The Building Blocks of Socialism

Everything I needed to know in life, I learned by building communes with multi-colored interlocking blocks:

Some Seattle school children are being told to be skeptical of private property rights. This lesson is being taught by banning Legos.

A ban was initiated at the Hilltop Children's Center in Seattle. According to an article in the winter 2006-07 issue of "Rethinking Schools" magazine, the teachers at the private school wanted their students to learn that private property ownership is evil.
According to the article, the 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."

Of course they believe it's unjust because someone has more than them. However if they held the deeds to all the land, I guessing their opinions might change. One of my favorite Doug Powers-isms is "as AL Gore’s copy of the liberal dictionary teaches us, “we” is always defined as “you, not me.” How true Doug, how true.

At the end of that time, Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the children:

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

Unfortunately for the teachers at this private school, some capitalist pig's offspring somehow slipped through the venting process and supplied the best commentary on the whole situation:

Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying.

H/T Doug Powers