Lego, School, and the Box

I spent some time this afternoon reading Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School For? (available here).  At Section 51 Godin points out that Lego recently had to transform itself; the aisles of Lego no longer feature big buckets of bricks in need of imagination (they weren't selling) - rather, they feature predefined kits which, when built, will each look the same; no imagination required.

In this way each child will create the same thing in the same way as every other child.  There will be no risk that they will look silly or get it wrong... and if they do, it can easily be corrected back to the mainstream.  Sounds a lot like school doesn't it?

What is the real mission in your school?  Is it that each child should act the same way and learn the same thing?

This loss of imagination is not Lego's fault.  Lego is not broken... rather, it is the children who have been broken.  We've put them into boxes we call classrooms and given them the same information at the same time and allowed them to move only with the bells that move the herd from one box (or cell) to another for more of the same treatment. After years of being inside these boxes we then expect these same children turned young adults to think outside of the box...

My finger recently spent eight weeks immobilized.  In that time it lost its ability to move independently.  Eight weeks to ruin a finger and it will take twice that long to fix it.  It makes me wonder what twelve years of sitting in a box will do to your child?  By what magic will he then be able to move beyond that proverbial box?