Why We Banned Legos

I have to be completely honest.  When we received this assignment and were told we could choose any chapter we wanted, even a short one, I had ever intention of choosing the shortest chapter I could find.  As fate would have it, in my search for the absolute shortest chapter I found the chapter entitled, Why We Banned Legos.  As the mother of two small boys and an elementary teacher, Legos are a big part of my daily life.  In fact, My entire dining room table is covered with what we call Duplo Village.  Legos have provided hours of family enjoyment and activities and work very well as a break or a reward in my classroom. Reading the title of this chapter I could not imagine what could have transpired that lead to Legos being ban, but I needed to find out.  Before I read the chapter I thought surely this Lego banning people must be insane.  I was in the mindset of stereotyping and gender bias from our class discussion today and my mind whirled with ideas of how Legos could be guilty of either of these two things.

As I began reading and learning about the setting in which the Legos were banned, my mind immediately jumped to the conclusion that this was an adult issue.  Clearly these adults just needed to structure the Lego activities and provide clear rules for play.  They were allowing this situation to get out of hand.  I had already began to construct my blog in my head.  I would tell all of the scenarios where I have scene Legos be used creatively and successfully with groups of children.  I would make suggestions about how the adults could have structured the activities more successfully to allow equal access to the materials. Then I would go to sleep!

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending how you look at it, I am not yet asleep.  The Lego City issue was something so much bigger than a simple management issue.  The children were mirroring a "class based capitalist society" in their play.  A few leaders were in charge and other children were being excluded.  Special pieces were being hoarded and some children were building giant buildings, while others only had a meager amount of blocks to work with.  The teachers in this program worked for months to not only solve the Lego City problem, but to return legos back to the classroom it a way that was fair to all children.  My hat goes off to these dedicated, insightful and inspiring educators that took an opportunity to teach children about equality instead of simply managing the play by imposing adult rules.


The authors concluded the chapter by stating:
"We believe that educators have a responsibility to pay close attention to the themes, theories and values children use to anchor their play.  Then we can interact with those world views, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy."