-By Warner Todd Huston
Any number of examples can be found these days to illustrate the poor or destructive education received by our children in the United States today. All across the country our children are being slighted by Teacher’s Unions and organizations who don’t wish to teach but wish to indoctrinate our children with their brand of political activism. From the whitewashing and PCing of our history textbooks to the failed “new” concepts in teaching being so regrettably foisted upon our little ones as an “education,” the examples are legion and can be found with ease. That activism is almost universally in the socialist or communist mode of thinking, one antithetical to the whole of the American experience. It is a mode of thinking designed to destroy the things that make America great.
No better example can be found than that out of the Hilltop Children’s Center of Seattle, Washington, where recently an experiment in communism was imposed upon the innocent children who were unfortunate enough to have had their unthinking parents force them to attend.*
In the face of a perfect example of the natural inclinations of man acted out by the children at this Seattle indoctrination center, the “teachers” there decided that their class room offered the perfect opportunity to, in their words, “launch a critical evaluation of … the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded.”
In other words, these teachers decided that the truly human characteristics exhibited by their students, those characteristics upon which our Founding Fathers based the greatest political experiment in liberty and freedom known to man, needed to be crushed, and that their children needed to have their humanity wiped clean in favor of a new, “collectivist” way of thinking. These so-called teachers’ goal was not one of happenstance, but one of purposeful indoctrination in communist thinking. The kind of thinking responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of people in the 20th century — millions in the 20th and still counting into the 21st.
That seems like quite a harsh statement, doesn’t it? Step back from the preceding paragraphs and consider precisely what I have said here. I have just said that teachers and teacher’s organizations throughout this country are actively trying to destroy it by indoctrinating our children in destructive ideologies right under our very noses.
Is this an over statement? Am I lapsing into hyperbole?
Let me grant that not all teachers or even every organization to which they belong have this deceptive and self-destructive goal, to be sure. But it is not an overstatement to say that too many truly do. And it is certainly not hyperbole to say that the Hilltop Center is one of them.
Perhaps you’ve heard of an Internet phenomenon called “Goodwin’s law”? It is a trope that states that whenever comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis are thrown out during a heated discussion, the discussion is invalidated or advanced to the point where no one is any longer listening and name-calling has taken over the conversation. Usually it is the resort of people who are not informed about the subject, or generally are too stupid to intelligently argue further. It’s a visceral, emotional response the “Nazis” standing in for the worst thing that can be imagined to call someone else.
Most of the time this is the resort of half informed Leftists with a rather low-grade intelligence. Too often it isn’t a last resort but a first. Folks on the right, however, rarely resort to the Hitler folly because sensible conservatives know that such an extreme example is not very descriptive, after all. As a stand in for the Nazis for the right, however, sometimes… maybe too often… socialism and/or communism becomes the tar that is liberally brushed upon the opponent.
Am I resorting to this myself here? Am I falling into the conservative’s version of “Goodwin’s law”?
You be the judge by the example of this Seattle daycare school.
What prompted these extremist teachers to launch their experiment in communist indoctrination was the popular toy the Lego. Lego building blocks have entertained generations of children since their introduction in 1955 and would seem to be an unlikely tool for indoctrination but that is precisely what these teachers did with them. Instead of using the Lego itself as a tool, however, the way these people used the toy was by taking them away from their children.
The Hilltop Center owned many thousands of the blocks that the children used to create a sprawling Lego city. As the children built, however, the natural inclination of property rights, the idea that labor deserved reward, and a certain representation of “class” began to cause the children to lapse into ideas of “ownership and the social power it conveys.” Obviously, as far as these anti-American teachers are concerned, these are bad concepts for children to “learn.” They “became increasingly concerned” over the natural, human reactions they observed.
Of course, “learning” these concepts is not what was going on because such concepts are inherent to the human mind. The concept of the ownership of one’s labor could not be a more natural reaction. The kids were being normal, sensible humans.
This was a no-no, apparently.
Under the ever watchful eye of the teaching staff the issue for the children became one of what to do as the supply of unused Legos began to dwindle, who controlled the flow of them and who should be “allowed” to play with or interact with those structures already built?
A group of about eight children conceived and launched Legotown. Other children were eager to join the project, but as the city grew — and space and raw materials became more precious — the builders began excluding other children.
