RCOB moment

Kerry Howley linked to this TCS Daily article which gave me my first RCOB moment of the week:

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."

You know what the saving grace is? The school is private. That means that the parents of the kids being indoctrinated are — or at least should be — fully aware of the politico-economic orientation of the teaching staff. It's also located in Seattle, which is rapidly gaining pole position in the race to be the champion of eminent domain proceedings.

In a way, the most heartening thing in the article was this passage:

Not all of the students shared the teachers' anathema to private property ownership. "If I buy it, I own it," one child is quoted saying.

You tell 'em, kid! Of course, you're now subject to full-time re-education camp for the rest of your childhood, but I admire your spunk.