Ayn Rand School for Tots
Posted by Moonage on 29 Mar 2007 | Tagged as: Idiot of the day, Political Correctness
The guys over at Volokh have had repeated guffaws over the Lego incident in Seattle. During their most recent guffaw, they referred to it as a bizarro Ayn Rand School for Tots. Now, that was a parody of an incredibly complex mind dealing with small children on a cartoon. The problem here is this is real life. They offer a defense and explanation of their choice of action on their website. It reads just like the Volokh peeps describe, it is surreal:
"I’m making an airport and landing strip for my guy’s house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.
"That’s not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."
"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it’s fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it’s for public use."
Discussions like the one above led to children collaborating on a massive series of Lego structures we named Legotown. Children dug through hefty-sized bins of Legos, sought "cool pieces," and bartered and exchanged until they established a collection of homes, shops, public facilities, and community meeting places. We carefully protected Legotown from errant balls and jump ropes, and watched it grow day by day…..
Carl: "We didn’t €˜give’ the pieces, we found and shared them."
Lukas: "It’s like giving to charity."
Carl: "I don’t agree with using words like €˜gave.’ Because when someone wants to move in, we find them a platform and bricks and we build them a house and find them windows and a door."
Now, before I get too carried away with this, how many FIVE year olds talk like that? I mean, really? If those children are worried about using the proper words at age FIVE, those teachers need to let the children play individually with the Legos and worry a lot less about political correctness. Secondly, the lesson learned here in my opinion is not one of unity, it’s one of unless you fake it, you lose it. If they had simply pandered to the teachers’ wishes, they would have gotten all the Legos they wanted. Instead, by making logical discussion and arguments on why they should have particular Legos, they lost them all. And, the ones not getting the Legos in the "game" learned that all they have to do if someone is doing better than you is complain a lot and they’ll end up with exactly what you have, nothing. So, in this example, all the children are losers. If they don’t learn to fight for what they want, they always will be. And, if the only examples they get are that there is no such thing as winning, they always will be losers.
Which is exactly what those teachers are.
Volokh was wrong to a certain degree, this isn’t something LIKE bizarro Ayn Rand School for Tots, this IS the Ayn Rand School for Tots. The thing about The Simpsons is most all of their content is based on something real. They just don’t go out of their way to explain what it was. In this case, now we know.
Going to do a quickie update as The Onion attacked a similar story making today’s headlines:
One comment particularly caught my eye:
"What a relief that it’s the day care and not my violent alcoholic rages that’s causing my child to misbehave."
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