Occasionally, Legotown leaders explicitly rebuffed children, telling them that they couldn’t play. Typically the exclusion was more subtle, growing from a climate in which Legotown was seen as the turf of particular kids. The other children didn’t complain much about this; when asked about Legos, they’d often comment vaguely that they just weren’t interested in playing with Legos anymore. As they closed doors to other children, the Legotown builders turned their attention to complex negotiations among themselves about what sorts of structures to build, whether these ought to be primarily privately owned or collectively used, and how “cool pieces” would be distributed and protected. These negotiations gave rise to heated conflict and to insightful conversation. Into their coffee shops and houses, the children were building their assumptions about ownership and the social power it conveys — assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive. As we watched the children build, we became increasingly concerned.
The careless destruction of this Lego town by children not a member of this indoctrination center (the “school” resided in a church and other kids ruined the Legotown) then offered these teachers their opportunity to launch their program of re-education and a re-engineering of their subjects’ humanity.
We met as a teaching staff later that day. 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. Our intention was to promote a contrasting set of values: collectivity, collaboration, resource-sharing, and full democratic participation. We knew that the examination would have the most impact if it was based in engaged exploration and reflection rather than in lots of talking. We didn’t want simply to step in as teachers with a new set of rules about how the children could use Legos, exchanging one set of authoritarian rules with another. Ann suggested removing the Legos from the classroom. This bold decision would demonstrate our discomfort with the issues we saw at play in Legotown. And it posed a challenge to the children: How might we create a “community of fairness” about Legos?
This paragraph alone demonstrates so many ill-conceived things. From the inability of these “teachers” to understand human nature, the capitalist society and Americanism to the very fact that they do not even have the slightest clue about children themselves. Children are not just “little adults” who are able to logically discuss esoteric ideas and learn from that experience. They haven’t the experiences or knowledge upon which to base any such consideration of highly philosophical ideals.
To justify their “experiment” they explained their taking away of the toys and acknowledged that they were, indeed, teaching a political idea to the poor youngsters.
We also discussed our beliefs about our role as teachers in raising political issues with young children. We recognized that children are political beings, actively shaping their social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity — whether we interceded or not. We agreed that we want to take part in shaping the children’s understandings from a perspective of social justice. So we decided to take the Legos out of the classroom.
Politics as removed from nature, the prime mistake that all socialists and communists make, a mistake that will always, in the end, turn their compassionate ideas into totalitarian oppression.
This brainwashing experiment apparently went on for months as these overbearing indoctrinators pummeled these poor children with thinking antithetical to their nature. Discussions of “equal distribution of resources,” and “fairness” rang throughout the school over and over.
As the intellectual pogrom continued, these teachers proved over and over again their hatred for capitalism and human nature and their utter inability to understand the very concepts they sought to summarily remove from their students’ unformed minds.
To build on [a student’s ideas about] the pleasure and unease that comes with wielding power, and to highlight the experience of those who are excluded from power, we designed a Lego trading game with built-in inequities. We developed a point system for Legos, then skewed the system so that it would be quite hard to get lots of points. And we established just one rule: Get as many points as possible. The person with the most points would create the rules for the rest of the game. Our intention was to create a situation in which a few children would receive unearned power from sheer good luck in choosing Lego bricks with high point values, and then would wield that power with their peers.
Absurdly, this “game” was formed on the assumption that all capitalism was inherently based on unfair and random “in-equities” and “unearned power.” These people are teaching their children that all rich people are inherently evil, unfair, selfish, and have gained “unearned power.”
Marx couldn’t have said it better himself.
Worse, they were teaching their children that “success” or winning the game (a stand in for being rich) could be had by no work whatsoever, that just the luck of the draw created the wealth, not hard work. This “game” was based on pure lies about wealth, resources, creation, property ownership and human nature.
To disabuse you of the thought that I am still engaging in hyperbole, let these faux teachers explain their ideas in their own words.
To make sense of the sting of this disenfranchisement, most of the children cast Liam and Kyla as “mean,” trying to “make people feel bad.” They were unable or unwilling to see that the rules of the game — which mirrored the rules of our capitalist meritocracy — were a setup for winning and losing. Playing by the rules led to a few folks winning big and most folks falling further and further behind. The game created a classic case of cognitive disequilibrium: Either the system is skewed and unfair, or the winners played unfairly. To resolve this by deciding that the system is unfair would call everything into question; young children are committed to rules and rule-making as a way to organize a community, and it is wildly unsettling to acknowledge that rules can have built-in inequities. So most of the children resolved their disequilibrium by clinging to the belief that the winners were ruthless — despite clear evidence of Liam and Kyla’s compassionate generosity.
