That said, the ultimate lesson they implanted in these kids is flawed.
I'm sure they'd be thrilled if these kids ultimately grow up and demand society be like the utopia they constructed in their after-school program. But the whole thing stems on there being a finite amount of resources. In the classroom, sure, there is a bucket of bricks – and that's all there is. But in the real world wealth isn't a finite resource.†
The brick game is based on this flawed thinking: According to the game, different colored bricks are worth different amounts, and the luck of your initial draw determines how you rank. The kids are told they can trade (I guess to make it seem more like capitalism?), but that's stupid because there's nothing to gain by trading – who's gonna accept a 2pt brick for a 3pt one?
So the kids are supposed to take away that wealth gets randomly, unfairly distributed, and the only way to make things right is to force the undeserving to share their bricks.
But in real life you aren't stuck trying to trade your money for money: you can attempt to trade wealth – wealth you can create. So a kid could offer back scratches for 1pt bricks. Or agree to carry all of Liam's green bricks for a couple interest bricks. Suddenly you're not limited by your initial draw.
And I think that's a very important lesson that these kids didn't get.
The article says these kids are upper-middle class, so it may not matter as much, but imagine that these were poor kids. Here they've been taught that they can only reach a certain random level of success, and to get any higher will require resources be taken from some undeserving, rich bastard – which, hey, some politician will make happen once in a while – but otherwise your efforts to succeed are futile.
What a hopeless lesson.