Quote from: SpikeLet us not forget that this is the same region that spawned Blue Rose....

And Shadowrun. And MageKnight. And Oathbouund. And. . . well. . . lots of stuff that doesn't suck

Quote from: jdrakehAnd Shadowrun. And MageKnight. And Oathbouund. And. . . well. . . lots of stuff that doesn't suck

I loved Oathbound too.

It's like I don't know you anymore, James!

Quote from: Thanatos02I agree. Teaching kids to share is horrible, first of all. Second of all, go capitalism! Hoo~ah!

:rolleyes:

You did notice that the 'sharing' was pretty much used only as an excuse to teach a collectivist/socialist agenda, didn't you? No one I know objects to teaching children to share, wether it be by decree and direct arbitration (you will allow Jimmy to use those Legos over there...) or by more independent methods (you should share with Jimmy... why don't you try playing WITH him?).  

That is far from the case here.   Sharing is not even the primary concern, otherwise they wouldn't have done that little trading game that took up the second half of the article.

Sounds to me like some of you would prefer that the kids be given knives and enter the 'circle of death' to earn the right to have milk and cookies.

Quote from: GRIMSounds to me like some of you would prefer that the kids be given knives and enter the 'circle of death' to earn the right to have milk and cookies.

....Coming soon to pay-per-view in your local town.

Quote from: GRIMSounds to me like some of you would prefer that the kids be given knives and enter the 'circle of death' to earn the right to have milk and cookies.

You obviously haven't been paying enough attention to my posting history. OF COURSE I support the circle of death for milk and cookies idea.  I'm a freakin' social darwinist at heart! :cool:

Quote from: Abyssal MawI loved Oathbound too.

It's like I don't know you anymore, James!

These last two years have been full of personal growth. Sometimes my rough edges still show, but I've been working on grinding them down. Part of that growth has manifested as me trying new things (e.g., playing games that I wouldn't normally play). As a result, I've found some new things that I like

Quote from: jdrakehThese last two years have been full of personal growth. Sometimes my rough edges still show, but I've been working on grinding them down. Part of that growth has manifested as me trying new things (e.g., playing games that I wouldn't normally play). As a result, I've found some new things that I like

Now I feel bad. I've regressed. I barely walk upright anymore.

Here's to you, mang!

That's just a chilling article.  It's like these teachers are androids with anti-fun beams shooting from their eyes.  This kind of thinking should be corrected with a pommel horse, leather cuffs, a speculum, and gerbils with fur heavily spiked by hair gel.

    My own solution to solving the "fairness" of Lego piece distribution is "save up and buy your own f****ing Legos"

The teachers are (a) taking the children's play the wrong kind of seriously and (b) encouraging the children to do the same.  You can see it right at the start, where they're talking about carefully preserving the work that the children have put in, protecting it from the world of childhood play.

Is the rest of the article fucked up?  Yes, yes it is.  But I think that there is the root of it.

They're Lego blocks, people.  You don't need to freakin' measure out what a "fair" allotment of space for each house is.  What you need to do is to say, come the end of the day, "Okay!  That's some great work.  Let's take a picture of it, and when we get it developed we'll get to send it home with you, but after we take the picture it's time to take the legos and put them back in their boxes."

I mean, c'mon ... every kid knows that a Lego that's in some built thing is one less lego you have to build the next thing.  Disassembled legos are the natural ground state from which fun emerges.  If you value the ability of the kids to have fun then you show that by giving them disassembled legos to have fun with, not by preserving their lego-structures.

You can say "Yes, I take your efforts seriously, I take your passion seriously, I value and admire all those things about you" but simultaneously say "... but I do not view this LegoTown as a sacred or protected artifact."  Valuing the end results of the play is no substitute for valuing the play itself.

But tearing down the nascent Legotown would have required adults to assert the authority that comes with their responsibility to provide a sane learning environment ... and since authority is Alway Bad In Every Circumstance (tm), we can't have that.  Far better to drive everybody's sanity straight off a cliff by trying to convince kids that they're secretly enacting a socio-economic drama rather than ... oh, I don't know ... responding to the screwed up passive aggressive bullshit of their teachers.

Excellent analysis, Tony!

-clash

Quote from: Koltar....Coming soon to pay-per-view in your local town.

Muppet Babies: Battle Royale

You know, I seriously considered coming in here with a seriously thought out discussion about the article. There seems to be some obvious misreadings, and the knee-jerk reactions I see are so bad I'm surprised there arn't physical injuries. But mostly, this thread already looks like the 'socialism, boo!' circle-jerk I didn't quite expect. Trying to discuss this wouldn't even come close to ending well.

Really, I shouldn't even have bothered to post this, but it's a replacement for the better thought out paragraphs I already had, and my ego demands that I post something for my time... - . -

Sorry you feel that way, Thanatos. I didn't knee jerk anything, I read the damn thing, thought about what I read and made my decision on my feelings based on careful thought.

If you want to post an alternative take on the matter, by all means do so.  Simply shouting that we have it all wrong or don't understand what we read isn't gonna convince anyone of anything. Ever.

It's one of those articles where someone slapped a really dumb title on it which colours the rest of the article and gives rise to the audience reading it in the worst way possible. If it was titled "The Political Consequences of Economic Distributions in Educational Settings: Elementary Schools" no one would be getting as upset.

As for the article itself, it sounds like a bunch of kids took over all the LEGO, then bullied everyone else into acting as if the clique owned it.

QuoteA group of about eight children conceived and launched Legotown. Other children were eager to join the project, but as the city grew — and space and raw materials became more precious — the builders began excluding other children.

QuoteOccasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn't play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. The other children didn't complain much about this; when asked about Legos, they'd often comment vaguely that they just weren't interested in playing with Legos anymore

QuoteWhen the children discovered the decimated Legotown, they reacted with shock and grief. Children moaned and fell to their knees to inspect the damage; many were near tears. The builders were devastated, and the other children were deeply sympathetic. We gathered as a full group to talk about what had happened; at one point in the conversation, Kendra suggested a big cleanup of the loose Legos on the floor. The Legotown builders were fierce in their opposition. They explained that particular children "owned" those pieces and it would be unfair to put them back in the bins where other children might use them.

All emphases mine. I chose examples right at the start of the article because I know most people won't read more than the title and the first few paragraphs.

The teachers took an explicitly political angle on this problem, which one might agree or disagree with (they could also have looked at the interpersonal aspects to see if there was a psychological reason), but it's clear that this was not a good situation that the teachers fucked up - it was a divisive and cliquish situation which they resolved (successfully, even).