The main goal? to teach that the capitalist system is evil and that no one can get ahead fairly.
But, the reality is that people become rich not because they are “mean” and “unfair” but because they have offered some service to their fellow humans that few others can offer and people come to them specifically for that thing, whatever it may be, that is offered. As an example, I cannot make a new plow, so I have to buy one to furrow my fields. To get a plow, I exchange my grain to the plow maker for his product. He cannot eat without my grain, yet I cannot make my grain without his plow. We work together for the betterment of both. Neither the farmer nor the plow maker is “mean” or “selfish” in their interactions and both work toward a better life. In microcosm, this is the heart of capitalism.
One wonders how quickly these “teachers” would stop to coming to their classrooms should the evil rich parents who unwittingly deposit their children in this camp would suddenly stop paying the tuition for the privilege of the indoctrination?
My guess is that the concept of “free labor” of which they are so fond would immediately evaporate should they be presented with an opportunity to experience such.
After eviscerating the basic truths that capitalism is based upon, they turned their Marxist eyes toward undermining private property rights.
We added another thread to our investigation of power, as well, by turning our attention to issues related to ownership. In Legotown, the builders “owned” sections of Legotown and protected them fiercely from encroachment. We were curious to explore with the children their beliefs about how ownership happens: How does a person come to own something? How is ownership maintained or transferred? Are there situations in which ownership ought to be challenged or denied? What are the distinctions between private and public ownership?
What good hater of capitalism would be worth his salt if he didn’t also want to destroy private property ownership, eh?
The “lesson” they taught was that “collectivity” is a good thing. That no one should own anything. And that no one should be allowed to have anything that is better or bigger than anyone else. These lessons were taught as if these “evils” outweigh the efficacy of capitalism, liberty, freedom, and democracy themselves.
After their children dutifully displayed and reflected the teacher’s mandates, the staff returned the Legos to the classroom with the assumption that a good deed was done and that these children will toddle off into the world as good little Marxists. Big authority prevailed, the individual crushed by its weight.
But all the wrong lessons were taught with the false, artificial rules that under girded the lessons and, unfortunately, these kids will find themselves unprepared for life in the real world because of it. These were lessons that if the parents of the children at this indoctrination clinic had followed, they could never have afforded to live in the “upper-middle class” neighborhood in which this “school” is situated.
Not one of these ridiculous exercises was based on real world experiences or real human truths. Not once were the ideas of what induces people to labor ever considered. Not once was the very human element of sloth brought into a discussion. No one even considered where the Legos themselves came from or how they were brought into the classroom in the first place.
Why should a person receive no reward for his labor? Why have societies built upon the idea that labor should be freely given for no reward always collapsed… always, not once in a while? In fact, why should anyone toil for no reward as others merely take and offer nothing in return? A situation like this is bound to occur in human interaction based on such ideals, it has been proven over an over again that it will. Why was this concept not brought up?
And, why did these people not consider what has to be done to a society to enforce the idea of total equality? Because the only way to achieve total equality is to round down to the lowest denominator, total equality of man displaces the need to achieve. Once achievement is eliminated as a human goal, desire or characteristic decay will ensue. And, as governments attempt to enforce this total equality, achievement must be quashed to prevent the possibility that someone, somewhere might “get” more than their neighbors. Suppression begins and murder results as humans strive to obviate the oppression of their nature.
But, no leftist ever sees the ultimate end of their “collectivity.” they constantly deny the evidence of the billions their ideas have murdered in the arrogant imaginings that they are, indeed, smarter than any human who has ever lived. Their arrogance is the cause of the biggest crimes against humanity.
Sadly, these lessons have, in essence, laid the groundwork for these kids to fail in life, hate their parents for the success they earned, and undermine the very basis of this country.
And this is what our children are being taught, not just in Seattle, but all across the country. The question is what are we going to do about it?
*This story is found on the rethinkingschools.org website. An organization described as “Founded in 1986 by activist teachers, Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit, independent publisher of educational materials. We advocate the reform of elementary and secondary education, with a strong emphasis on issues of equity and social justice.”
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston