Or to paraphrase: “A few of the kids were being jerks and it was making the other kids feel bad, and despite teachers repeatedly asking them to stop, they wouldn’t, so we decided (edit: after a lot of thought and discussion with the class) to take away the toy causing the trouble.”
This is hardly “indoctrination” any more than it is indoctrination to break up kids’ physical fights or stop kids from taking/breaking each-others’ stuff.
> We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity — whether we interceded or not. We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice.
I'm sure that the children of the Nintendo generation frequently discussed the power dynamic of King Koopa's dictatorship over the Mushroom Kingdom, and the systematically oppressed Shyguys, who have to cover their faces in public.
Is that supposed to be bad? Like... you don’t want kids explicitly thinking and talking about what goes on in their class because identifying and understanding their feelings might cause them to become too empathetic or something?
If someone doesn’t have some such conversations (with parents, teachers, other mentors, etc.) as a kid, I posit that their education is deficient.
> Is that supposed to be bad?
Quite possibly. One of the big successes of the law and modern political traditions like liberalism has been demonstrating that the most successful path is when "we" don't respond and provide mechanisms to let individuals sort out their own differences in a 1:1 fashion, personally navigating the power dynamics.
Strong group responses are actually quite destructive and squelch non-conformance. Anyone who might be unusually successful with an unorthodox strategy gets crushed. Ends really badly for minorities too. Groups aren't any fairer, nicer or more empathetic than an individual and in fact (because they tend to lowest common denominators and plausible social deniability for inaction) are often much more violent and cruel.
We don't want the teachers taking an extremely successful and tolerant society focused on individual action in context of a group and then inculcating group reactions in context of an individual. That will reduce tolerance and promote hate. Although to be honest teachers shouldn't be making any decisions about the culture, or children's personality, as it isn't really their role in life.
> taking an extremely successful and tolerant society
Which society are you thinking of? This is certainly not a fair description of the USA at any point in its history or of “Legotown”.
Well I think "unintentionally" is a bit of a strong term, kids are inexperienced but not necessarily stupid, they understand power dynamics quite early. Humans have great intuition for that sort of thing.
> causing a lot of harm to their companions and then asking the kids what alternative kinds of rules they could adopt that would leave everyone feeling satisfied is “promoting hate”?
Yeah. We've got some examples of how this thinking plays out in practice - the people who want to mobilise a group to come down on individuals for social improprieties/organise public shamings are usually highly intolerant and, frankly, often seem to be motivated by hate. These are the instincts that power mob actions for generations. It is pretty routine, I'm not going to claim its in any way uncommon. I'm not even going to claim these legophobes are doing it, I haven't read today's article :].
But if you want to know why people would be nervous about teachers getting a group together to talk about individual's "transgressions" then this is the argument for why it is bad. It is inculcating a political opinion for how to handle social tension that is arguably bad.
> Which society are you thinking of? This is certainly not a fair description of the USA at any point in its history or of “Legotown”.
The US has a great track record. There aren't many countries where minorities do as well as the US. China is basically an ethnostate, India I'm not sure about, then suddenly in at #3 population we've got diversity central in the USA and the airwaves are chock-full of people arguing about how to make life better for minorities. Very attractive migration destination too (USA #1 and all that). Not exactly the sort of ranking that an intolerant country can manage.
This is definitely not a big success. What we get from this mentality is billionaires hoarding resources and corporations destabilizing democracies. The law exists to establish rules of conduct for living in a civilized society, not for encouraging individuals to sort out their differences on their own.
> Strong group responses are actually quite destructive and squelch non-conformance. Anyone who might be unusually successful with an unorthodox strategy gets crushed. Ends really badly for minorities too.
Strong group responses can be destructive or constructive. Either one can benefit or harm minorities. Organizing into a group to accomplish a goal does not automatically mean that individualism is cast aside -- many social movements have existed to empower individuals.
> We don't want the teachers taking an extremely successful and tolerant society focused on individual action in context of a group and then inculcating group reactions in context of an individual.
It sounds like in this case study, the society in question was far from extremely successful and tolerant. The whole point of the exercise was to promote social harmony among students.
