I wonder if I was the only one reading the article thinking to myself "It's LEGO, not LEGOS" ?

Quote from: Tyberious FunkI wonder if I was the only one reading the article thinking to myself "It's LEGO, not LEGOS" ?

No.  But there are only so many times you can shout that at the screen.
The computers, they do not listen to us.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkI wonder if I was the only one reading the article thinking to myself "It's LEGO, not LEGOS" ?

No, me too, in fact that's all I can think about while trying to read the article.

Quote from: fonkaygarryThose little kids built an entire civilization on their own and the teachers shut it down because it was too much like real life?

Holy fucking shit.  Do they breath oxygen on that planet?

Heh, that was my first reaction as well. I think the teachers are 'projecting' just a little too much.

QuoteAll 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.

You have no right as an individual, you must conform to the collective. You will be marginalized. Individual effort will not be rewarded.

.....WTF is wrong with people?

Quote from: NazgulHeh, that was my first reaction as well. I think the teachers are 'projecting' just a little too much.



You have no right as an individual, you must conform to the collective. You will be marginalized. Individual effort will not be rewarded.

.....WTF is wrong with people?

I agree that the individual is being crushed in america. Between school "uniforms" and employers dictating things like hair length, facial hair, etc, plus discriminating against people with tatts or piercings, the america worker is basically being forced into this "dilbert" mold, and now they're trying to get kids indoctrinated into conformity and uniformity, and to accept "Beacuse I said so!" as a reason for the elimination of individuality.

Quote from: Tyberious FunkI wonder if I was the only one reading the article thinking to myself "It's LEGO, not LEGOS" ?

It's actually "Lego Building Blocks", which is what I was thinking of.  Years ago (1970s), Lego put a flyer in their products talking about how they weren't "Legos" because they were concerned that their product would become "legos" rather than "building blocks" and, thus, cause them to lose their trademark on the name "Lego".

It would have been interesting to see pictures of the creations in question.

I have an image in my mind that before the teachers imposed their utopian ideals on the children, the created city must have had a grand center with all kinds of "cool stuff", and it also had a slum of sorts with small, modest buildings created by the children who kept playing, but who were outside of the main power structure.

After the teacher imposed rules, I imagine everything is uniform, and the grandiose structures of the old city don't exist.  Instead, I picture things as much more homogenous and bland, and the creation as being much lesser overall.

Quote from: AnemoneAnd what is that?  :confused:

See, the thing that I was nodding along with is the 'feel good everybody shares alike' mentality, and the concept that when teachers provide a resource for play (legos... screw you guys, I've always added that S to the end...) that it is not fair or right that some children are left out.

Sound good and right.

But that's not the entire picture.  First we have some apparently very sharp, very creative young minds engaged in an ambitious cityscape project, complete with a very well developed political and social structure. Rather than encourage this, and introducing means of involving the oastricezed children (perhaps by exercising their authority as the providers of the legos to begin with) they were upset that their own collectivist communist ideals were not being followed and they tore it all down as they indoctrinated the children into their personal political views.

Then you have the trading game later on.  When you read the rules presented by the winners (and why was it the winners who got to make the rules exactly? Oh, yes, indoctrination and condemnation of the capitalist culture they live in... right)  did you find the rules were inherently designed to allow them to maintain their monopoly on 'winning pieces'?  No, they were designed, if poorly, to introduce more 'fair play' by forcing stronger competitors to trade.  Then when they won again the teachers encouraged them to feel guilty about having the power.  WTF!  While the article doesn't specifically state it, I would not be at all surprised to find that they deliberately slanted the play from the start to give a student an overwhelming advantage (for example: were green blocks really the most valuable prior to 'Liam' selecting all the green blocks for himself, or did they decide after selection that it would make the lesson more valuable if one player started with a monopoly on the power?)


In short what I was nodding along with that I really REALLY don't like is the fact that these people decided to do the exact opposite of encouraging children.  Indoctrination is bad enough by itself, but the entire purpose of this seems to be destroy these kids chances of being useful contributing members of society.  


Did that answer your question?

I was shocked reading this. Right next to me is an old GDR Kindergarten, the whole staff from the olden days, and I know many GDR teachers. They aren´t as communist as those shitheaded teachers are.

I´m delighted at your reactions.
This is the first time I got a fuzzy feeling at a RPG site.

Spike, you have put into words almost exactly what I was thinking while reading, but couldn't quite put into a cohesive sense of what made me feel disgusted. Thank you.

EDIT: Raise your hand if you even considered the possibility that the teachers destroyed the cityscape...

Quote from: James J SkachSpike, you have put into words almost exactly what I was thinking while reading, but couldn't quite put into a cohesive sense of what made me feel disgusted. Thank you.

EDIT: Raise your hand if you even considered the possibility that the teachers destroyed the cityscape...

Thanks. I had to really examine exactly what I was thinking to put it into words... I was worried I was jumping at shadows when I first went 'WTF?!'...

Consider my hand raised.

The ultimate dead end of socialist education.

On the plus side, I'm suddenly looking forward to the rebelling teenagers who strike out against everything they've had forced on them.

That was a damn strange article. It gets a :wtfsign:

I agree. Teaching kids to share is horrible, first of all. Second of all, go capitalism! Hoo~ah!

:rolleyes:

The point is, they weren't teaching the kids to share. They'd like to think that they were.  They feel that they were imparting some enlightened approach that only they are beknighted to pass on due to their intellectual superiority. But what they were doing was not letting a bunch of eight year olds play with the lego to fan thier own vanity.

Sick, actually...

Capitalism and sharing, contrary to popular belief, are not mutually exclusive.