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!