This was an afterschool program. Presumably, the kids had been in school all day already. Can't they just play? Does everything have to be some overly directed lesson?

I know of so many young children who are not allowed to have an unexamined moment in their lives. The parents have no idea how to back off and trust their children just to be children. It is smothering and exhausting. Hey, teachers (parents), leave them kids alone!

The teachers were reacting to possessive behavior of Legos--hardly survival skills that these children need to have. I'm sure they'll learn from everywhere else how to keep that up.

Teachers can't teach about religion because of the separation of church and state. Slippery slope.

Is this really pushing a utopian ideal of sharing? I don't know; I think they are taught to share a lot in kindergarten too, but we don't witch-hunt those teachers or accuse them of 'utopian ideals'.

Are these teachers forcing these children to always share? No, hardly indoctrination. I say you could say the same thing about teachers telling children they can be anything they want to be is also indoctrination. Should teachers tell students that because they're poor, female, non-white, or disabled they will not have the same luxuries that abled rich white men will have? Because if they don't, then they're not telling these kids 'what exists in the outside world.'--to use your logic.

By the way, if you want to make a really persuasive argument, try spell checking your writing. It gives your argument that extra special something.

...realistic. If teachers all taught their desires instead of real life, kids would come out of schools with alot of hopes and dreams but not many survival skills. Why is it OK for these two teachers to idealize society the way they want it, but teachers with religious opinions on our origins and purpose cannot do the same? Just as I don't want teachers pushing creationism, I don't want them pushing the idea of a utopia that will not happen in the childrens' lifetime. Reality may not be pretty, but kids still need to know what exists outside their sheltered bubbles. A teachers job is to educate, not endoctrinate.

we won't be a capitalist country forever. Nobody has ever been anything, much less capitalist, forever (see History volumes 1-1000).

These teachers, as educators, are trying to educate a different way of thinking in the world about ownership. Brava to them.

Look historically--how has the U.S. ever changed? Blacks and women, more or less, are now considered full human beings with, again more or less, equal rights. That wasn't always the case. It changed because people changed their ways of thinking about these groups.

I agree that building a homeless shelter will help alleviate the immediate and dire effects of capitalism, but if we dedicate all of our efforts to cleaning up its mess and never fix the problem in the first place, we'll, we're doomed to cleaning up mess for the rest of our lives.

I'm glad to see these teachers don't share your fatalistic views on our current state of being in the world.

As much as the teachers in this story obviously hate it, we are a capitalist country and likely will be forever. They are doing a disservice to their students by packing up this realistically stratified microcosm and pretending it just doesn't exist. Instead of making the businesses with power vanish overnight (good luck getting Wal-Mart to do that) the teachers would have done better to participate in the construction by adding a homeless shelter and foodbank. Then they could explain to the kids the reasons places like these are needed in a capitalist society, and convey their ideas on social/economic inequality that way. Desiring and working for change in America's power structure is a noble endeavor, but we do not have the luxury of wiping our communities clean every time the power-hungry take the lead. We have to deal with them as they stand, and our children need to be taught that early and often.

I admit it is a clever lesson after reading their article. But I want to know if the kids put into practice the new ideas of ownership with the Legos once they were brought back. I mean, what was successful and what wasn't? What do they think caused success and/or failure?

I think theories on how to change the world are a dime a dozen, so unless you have some evidence about what is and isn't successful, the Lego experiment is incomplete.

(And per Broadsheet's title--there wouldn't be any "lords" of Legotown since they're critiquing capitalism, not feudalism. I think the correct term would be "bourgeoisie". And, dare I say, if you're asking the question about who owns the Lego means of production, well, their article makes it quite clear that the teachers do. Doh!)

What the hell is wrong with those kids? My brother and I used to build toilets out of Legos. The toilets actually flushed. We would use one of the smallest Legos for the turd.

True story.

(My brother is now 24 and building a 5 foot by 7 foot mosaic of Marilyn Monroe out of--you guessed it--Legos. Last I'd heard, he'd got as far as the boobs.)

The adults need to butt out! If they must make everything into a lesson, then they could have seen kids learning to negotiate, defend themselves, work cooperatively, handle "defeat," etc. OMG, can't kids play anymore? Meddling adults are depriving kids of the chance to learn to navigate in the world. Nothing wrong with keeping an eye on the bullies and the ones who have social difficulties, but it is ridiculous to micromanage their play in this manner. They are hurting, not helping these kids.

Here's a lesson we all must learn: life's not fair. How much better to learn it incrementally, starting with the small things that happen in an ordinary childhood. What happens when these kids get to college and no is there to make sure their egos aren't bruised and no one is mean to them? What happens when they get a job and all the boss cares about is whether they showed up on time and did a good job?

When adults micromanage these things, they are really giving the children the message that the adults think they are incompetent and unable to handle their own world. It is a deeply negative perspoective.