From: Phil Osborn (philosborn2001@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat May 18 2002 - 16:12:04 MDT
>Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)wrote
on Thu May 16 2002 - 21:11:51 MDT
On Thursday, May 16, 2002 10:13 PM Phil Osborn
philosborn2001@yahoo.com
wrote:
>> Jeez! A three-year-old should already be reading
>> fluently, not just speaking...
And working too! The free loaders!:)
Dan >
At the Montessori School I helped start, we introduced
a school monetary system - on the cookie standard.
The traditional Montessori school expects the kids to
do various jobs around the school - wiping the tables
after eating, sweeping the floors - as part of the
learning process - part of the "practical life
exercises" which also includes food preparations,
shoestring tieing, buttoning clothes, etc. In fact,
the Montessori director is not supposed to double as
janitor. This is part of the kids' responsibility to
maintain the environment.
When we introduced the monetary system, we also
started accepting bids on all the various school jobs,
and the kids were quite enthusiastic about the
process. A further refinement came with regard to
dispute resolution. The traditional Montessori
approach is to council kids who get into a dispute or
fight and remove kids who are causing a disruption
temporarily - a "time out," holding them in ones lap
if necessary. We felt that this was simply a failure
to fully extend the Montessori Environment for
Discovery into the social arena.
Thus, instead of the directors acting as police to
impose "justice," we began letting the kids do paid
arbitration on their disputes. Kids who had a good
rep as an arbitrar could make decent money.
Shortly before I move to the West Coast, at one of my
last visits to the school, I was unwinding swings that
someone had thrown around a swing set. I warned a
six-year-old girl to keep back, as it would hurt a lot
if she was hit by one of the swings. She informed me
that it would hurt me a lot more, when I had to pay
her restitution.
On a related note, I've suggested before that if we
were to update the practices common in traditional
societies - where the children are expected to care
for the parents in old age - to a modern economic
framework, then child-rearing in general would benefit
enormously. I'm talking about the idea of forming a
trust in each newborn child. This trust could be
disowned by the child later, but doing so could be
expensive, as it would be the public record of the
trust that would determine its share value, and a
person who disowned such a vehicle would find it hard
to get loans or credit.
The parents could claim a portion of shares - or be
granted them by the child at maturity - which would be
the financial payback for all the investment they made
in the kid. If they did a good job, then the share
value would generally reflect that. Other people
around the world could also invest in the child -
typically thru child-oriented mutual funds, I expect.
Kids of exceptional potential would get the education
optimized to their abilities regardless of where they
were born, or their parents income level.
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