Amazing article about power structures and legos

[cherydactyl]

Why We Banned Legos, an account from a daycare/before- and after-school-care facility in an affluent Seattle neighborhood about an interesting conundrum of limited resources that arose from their school-age children building a 'Legotown.'

Totally fascinating. If you like or care for kids in any way, I strongly encourage you read it!

ETA: and here's a follow-up article: 'Lego Fascists' (that's us) vs. Fox News

Comments

[cherydactyl.livejournal.com]

I kind of wish they had focused on the scarce resources somewhat more. Talking about how to resolve conflicts over scarce resources is vital to developing economic awareness, and it's all under the surface here. The options for getting more of the cool pieces might include buying more legos, taking turns with them, etc, one person getting more of a less scarce piece in order to balance not getting the coolest piece, group decision making about how to use cool pieces based on a proposal model, etc.

[dspitzle.livejournal.com]

I have the same thoughts. Similarly, one of the basic arguments made by the kids was essentially one of sweat equity granting some aspects of property rights, which in many other contexts would be considered valid. However, since those same property rights were clearly interfering with other children acquiring that same sweat equity, I think one interesting experiment would be to reserve a block of legos which students each get to use for a week at a time. That would give each student the opportunity to build their own big project, or coordinate group construction, or even trade them for specific parts ("I just want to build a whole landscape in green").