I'm always interested in this idea when it comes up because I don't understand what people think the billionaires are hoarding. For curiosity's sake could you give me a quick enumeration of the physical, real-world resources that you think the billionaires are using up? Like, do you think they have 10 million in rice hidden in a silo for a rainy day?
And billionaires do effectively hoard things like rice. That's what the futures market they invest in is all about.
If the billionaires magically ceased to exist and poor people owned the apartments, I don't think they'd be paying the other poor people as much to come clean them.
People won't buy your SaS for $4.99 a month so you can earn your first million if they spent all of their money on iPhone priced higher than it needs to be.
Strongest benefit of the market is competition that allows million ideas to be tried to find the thousand that will benefit the society. One person with billions of dollars won't have million ideas, let alone thousand beneficial ones.
They also hoard other stuff like land and real estate but that's just means to an end. Extracting capital, denying it to everybody and keeping it all under singular command.
Well... yes, they did? Sure, not all of them, but there's plenty of fanfiction out there on the topic, and the gaming industry as a whole has devoted more than a little bit of effort to deconstructing, reconstructing, and generally exploring the implications of everything from fantasy kingdoms to the impact of game levels themselves on the player.
It's adults that wrote all of the fan fiction, supported the industry, etc. after.
There has long been this subculture of actively encouraging bullying amongst children in order to "weed out the weak", and it's disgusting every time it's suggested.
In my experience it's usually a rationalisation by those who wished to do the thing already, but now even more than apathy, there's a moral obligation to bully people, which is quite appealing if you want to do those things.
Please note that the situation was resolved by the teachers utilising their position of power to impose the change they wanted. They want democracy and egalitarianism but it turns out they needed authority to impose that.
Highly ironic.
The "change they wanted" was for social harmony among students, and it was accomplished using rules that the children created and agreed upon.
It's definitely valid to question what those things should be, but some conversations need to be "forced" in order to educate children about things they don't know and likely won't discover easily for themselves.
Removing the toy that is the focus of a lot of interpersonal drama is (sometimes) a quick way to diffuse the immediate conflict. Then talking together about how different people are feeling in a particular circumstance and getting group feedback on ways to solve problems constructively is the way to help kids improve at the skills they are lacking.
If all possible source of conflicts are removed than when significant conflicts are going to arise and be learned from? This is self-contradicting.
That's not a healthy environment. That's literally the big man screwing over the little man.
I'm actually impressed. Those are people that care about their job.
They ran psychological experiments on the children that spanned weeks or months. They deliberately incited them to see what would happen - without any direct guidance or approval from the parents. If I had found out my kids had been subject to these experiments, I would be livid
There are costs to this. Sometimes the kids will fight or some kids will be left out and perhaps adults will need to intervene to get things back to a good baseline. But the benefits are that you become prepared to work, play, and live with other people - knowing that you won't always get your way, and it won't always be fair, but there are ways to handle it.
In the story laid out by the article some kids are monopolizing the legos to the extent that other kids stop playing with the legos. Okay, so? That's good. They found a good solution - other people are using the legos, I will play with something else. Next month when the lego hogs move on to playing with other things, the kids who were playing with other things can go take the legos. Or maybe they won't, but that's okay too because not every niche is for every person all the time.
The resolution is that the teachers lay down rules about how the kids can play with legos. They have to build their buildings to a standard size. The takeaway is that authority will tell you when you can play with your toys and how you can play with them and if you don't abide by the rules you don't get to play. Why is this a better lesson than letting kids play by themselves as much as possible?
It looks like you didn't actually read to the end of the article, given that the resolution is that the teachers get the children to work out their own rules about the Legos that all of them feel is fair.
This is literally the point of the article.
They're showing their clients what a good job they're doing at instilling values and teaching life lessons.
edit: i mistakenly said they're a private business, they're a non-profit.
The hypersensitive political contextualisation of this piece elicits the wrong outcomes and it's a totem for so much that is wrong today.
We're constantly over analysing and injecting bits of politics into the situation.
It's ridiculous.
Any sane, reasonable parent or teacher would have been able to solve the 'lego problem' without much fuss. Now we are arguing about it 15 years later because these shenanigans are perennial.
