PROPERTY IS THEFT. Pierre Proudhon goes to daycare.

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."

They claimed as their role shaping the children's "social and political understandings of ownership and economic equity ... from a perspective of social justice."

Acting as change agents, the teachers decreed that all future Lego projects shall be khrushchobas.

Legos returned to the classroom after the children agreed to several guiding
principles framed by the teachers, including that "All structures are public
structures" and "All structures will be standard sizes." The teachers quote the
children:

"A house is good because it is a community house."

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes."

"It's important to have the same amount of power as other people over your building."

The irony, dear reader, is that the school in question is a private school, in which the teachers' lessons are property of the teachers, and definitely not standard lessons. Pity the kids: if they take this stuff to heart, they're at risk of being excessively earnest at 15, or of being potential converts to the libertarian position, or potential drafters of restrictive covenants and snob zoning codes.