1.)Does anyone contest that?
2.)I love all those places that have disparity solved.
3.)Does anyone contest that?
If history and fables lend themselves to revealing these lessons through metaphor and tales of human struggle, the seeds for learning from them will be much more successful at growing than if the seeds are planted with a bludgeon.
It would be nice if my school didn't treat my child like a mindless robot to be programmed and instead provided context with content.
the kids who had control of the Lego had a set of rules. other kids didn't have a say. the Lego was taken away so it wouldn't distract from the discussion, and then all the children developed rules they were happy with.
Usually that's the goal of people that suggest this kind of treatment of children. It's usually backed up by a circular is-ought that the kids who are the victims in the bullying and faults are culpable and ought to become stronger if they wish to avoid that happening to them.
There has long been this subculture of actively encouraging bullying amongst children in order to "weed out the weak", and it's disgusting every time it's suggested.
What does weeding out the weak even mean here? Like they might identify the ones who aren't good at defending themselves, but then what? Are they planning on taking all the weak children out back and putting them down?
It's a flavour of social darwinism. The argument essentially goes that you encourage darwinian evolution of society where the weak are indeed weeded out, and that we should encourage people to "evolve" and become "strong".
In my experience it's usually a rationalisation by those who wished to do the thing already, but now even more than apathy, there's a moral obligation to bully people, which is quite appealing if you want to do those things.
maybe not. but children do experience power imbalances in their own lives, particularly when dealing with their peers. and it's valuable to learn how to identify them, and how to build better systems that benefit everybody.
>> We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded.
Please note that the situation was resolved by the teachers utilising their position of power to impose the change they wanted. They want democracy and egalitarianism but it turns out they needed authority to impose that.
Teachers are "authority figures" because their knowledge of education is recognized, accepted, and legally certified. Children ages 5-9 are not always capable of self-governance and sometimes need the guidance of an authority figure to resolve conflicts.
The "change they wanted" was for social harmony among students, and it was accomplished using rules that the children created and agreed upon.
The Legotown “leaders”/“builders” that the teachers disempowered were authority figures because their knowledge of Legos was recognized and accepted by the other children. There wasn’t much conflict (just submissive acceptance of the builder’s governance by the non-builders, and animated discussions on what to build together between the builders) until the teachers intentionally synthesized some with their Lego “game” in order to engrain their own preconceived biases (“critical judgments about people who have wealth and financial ease”) into the kids.
Very similar how communist revolutions happen. Inequalities are identified the people rise up and everything gets burned to the ground. All the old leaders removed and need inequalities spring from the ages.
so you're acknowledging that our current political/economic system has built-in inequities? that playing by the rules is not a virtue in and of itself, especially if the rules cause harm to others?
and if it has inequities, we should strive to eliminate them, yes? shouldn't someone who benefits from those inequities be obligated to help those who are harmed by them?
> But isn't this about the teachers intervening? How are kids to fight against the teachers?
The teachers intervened in the situation (essentially issued an injunction) while organizing a forum to mediate a solution.
Also, just to be clear, adults must be tyrants where children are concerned - you can't logically bargain with emotionally immature humans. Occasionally somebody is going to get sent to the car or a time out.
> adults must be tyrants where children are concerned - you can't logically bargain with emotionally immature humans. Occasionally somebody is going to get sent to the car or a time out.
Yes you're right. Perhaps my whole take is "it's not how i would have done it" & "is not the lessons I would be trying to teach."
As someone who had to punch upwards to climb out of poverty, I'm trying to think how a young me would take this lesson. I probably wouldn't even really get it, I probably wouldn't have been able to be in this class. But if I were..
I just find it conflicting. I'd be interested in seeing where the kids are now and/ where they came from.
> "We’d audiotaped the discussion so that we’d be able to revisit it during our weekly teaching team meeting to tease out important themes and threads. The children’s thoughts, questions, and tensions would guide us as we planned our next steps."
is this what you're referring to?
they recorded one initial discussion so the teachers could collaborate and think more about the best way to resolve this conflict.
and honestly, it sounds like they taped it just because it was easier than having someone take meeting minutes. have you tried keeping up with 5-9 years-olds talking? it's exhausting.
except... it isn't? that's literally not what socialism or collectivism is. socialism is just the idea that "wealth" (or any substitute, like lego) should be owned by the community, and rules that bind that community should be made by a consensus of the members.
"This policy proposal might be helpful. Is it? Let's see: The policy is socialist in nature + socialism killed millions in authoritarian communist regimes = this policy will kill millions. Therefore we must not allow the policy to succeed."
I can't imagine how they ignore the flaws. People do this, without exaggeration, unconditionally for every socialist policy.
Teaching kids a failed philosophy just sets them up for failure as adults. There's an infinite universe of things to teach - why not teach them something useful, something that works?
> Therefore we must not allow the policy to succeed
Oh, but we do allow it to succeed. There are no laws against communes and worker collectives in the US. Any group can form one. And many have - thousands of them.
They all failed on their own.
You and your like-minded colleagues are welcome to give it a try. Nobody is going to try to stop you. You can ask Bernie to supply the funds (he's rich) and be your leader. I only ask that you come back in a year and tell us how it went.
You allowed the minimum wage to be increased? You allowed us to require companies to give maternity leave? You allowed us to expand SNAP benefits? If so, it's news to me.
Good thing they weren't teaching the kids to grow food. Watch what happens when the kids have to work to acquire the goodies, instead of it just being handed to them.
Setting a Linux process to a "realtime" priority (using SCHED_FIFO, etc.) will put above all non-RT /userspace/ processes. But doing that still means that the kernel can preempt you, if it decides to.
While the kernel theoretically has the ability to preempt you, it's not supposed to when using a realtime priority thread. Per the RH realtime guide[[1]:
"""
SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR threads will run until one of the following events occurs:
- The thread goes to sleep or begins waiting for an event
- A higher-priority realtime thread becomes ready to run
If one of these events does not occur, the threads will run indefinitely on that processor, and lower-priority threads will not be given a chance to run. This can result in system service threads failing to run, and operations such as memory swapping and filesystem data flushing not occurring as expected.
"""
SCHED_DEADLINE, which is newer and not mentioned in the guide, can provide a bit stronger guarantees because it can fail if it thinks the requirements you set aren't actually obtainable based on other system load (including high priority kernel tasks that might need to run, etc).
- unfair power structures disproportionately harm those without power
- including everyone in decisions about the allocation resources is an effective way to solve disparity
- communities that form rules to govern themselves are more just and fair than communities where rules are formed by a minority