Do you have kids? Have you ever worked with kids? Helping kids to solve their conflicts is rarely “without fuss”. Even when there are only like 2–3 kids involved.
Being “sane” and “reasonable” doesn’t go nearly as far as you might hope.
(For that matter, the same goes for many office conflicts among groups of adults.)
"You can't share the legos and play nice? That means that the legos are going away for tonight."
"But we can share!!"
"Ok, but this is your last chance."
[kids play nicely or legos go away]
Some of my childhood friends with “sane” and “reasonable” parents (and who themselves grew into lovely adults) were incredibly cruel to their younger siblings, but were smart enough about it that adults never noticed.
Some become conditioned into being doormats for the rest of their lives, just to avoid conflict. IMO, it's a very bad thing.
It's important to teach children at an early age about equality and empathy. Actively engaging with them over the course of weeks in order to help them understand complex ideas of power dynamics and community is commendable, not ridiculous.
What the teachers are doing is preparing the kids to defend themselves against the default politics in the world today, the politics of capitalism, of "might makes right" and "I've got mine". Sure, you can scold them and tell them to share or the legos will be taken away, but by engaging them in dialogue you are allowing them to reach the conclusion on their own that sharing is best, and it'll be a stickier lesson for when they're grown and out in a world which teaches them that not sharing is best.
Oh please not more of this.
If you used the word 'capitalism' in teaching kids how to share, you're infected, you're part of the zombie army.
If the kids are not sharing, have them share in a few words and that's that.
If you write a treatise about it that uses words larger than the kids can even understand, you've decontextualized the situation and are spreading 'verbal covid'.
The teachers didn't interpose themselves -- they brought a conversation to the children after the town was accidentally destroyed. Through weeks of conversation, the children created a set of rules that benefited everyone, including the children who were previously excluded.
I suspect you have more in common with the teachers politically than you and I have in common. Perhaps you think it's good for the students to be politically indoctrinated because you agree, to some extent, with what the teachers are saying.
Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly. I think after-school teachers for young kids are there mainly to help socialize children and keep them busy while their parents work. I don't think it's their role to teach kids any particular ideology.
It feels like you're largely reacting to the taking away of toys and trying to make it into a statement about politics, when frankly denying toys is a pretty common and mundane way of dealing w/ child misbehavior (e.g. notably many parents ground kids without video games etc)
As a parent of two kids, I can tell you that rather than dealing w/ clear cut black-or-white lines, you're almost always dealing with a looong slippery slope of behavior where actions subtly weave in and out of what one might consider bullying or otherwise unhealthy behavior. There's unhealthy behavior with intent, without intent, rationalizations, testing of waters, and all sorts of gray area stuff, and as adults it's our job to navigate that.
Your position about not taking on a "teaching" role can be seen as the philosophy of letting natural consequences run their courses as a learning opportunity for kids etc, but it can just as easily be construed as being the type of person that turns a blind eye to bulling, if one really wants to start getting into political escalation. But frankly, parent forums have enough nosey judgy drama and we don't need it here on HN too.
If anything, it's interesting (to me, anyways) that they talk about using several pedagogical techniques. I don't have a horse in the race as far as the kids in the article are concerned, but the ideas of the sorts of things one can use (or not use) to deal with unhealthy behavior is something I can apply to my family.
I mean, we don't exactly get to hear from the children themselves. we only get a self-congratulatory retrospective from one of the teachers. as you allude to in your own comment, "toys go away until you learn to play together nicely" is not exactly a new story in a child's world. I suspect at least some of the children were precocious enough to realize that the legos were not coming back until they gave some satisfactory answers in the "dialogues".
and by the way, I did read the entire article. it is overtly political.
> Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
And the actual issue at hand is something I'd describe as a kid being "obliviously unfair". As I mentioned, it's a set of behaviors and attitudes that you know isn't cool but is very difficult to articulate why exactly.
Where I disagree with the article is that I wouldn't let what I consider to be oblivious unfairness to fester for months like some sort of experiment. Instead, I'd just make the executive decision to drop the diplomacy and just complain about the bad behavior right there and then.
