I suddenly remembered this, and because didn't know where to post this, I thought this subreddit might be suitable.
When I was in grade 4 in the early 2000s, my homeroom teacher did something amazing to boost the participation rate of the entire class. He would invent his own in-class currency by printing and cutting colored paper into money sized paper bills in increments of $1000, and would hand them out when either someone answered a question in class, or if they did their homework.
This money can then be used in one of two ways:
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He had a massive collection of toys, comic books and other trinkets lying about in one of the corners of the classroom from decades of teaching in the same room. Every Friday afternoon he would host a one hour auction session where the class would bid on these toys.
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In addition, because Thursdays would dismiss the schools early, he would allow students to setup shops after school every other Thursday, and hone our entrepreneurial skills by selling just about anything, whether it be our own old toys / trinkets, cupcakes / donuts, or whatever other classmates were willing to purchase.
These paper bills changed the dynamic of the class quite dramatically. From the very start of the school year, nearly every single student would raise their hand when he asked any questions in class. Likewise, he would also assign bonus questions on top of our homework for some bonus paper money. As one can imagine, the diligence level of the class in regards to homework shot right through the roof.
While this concept is nothing new, my grade 4 teacher took it to a whole new level with what he's about to do: roughly around November when everyone in the class was starting to get bored of the money system, he would introduce the concept of inflation by printing $5000 bills. This effectively made the previous currency worth 5 times less, and prices in the auctions would soon reflect this change. All of a sudden, the richest kids in the class had to work hard again just to be able to catch up.
Eventually, the teacher would introduce $10,000 bills, followed by $50,000 , $100,000, $250,000 , and finally ending at $1,000,000 bills. After a while he would stop printing the money altogether and introduce the concept of fractional reserve banking by opening a bank to store this paper cash. Whenever anyone withdrew or stored money, the transaction would be written on a public ledger chained to the classroom to prevent tampering. The money itself would be stored inside a locked cabinet located beside the teacher's desk. However, all this craziness is still not quite the end.
Eventually, some of the students were able to accumulate hundreds of millions of the in-class currency from selling delicious cupcakes every other Thursday. When the student tried to withdraw all of their money, all of a sudden there was a run on the bank. The reserve simply did not have enough money to hand it all out at once! The teacher then made the announcement that the bank would be defaulting, and whatever money was on all of the students' accounts were all swiftly wiped clean. The money experiment ended shortly after, but because this happened in the very last month of classes in June, we left feeling positive coming out of the experiment.
I personally think that my grade 4 homeroom teacher was a genius for coming up with this classroom currency to not only boost participation, but also introduce 10 year old kids to complex economic ideas like inflation, fractional reserve banking, and banks defaulting from too many people withdrawing all at once, almost like he was preparing us for future economic crashes like the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis or the 2020 COVID lockdowns. Unfortunately, I was one of the last groups to be taught by him, and he retired two years after, but I will always fondly remember of my time in his classroom. If I had to describe which grade was the greatest schoolyear of my entire life, this post would be my explanation.
5/5
Submitted June 23, 2021 at 01:12PM by terryx4 https://ift.tt/3qp7VZI
