http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=022107C

L'Eggo My Lego
By Maureen Martin : BIO| 28 Feb 2007


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" (http://www.rethinkingschools.org/img/archive/21_02/cover.jpg) 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."

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

So they first explored with the children the issue of ownership. 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. The teachers then explored with the students concepts of fairness, equity, power, and other issues over a period of several months.

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."

Given some recent history in Washington state with respect to private property protections, perhaps this should not come as a surprise. Municipal officials in Washington have long known how to condemn one person's private property and sell it to another for the "public use" of private economic development. Even prior to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, which sanctioned such a use of eminent domain, Washington state officials acting under their state constitution were already proceeding full speed ahead with such transactions.

Officials in Bremerton, for example, condemned a house where a widow had lived for 55 years so her property could be used for a car lot, according to the Institute for Justice. And Seattle successfully condemned nine properties and turned them over to a private developer for retail shops and hotel parking, IJ reports. Attempts to do the same thing in Vancouver (for mixed use development) and Lakewood (for an amusement park) failed for reasons unrelated to property confiscation issues.

The court's ruling in Kelo, however, whetted municipal condemnation appetites even further. The Institute for Justice reports 272 takings for private use are pending or threatened in the state as of last summer. It's unclear if Legos will be targeted. But given what's being taught in some schools, perhaps it's just a matter of time.


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I can't decide between or .

At a PRIVATE school? You'd think these idealistic teachers would work for Teach for America, and you know, work in an underserved public inner city school. Ironic to say the least.

My objective eye pretty much stopped paying attention to the article after I read that.

I'm sure the same teachers at that school condone people's private property being taken away so the government can sell it to retail developers who turn the space into parking lots. The article makes the teachers sound as if they are instructing a form of communism to their students, when really they're teaching them to be critical of established notions of culture and social relationships. So in other words, the teachers are doing their jobs. Although banning legos is ultimately and profoundly stupid. Perhaps more stupid than the piece posted in this thread. Website seems interesting though.

Here's one thing we agree with....eminent domain is bad.

Replace "teachers" with "government" and "children" with "citizens" in the article and what do you get?

I didn't think the piece was stupid, making a connection about how what teachers are teaching reflects changes in public attitudes about things like private property is interesting social commentary. The suggestion is not that the teachers support the government stealing from people to give to developers, the suggestion is that teaching kids not to respect private property rights creates a generation that is more tolerant of the government using eminent domain.

Oh hi!!!

This is an interesting article, although I'm skeptical about its criticism of Washington's use of eminent domain. The state constitution provides greater private property protection than does the 5th amendment of the federal constitution, and the Washington Supreme Court has been more restrictive in its interpretation of the requirement that private property taken be put to "public use" - essentially requiring that the use really be public, that the public interests require it and that property that was appropriated was necessary to effectuate that public use.

Compare to the US Supreme Court's broad interpretation of "public use" as meaning a "public purpose," which can include private economic redevelopment if a local legislature has determined it will serve the public interest.

Banning Legos is undoubtedly stupid, and if the article is accurate aside from what I pointed out above, it seems like the teachers were doing more to attempt to indoctrinate the students than to challenge their ideas surrounding property ownership (on this note, it would be nice to know how old these kids are) but I think there's a place for discussion relating to our current system of ownership. I think that discussion necessarily has to include a recognition that the federal constitution (and basic structure of our society) is founded on the notion of freedom of contract and private property and designed to protect those ideas, but there's no harm in injecting a little equity into private schools...

You think that what's explained above is equity? Things wouldn't be more one-sided even if Ayn Rand had opened up an Objectivist school for children.

Maybe I wasn't clear - like I said, if the article accurately portrays what was actually happening in the class, it is more indoctrination than discussion and clearly one-sided. My point was that it isn't altogether harmful to invite discussion that critiques the current system of property ownership, but that such a discussion necessarily has to include the recognition that our society is built around the notions of freedom of contract and private property rights.

I think what I meant by "injecting a little equity" was that sometimes these notions break down a little bit and require recourse to background principles of justice to correct particular circumstances/incidences of failure.

Consider the Supreme Court's Lochner-era line of cases and their absolute unwillingness to uphold any law that interfered with freedom of contract and its subsequent rejection of that rigid approach in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish - or even look at Justice Holmes' dissent in Lochner where he argues that "a constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory..." and contrast it with the idea that "wherever the right of private property exists, there must and will be inequalities of fortune... It is impossible to uphold freedom of contract and the right of private property without at the same time recognizing as legitimate those inequalities of fortune that are the necessary result of the exercise of those rights" from Coppage v. Kansas.

In light of these ideas, I think my idea was that a better discussion to be having would consider ideas like this and challenge students to consider what the appropriate balance between these ideas should be, whether it is even permissible to look for a balancing mechanism beyond the market and why it is or isn't permissible... maybe.