And yes, at the end of the day, the teachers always have the final authority. Do you think it's a good idea for a group of children to never be told "no?"
> Conversely, I would not share my politics with children, even abstractly
Every human interaction is politics. It's not just about leaders, governments, and parties - it's about who gets what, and when, in a world where we can't all get what we want. Managing how power and resources are shared is the fundamental idea of politics.
If you don't teach kids about politics, they will be lost in the world - unable to advocate or negotiate for themselves, understand the situations of others, or question the systems that have been built around them. This article describes children learning all that and more.
And yes, at the end of the day, the party always has the final authority. Do you think it's a good idea for a group of proles to never be told "no?"
Context matters - situations dont become identical just because you can switch out a few nouns to make an edgy analogy.
Absolutely, and the context here is that these teachers have the absolute authority to say no and impose their will on children in pursuit of their indoctrination.
It’s hardly edgy: given their expressly stated goals, it’s alarmingly relevant.
Except, everything is politics. Even basic empathy is now (unfortunately) a prominent political issue.
It clearly, expressly, and obviously was not. The definition of indoctrination is:
> the process of teaching a person or group to accept a set of beliefs uncritically.
But sure, I can explain what I find objectionable about the indoctrination.
From the actual article, this was not 'critical thinking lessons'. It was carefully manipulated by the adults around them to push them to a particular set of beliefs, i.e. indoctrination. E.g.:
> mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive.
They disagree with the 'society' the children built, and want to impose their values on it instead.
> We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded.
Perfect: the children are in emotional distress, this is prime time to indoctrinate. Never let a crisis go to waste, right?
> Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation.
Expressly stating their intent to impose a set of views on these kids, not teach them to derive their own values.
> We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice.
And again expressly stating their intent to impose their views on the kids.
> “We don’t want to rebuild Legotown and go back to how things were. Instead, we want to figure out with you a way to build a Legotown that’s fair to all the kids.”
You don't get your Legos back unless you organize them in a way we agree with. More than that: you need to come up with an option that's satisfying to us. It's grotesque.
> Our intention was to create a situation in which a few children would receive unearned power from sheer good luck in choosing Lego bricks with high point values
Imposing their (provably false in this case) views on how power is derived, again, except even more subversively via a 'game'.
> Carl: “I don’t like that winners make new rules. People make rules that are only in their advantage. They could have written it simpler that said, ‘Only I win.'”
Immediately proceeding this quote, the author lauded two children for making rules that were clearly more 'fair'. Note that they did not correct Carl here, because the children hadn't fully adopted their views yet.
> To make sense of the sting of this disenfranchisement, most of the children cast Liam and Kyla as “mean,” trying to “make people feel bad.”
The lack of self-awareness here is startling. But I guess not strictly an opposition to their methods here.
> The game created a classic case of cognitive disequilibrium: Either the system is skewed and unfair, or the winners played unfairly.
Or, you know, the system is fair and the winners won while the losers lost. But, again, a digression.
> As teachers, we were excited by these comments.
"Our indoctrination was working!"
> Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.
Their definition of equality. And there was no democracy involved in any of this. It was forced upon them from a small group of dictators (the teachers) and they were manipulated until they were indoctrinated to accept it.
That about sums up my objections.
What _you_ consider basic empathy is a political issue.
Which, of course, makes it easy to denounce anyone that disagrees with you as evil without any self-reflection or analysis.
I agree, that's unfortunate.
> Why should the children accept the student-teacher hierarchy? Are they old enough to question it?
This is an anti-intellectual anti-parenting garbage take. These are 8 year olds.
Except you already do when you support school curricula that preach the righteousness of Manifest Destiny, whitewash the civil rights movement, extol the virtues of capitalism, hierarchy, and "rugged individualism," etc etc etc.
Okay, after weeks of this, they all agreed that now everyone owns the legos together. Which is ironic given that they had power over their legos. Then the teachers took it away. Then the teachers gave it back. It sounds like the lesson here is to blindly accept hierarchical powers.
