Why We Banned Legos

Why We Banned Legos, by Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin, explains the process an after school center went through in order to encourage its students to be critical thinkers about society; specifically the social power of ownership.  A group of students were building a Lego community at this after school program and the teachers noticed it was becoming an unintended way the children were playing the part of a capitalist society with "special" features and rules regarding who could use certain blocks in the set.  The pieces that were more highly sought after were  going to the houses in Legotown with the big ticket features, such as the airplane landing strip.  The teachers were concerned and one day, tragedy struck for the children when Legotown was unintentionally destroyed by a church group one weekend.  The teachers decided they would bring Lego town back in a more democratic way, where resources were  shared, and students worked collectively and collaboratively on structures within the town, rather than building their own structure and trying to build the biggest and the best in the town. Their hope was to help students develop a contrasting  set of values to the ones that previously existed in  Legotown so that all children in the class, even those on "the fringe" had access to the legos in the same way as those who were on the inside track.

The planning was inspired by schools in Italy where teachers "offer a provocation and listen carefully to the children's responses" described here.  Teachers then use responses to develop the next provocation or to challenge or expand the current beliefs.  They viewed children as political beings who shape their views based upon what they see and experience in their daily lives, so they took the legos out of the classroom and  posed the question..

"How  might  we create a community of fairness about Legos?"

Through discussions that dissected the power and communication that existed in the previous Legotown.  They talked with the children about equity and equality, explored power and discussed what power looks like.  They posed questions such as:

• Does fairness mean that everyone has the same number of pieces?
• What about special rights: Who might deserve extra resources, and how are those extra resources allotted?
• What do you think power means?
• What does power look like?

Through the work of exploring power, what it looks like, and the effects  it can have, the students developed a set of rules for the new Legotown.  This new set of rules took into account what they had learned about peoples' perspectives and experiences and how those things shape the rules they make.  The children also learned that rules should and can be questioned when they do not work for everyone, but that this needs to be done in a respectful and productive way.  

"Children absorb political, social and economic worldviews from an early age.  Those worldviews show up in their play, which  is the terrain that young children use to make meaning about their world and to test and solidify their understandings" (Pelo & Pelojoaquin, 62).