Teaching Socialism in Seattle

A reader tipped me off to this little piece of amusement/horror. The Hilltop Children's Center, essentially a hippy playhouse thinly disguised as a place of "learning," banned Lego blocks as a way to teach kids the evils of the Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, or anything else that espouses the dangerous and inhuman notion of "private property rights."

[T]he 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."

The article then goes on to describe how the school successfully Marx-ized these budding little robber barons. At least according to the school. What they did is take all the legos away, force the children to play with them in a certain way, and ensuring that (while children are supposedly encouraged to follow their own passions) they could never control their own destinies because The Grownups were in charge, and that was how to run a society. Essentially, they're teaching the children all the benefits of fascist tyranny the Soviet Union once enjoyed, and now serves the people of North Korea and Cuba so well. But at least they have "social justice" in the new, improved People's Republic of Legotown. Ah, the equality of universal poverty! How noble.

What's sad is that these "teachers" are just plain too wilfully dumb to realize that a) humans (including children) are naturally possessive, b) it's both important and natural for kids (especially boys) to stake out their own turf, c) "ownership" and "power" are inherent human traits, irrespective of culture, and d) no matter how many times it's tried, socialism just plain doesn't work alongside freedom, democracy, or prosperity.

Here's the full article the school submitted to "Rethinking Schools," the magazine for all those folks who think kids, like, just need to like, BE, man. MAN! It is priceless. Be careful, though - it is a concentrated and unvarnished look at the socialist mind. It can be painful to those with a pre-existing condition of common sense.

I wonder what John Edwards thinks about all of this...