We have to take the teacher's version of events here. But as a parent, it seems equally likely the students learned how to be performative until the teachers were satisfied enough with what they heard to give them their toys back.
Your last sentence says a lot. It's sad to expect your children to performatively participate in community but return to selfish behavior when it no longer benefits them.
This wasn't one guided conversation - this was months of them. And the children were being recorded and their answers analyzed regularly.
Even if I accepted the diagnosis in the premise, I do not want to take their word about their own results.
Yes, complex topics often require prolonged discussion. "Conversation" can imply an active exchange over the course of time.
> And the children were being recorded and their answers analyzed regularly.
If you had read the article, you would know that the initial conversation was recorded so the teachers could take notes.
Taking notes and analyzing students' answers is literally part of the job description of a teacher. Teachers are not babysitters, they're educators.
The Legos were removed, a conversation occurred over several weeks, and the Legos were reintroduced when the conversation resolved.
Maybe that matters more in a message board discussion like this one than it does to the actual people involved. Then again, getting buy-in from adults is necessary if a new approach to teaching is going to be replicated on a large scale.
There are easier ways of teach kids how to share without not only depriving them of toys but making them feel utterly powerless over a random event and having the teachers unilaterally decide to take away the Lego. It wasn’t taken away from some particularly egregious event, it was an accident and the kids wanted to fix things but the teachers response was to show the kids had no agency or power in the decision at all. Way to show the kids what true power is!
These teachers, on the other hand, took it as an opportunity to teach socialism and collectivism.
---
For those that didn't read the article, here are the resulting rules:
- All 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.
I didn't read the whole thing. I read through the kids being jerks, then the the town was destroyed, then the teachers started running experiments on the kids.
That was the part that really got me. Teachers running unsanctioned experiments to emotionally provoke my children. That is unacceptable
The vitriol people are projecting on such a benign game really makes me think society would be served well if many of the commenters here had participated in similar games as children themselves.
I had also been in Norway that people call socialist but is actually quite capitalistic.
Most socialists have an idealization of what collectivism "should be". They compare "real capitalism"(an implementation of capitalism in reality) against an ideal socialism that have never existed and never will on the real world.
It is only in their minds. Don't tell them about Venezuela or Cuba, China or URSS because they were not the real thing of course.
But they don't admit that Capitalism could also be ideal and perfect.
If you want to compare it to communist autocracies, you'll need to at least tell us how they're at all related to each other.
No, it's about using lego to teach teaching kids about capitalism and power structures.
> Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom
> These children seemed to squirm at the implications of privilege, wealth, and power that “giving” holds. The children denied their power, framing it as benign and neutral, not something actively sought out and maintained. This early conversation helped us see more clearly the children’s contradictory thinking about power and authority, laying the groundwork for later exploration.
Seriously, count how many times the article mentions "power", and count how many times it mentions "share".
Why? What would that even tell me? Toy-hogging is one of the earliest and simplest examples of a power imbalance a kid will see. Teaching the kids about the power imbalance directly instead of just decreeing "you have to share" is outstanding teaching, and certainly much more effective. These are some lucky 8-year-olds.
And what does this have to do with communist autocracies?
Uh huh, it sounds like you agree with me now? The article isn't about sharing lego. It's about using lego to teach kids about society, power structures, and capitalism. The article lays the ideology motivation of these teachers bare, it isn't hiding anything. You don't need to read between the lines because the article is quite open about all of this. This article is not about "teaching children to share Lego toys" as you previously claimed. It's about "Exploring power, ownership, and equity in an early childhood classroom". That's what the article says the article is about.
I do agree with you, that's what the article is about! I also believe that it's a good thing to teach children about when they're young. Things make a lot more sense when you understand the structures of power that created them. I kinda wish I had figured it out a bit sooner than I did.
They're good lessons to teach kids. Do you disagree with that, or did I just misjudge what you were saying?
There was nothing in there about teaching kids about capitalism. It was about exploring the kid's understanding of ownership and power, which are far more fundental concepts that predate capitalism by thousands of years.
"...the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive."
Is is disheartening that any critique of power, class or ownership becomes synonymous with being anticapitalist. These seem like crucial topics to discuss if you want a well functioning capitalist society.
