes. Mostly these rooms are used for recreation. People simply put in a program and viola they are experiencing the roaring twenties, walking through the pages of their favorite novel, or going hiking through astounding vistas. It is like they are really there, with the added benefit of they can't be harmed. There are other people in the programs (who are holograms) and they will interact with you. Pretty cool really except when there is a malfunction and the safeties get turned off, but that is another story.
If you have enjoyed the Air Bud craze and the Air Buddies movies, you and your family is sure to enjoy the Snow Buddies movie! And the only thing better than finding a good family movie, is getting that movie for free! So, 
My new friend, 
During Bloggy Giveaways I won this beautiful Bible tote bag from Elaine at 
