*Editor's note: Although this event originally occurred in 2015, we find it still pertains to kindergarten education today, as evidenced in Liberty Nation's articles here and here, remains subject to left-leaning political indoctrination. The reason we highlight this story now is that the school in question has recently been nominated for a National Blue Ribbon Award.
Kindergarten boys in Washington state are not allowed to play with LEGOs, at least in Ms. Karen Keller’s classroom. The progressive teacher at Captain Johnston Blakely Elementary on Bainbridge Island got the bright idea that girls were not given a fair opportunity to learn how to build and decided the best way to go about offering them the chance was to forbid the activity to the boys.
According to Keller, the children have a 40-minute time slot known as “free choice” where they are allowed to play with whatever toys they’d like. She said the boys gravitate to LEGOs while the girls seek out dolls and crayons.
Keller at first tried to encourage the girl students by purchasing pink LEGOs, but that didn’t work. The girls still sought out their favorite toys and seemed to have no interest in playing with the building blocks. So, the crafty teacher decided to form an all-girls LEGO club where the boys were not allowed to play with their favorite toys. And to make matters worse, the caring teacher who is so interested in protecting and promoting good, healthy interaction and growth with her students, openly admitted she lied to the boys:
“I always tell the boys, ‘You’re going to have a turn’ — and I’m like, ‘Yeah, when hell freezes over’ in my head,” she said. “I tell them, ‘You’ll have a turn’ because I don’t want them to feel bad.”
Keller’s reasoning is certainly flawed. Not only did she elevate one gender over the other, she corrupted free-choice time, practically forcing girls to play with toys they didn’t necessarily care about while forbidding the boys their favorite past-time.
“I had to do the ‘girls only Lego club’ to boost it more,” she explained. “Boys get ongoing practice and girls are shut out of those activities, which just kills me. Until girls get it into their system that building is cool, building is ‘what I want to do’ — I want to protect that.”
What will be next on her agenda? Will she ban girls from dolls because it might represent something so horrible as raising a family? Force boys to play with dolls for the same reason? Apparently, Keller doesn’t understand what free choice is all about. Instead of taking away their privileges during the free time, why not make it a classroom project where boys and girls participate together?
Keller even went so far as to obtain a Classroom Enrichment Grant for LEGO Education Community Starter Kits for three classrooms. She petitioned for the grant saying; “while it’s not necessary to board up the playhouse and adopt the babies out, concrete steps can be taken to ameliorate the gender gap in the kindergarten and present engaging ways to develop girls’ spatial skills.”
What the teacher didn’t mention was that she would forbid the boys to participate.
Let me leave you with one more quote from Keller that shows just how idiotic her plans are for her young, impressionable students: "I just feel like we are still so far behind in promoting gender equity," Keller said.
Is it equity when you forbid one gender from participating just because you want the girls to become builders? Is it equity when you force your students during “free choice” to play with toys they have no interest in? Is it fair our school systems allow these discriminative practices to continue against our children?
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