Even more of us believe that a small minority should not be allowed to hoard all resources for themselves while others have nothing.
Makes me wonder if this kind of hyperbole is just the natural outcome after decades of politics labeling all kinds of situations the "Next Nazi Germany" [0] or "Worse than Hitler" [1], often to justify foreign intervention.
Maybe Godwin's law actually predates the Internet.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-33603620080515
[1] https://apnews.com/article/c456d72625fba6c742d17f1699b18a16
Answer: It's your strawman.
Is the man with a sword a specific person? What are you talking about?
Communist regimes are known for the opacity and media suppression. It's not like they'll tell the whole world about it.
And contrary to what is believed, Cuba is not totally sealed off the world and still relies on capitalism to survive (cigar, rum and tourism), which mainly prevented it from going full North-Korea.
https://www.therichest.com/shocking/the-15-worst-atrocities-...
I don't believe that socialism and collectivism are suitable fixes to poverty or income disparity.
Put another way, I suspect we share values but disagree on policy.
"This policy proposal might be helpful. Is it? Let's see: The policy is socialist in nature + socialism killed millions in authoritarian communist regimes = this policy will kill millions. Therefore we must not allow the policy to succeed."
I can't imagine how they ignore the flaws. People do this, without exaggeration, unconditionally for every socialist policy.
> Therefore we must not allow the policy to succeed
Oh, but we do allow it to succeed. There are no laws against communes and worker collectives in the US. Any group can form one. And many have - thousands of them.
They all failed on their own.
You and your like-minded colleagues are welcome to give it a try. Nobody is going to try to stop you. You can ask Bernie to supply the funds (he's rich) and be your leader. I only ask that you come back in a year and tell us how it went.
You allowed the minimum wage to be increased? You allowed us to require companies to give maternity leave? You allowed us to expand SNAP benefits? If so, it's news to me.
You mean (ridiculously simplified) taking turns and sharing?
There’s nothing inherently different between these things.
I've seen socialists before using fixed pie economics in classrooms to extol the evils of free markets.
The Monopoly game was invented by a socialist to show how bad free markets are. Of course, it's a fixed pie game.
I agree that most things aren’t fixed pie. But some of the most important things in life are, and people who get lucky in that regard have a massive advantage.
We do it all the time:
1. multistory buildings
2. vertical farms
While we’re not fabricating land (yet), we are certainly manufacturing desire.
Nope. We use energy to transform valueless things into ever more valuable things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
I should also note that zoning laws and other regulations make the real world into a fixed pie game. And those are often completely apolitical, their only ideology being NIMBY.
according to the teachers. they are not a reliable unbiased source here. they are seeing everything through a marxist lens of exploitation.
but we don't have the kulak-kids' side of the story.
I didn't realize there was so much McCarthyist fear in the HN community. I wonder to what extent this is new, or if it has always been this way.
- The teachers were concocting some way to fix the lego problem.
- Their way to fix the problem was to exercise total, unrelenting control.
- Their total power was juxtaposed with their bewilderment about the lego problem (this bewilderment was somewhat reminiscent of the "what's a potato" dinner date story from reddit). Is this the first time the lego problem has come up??
Those three things gave me the feeling that, even beyond taking away the legos, something very unfair and very annoying was about to happen. This was confirmed when I got to the part about their twisted waste-of-time game. Do they think the kids learned anything? I actually recall having to play a similar classroom game. I remember being annoyed at the teacher for wasting my time. I hope those kids are part of some longitudinal study, because their recollection of the lego fiasco would be pure gold.
Then the kids had to do drawings about power instead of playing with legos!?
How can a person with any anti-authority sensibilities react positively to this article?
It has (at least for the last five years while I've been here) always been this way - there is a very wide spectrum of humanity represented here.
