Schools & Social Engineering
MichaelW on Mar 06 2007 at 3:59 am | Filed under: Culture, Economics, Education, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page, social science
Podcast Follow-Up:
One of the articles that I mentioned in the podcast (which, looking back on it, was only tangentially related to the topic at hand, and only in the kindest sense of the term “tangential”) involved the Hilltop Children’s Center in Seattle. When discussing how the education industry had over-dosed on boosting kids’ self-esteem, I was reminded of the blatantly anti-capitalist and anti-property social experiment conducted at Hilltop over a bunch of Legos. Maureen Martin described the ordeal at TCS Daily (HT: Ilya Somin):
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” 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.”
To be fair, the Legos were “community property” to begin with, but a simple rule concerning sharing should have sufficed if some of the kids felt like they weren’t getting a chance to participate. Instead, the teachers decided to instill the values of socialism into playtime, actively seeking to dissuade them from accepting the underlying basis of the free world — i.e. property rights. By teaching these children that to “own” something is to “oppress” others, and that property is no more than a primal urge to exercise “social power,” these teachers have done their charges a great disservice. The children who were persuaded by this socialist claptrap will likely forego myriad opportunities to contribute to the world until they realize that pursuing their own dreams and visions, and profitting from it, not only makes the world a better place, it encourages others to do so as well.
Of course, the lesson that the Hilltop educators sought to teach may backfire, as Ilya Somin noted:
However, as a property professor I should point out that the teachers’ experiment in common property legos may have some educational value, though not the kind that the teachers intended. Giving Legos to a large group of children without allowing any kind of private ownership rights is a great way to demonstrate the dangers of what we law and economics types call the tragedy of the commons.
If kids are not allowed to “hoard” Lego pieces, it is unlikely that an impressive-looking Lego town can be built in the first place. If there is no right to exclude of the kind decried by the teachers, any Lego town that does get built is likely to be quickly destroyed by other children looking for Lego pieces to use for their own projects. Avoiding tragedies of the commons is one of the main reasons why private property is an essential social institution, and the Seattle teachers have, however unintentionally, stumbled on a new way to teach children about it.
For those of you interested, the full article by the teachers can be read here. I encourage you all to read it in its entirety.
I think the reason this sort of nonsense irritates me so much is that I really bought into it when I was growing up. It wasn’t so much that I was taught such “lessons” directly as it was the generally pervasive idea that pursuing riches of any kind was considered “being greedy” and that having more than someone else made one selfish. Whether it was in school, or on TV, or in song lyrics, or in every movie made at the time, this was all common wisdom when I was a kid. These were sins of the worst kind, and anyone who was impervious to their accompanying shame was considered to be insensitive.
Needless to say, those guys always seemed to have a way with the ladies. But, I digress.
For my own part, it wasn’t until I was well out of college and actually trying to make my way in the world that I realized how much nonsense I had been fed. I saw lots of other people working hard, making lots of money, doing things I could only dream of, and still being kind and generous with both their time and hard-earned lucre. By the time I finally convinced myself that, not only was it okay to want the finer things in life, there was nothing wrong with actively pursuing them, a good number of valuable earning years had passed me by. And while I don’t regret the things that I’ve done with my life, nor how I chose to spend my time during my neo-hippie years, it pains me to see kids today being whole-heartedly fed the BS I swallowed when I was their age.
I can’t help but think that if those children were taught just how kind and generous they could really be if they worked hard and earned a good living for themselves, that we’d live in a much happier, less divisive society. A utopian dream? Surely. But it sure seems worth trying for if you ask me.
Technorati Tags: Hilltop Children’s Center, socialism, capitalism, property rights, Ilya Somin, freedom
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The View From the Bluff: Lance’s Economic and Finance Blog
I now see the Phish connection, I should have known;^)
Heh.
Actually, as far concerts went, I was always more into the Allman Bros. and alternative rock (e.g. Widespread Panic, Radiators, Bles Traveller, et al.). I liked going to Dead/Phish shows for the circus atmosphere, as opposed to the music. They were fun shows though
Yeah, plead that case all you want, we choose to believe otherwise. I am the Greenwald of alt music snobbery.