It wouldn't help, just change the number of pieces involved in the conflicts. Speaking from experience, you can never have so many Legos that you don't want more.
Of course, we weren't keeping builds around forever either. That's the real trick I think. Lego should be for ephemeral builds (for some reason, kids usually understand this better than adults.) At the end of the day/week/month, take whatever you built and drop it back into the bucket. If you have enough lego for X kids to build things that last Y days, you'll never run out.
But I'd agree that probably doesn't work if you have a bunch of kids trying to play with the same set. It has to be very clear that everyone is borrowing the Legos, and anything that survives the day's session needs some consent from everyone.
>>Carl: “We didn’t ‘give’ the pieces, we found and shared them.”
Lukas: “It’s like giving to charity.”
Carl: “I don’t agree with using words like ‘gave.’ Because when someone wants to move in, we find them a platform and bricks and we build them a house and find them windows and a door.”
These children seemed to squirm at the implications of privilege, wealth, and power that “giving” holds. The children denied their power, framing it as benign and neutral, not something actively sought out and maintained. This early conversation helped us see more clearly the children’s contradictory thinking about power and authority, laying the groundwork for later exploration.<<
This is twisting language to trap, like a debate. Something a child is not prepared for. They have neither the understanding of the power structure nor the conversation they've enganged in. They've been punished for crimes they don't fully comprehend and lost the chance to learn engineering, team play and concession, while the teachers have missed out on a very teachable moment because, "We saw the decimation of Lego-town as an opportunity to launch a critical evaluation of Legotown and the inequities of private ownership and hierarchical authority on which it was founded" - but, in truth, it was an exercise in laziness.
These people talk about singling out done by children when in this very same article they have singled out two children making "assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based, capitalist society — a society that we teachers believe to be unjust and oppressive". That is a lot to lay at the feet of children over the misappropriation of Legos.
Do you not think this all could have been headed off before the banning of Legos with the same discussion tactics that happened post ban, post tantrum and pre-blog railing against the woes of a capitalist society as seen through the perversions of a small child?
It sounds like your real complaint is you don't agree with the lesson they taught, or maybe even just the language they used to describe it. If so you should say that, not pretend they didn't try.
I'm saying they used negative reinforcement as a knee-jerk reaction and then, as an afterthought, brought back the Legos instead of having a discussion first and taking action second. They learned that action and punishment comes first and the discussion and concession is an afterthought, a problem all too prevalent in modern society.