When a poll is voluntarily responded to, even if the poll is eligible to the entire population you want to poll, you'll end up with some pretty heavy biases - first off the middle is always underrepresented - people who don't have strong feelings on a topic won't bother taking the time to reply and people who aren't familiar with the topic at all will generally (generally there are obviously people who reject this) decline to respond out of shame. So then you're left with the group of supporters and opposers - it turns out that, as a general rule, you should expect an across the board negative bias on any polls: if I asked "Is vanilla ice cream the best ice cream?" I'll end up getting a much stronger response from the people who disagree compared to those that affirm - when it comes to our attention things we don't like naturally draw more of our attention so that accounts for a decent part of the bias... Additionally the status quo tends to be underrepresented because people who are comfortable with the way things are are less likely to view broadcasting that belief as important... in general underdogs fight a lot harder.
So, back to your point... when discussing anything on the internet, regardless of the forum, expect the responses to be unrepresentative of the population in general and instead be composed of a higher proportion of dissenters than actually exists.
That all said, I do think HN has a notable left-lean. I think technology in general tends to underrepresent strongly religious individuals (there are exceptions: see larry wall) and the tech centers tend to congregate around educational centers which tend to be more liberal than the country as a whole.
Lastly, HN prides itself on being (or aspires to be) a relatively politics free zone - so a large number of people will downvote comments just because they lean in either political discussion because they don't want the conversation to turn into a miniature scale representation of modern US politics.
So yes, you get a strong reaction when advocating free markets just like other people get strong reactions when advocating socialist policies.
I feel absolutely livid thinking that these people are out there to inject, indoctrinate and infect innocent minds of children with their disugsting view of the society.
Children grow up wonderfully around the world, some 7 billion of us are here. There is no way this type of indoctrination has any proven benefit besides perpetuating their biases.
SUPPORT STUDENTS TO RECLAIM THEIR MATHEMATICAL ANCESTRY
• Intentionally include mathematicians of color.
• Expose students to mathematicians of color, particularly women of color and queer mathematicians of color, both through historical examples and by inviting community guest speakers.
• Teach students of color about their mathematical legacy and ancestral connection and mastery of math.
• Honor and acknowledge the mathematical knowledge of students of color, even if it shows up unconventionally.
• Give rightful credit to the discovery of math concepts by mathematicians of color. Reclaim concepts attributed to white mathematicians that should be attributed to mathematicians of color.
Would love to hear opinions. If the idea is to encourage non-White kids to go into or connect with math, especially in districts with a large non-White student population, then great. But if the idea is that math curriculums today somehow teach kids that straight white men are superior, that's a bizarre implication.
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos/why-race-and-represe...
Maybe need to blame the BBC for the "Queens Latin"
What world do you live in?
All the adults had to do is get more Lego pieces so it didn't have to become a resource issue.
I'm thinking, what else are these adults going to be up to next? Have three picture books in the class, and when seventeen kids fight over them, take away picture books? And villify the ones who were seriously trying to learn to read for daring to think they should have preferred access to the books?
It's a school district in Seattle. How many teachers do you think 5x'ed their net worth with the appreciation of their property alone in the last decade? How many of them voted no against public housing being built near their property?
Private ownership doesn't look so bad anymore, does it!
Having them jump through hoops to appease the agenda of the teachers to eventually regain it back doesn’t change the fact the children know they have no agency ie power. The entire thing reeks of hypocrisy.
> "We’d audiotaped the discussion so that we’d be able to revisit it during our weekly teaching team meeting to tease out important themes and threads. The children’s thoughts, questions, and tensions would guide us as we planned our next steps."
is this what you're referring to?
they recorded one initial discussion so the teachers could collaborate and think more about the best way to resolve this conflict.
and honestly, it sounds like they taped it just because it was easier than having someone take meeting minutes. have you tried keeping up with 5-9 years-olds talking? it's exhausting.
A teacher hitting a child is bad not just because it's a violent crime, but also because children are especially vulnerable. They are smaller, weaker, and don't know what options are available to them. Hitting an adult is bad, but not as bad, because an adult is more capable of defending themselves and/or reacting appropriately to seek justice via other means (e.g. retreating and calling the police).
The teachers aren't physically abusing the children, but they are psychologically hurting the children by taking away their toys and forcing them to play the way the teachers want rather than the way the kids want. If the teachers think their politics are important, they should discuss politics with consenting adults, not prey upon children who won't really understand what's happening or what they can and should do about it.