Peter Bowden

I recently read the book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel H. Pink,  a great look at changes in our world that are pushing us toward a new right-brained (creative & relational) ruling class.  That’s right, long gone are the days when logic and rule governed knowledge workers could have their pick of cushy jobs.  India can take care of those positions for far less, and they have more honors students than America has students!  Now its the creatives who have the skills to dominate, and I think LEGO may be setting up all your sons for failure…

With that in mind, you have to watch the Youtube video series The Lego Boys Club — Lego and Gender. You may watch part 1 above and part 2 at end of post.

As  I watched  I couldn’t help but think that LEGO is reinforces play that under values everything we want and need our children to be in order to succeed.

Okay, pause here and watch the videos.  You can also click play and listen while you finish reading my post.

Two of the most important skills are

1. innovative thinking
2. empathy/relational skills

Watching The Lego Boys Club the play they are promoting appears to be

1. combative, violent
2. assembly of prescribed sets

Isn’t that the opposite of what we’re looking for?   I remember building with beautiful rainbow bricks that I could make anything out of.  Yes, they still have those, but try telling Junior he can’t have the super slick Star Wars sets.   I love Star Wars, but with these and  other sets  the children are focusing on combat and brick by brick following the blueprints for building specific buildings and vehicles that someone else designed.

Brick by brick building something someone else designed…

Did you read that

Brick by brick building something someone else designed…

Sure, its fun to play in that Universe, but its a Universe someone else imagined. And the sets are all mapped out.  Okay, sure you can mix and match and make other things, but when I tried to do that with a friends son, he was not happy that I deviated from the plan.  “You’re suppose to make a ______ with these.”

Your suppose to do this.
Your suppose to build that.
Do what you’re told young knowledge worker!

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love Lego building blocks.  And my 3 year old daughter does too!  But she builds with the raw building blocks, no sets.  If she wants to build a Star Wars battle cruiser she can, but she’s going to have to figure out how to do it from scratch.

I know that some day she’s going to want one of those over designed, follow the blueprint sets.  I’ll let her. But then I think I’ll buy several sets at once.  Maybe mix them up and file away the directions.  If she can figure out how to build what’s on the box from the pictures alone that’s fine.  Nothing wrong with mastering a little reverse engineering!

Here’s a fun promo for Curious George including some of the live action.  Each Curious George story is followed by an interstitial segment featuring kids modeling how viewers can engage with the same science, math and design engineering concepts as George did.

As someone working with communication, social media is becoming an increasingly important part of my work.  Every time I speak and mention Facebook there is almost always someone who declares they are never going on Facebook.  For these people I think I need to print out wallet cards with this infographic.  Okay, maybe too complex for a wallet card.  A poster?  If you want to engage with people, you need to know where they are.  Facebook!   Graphic Source: The Growth of Social Media: An Infographic. [...]