Comment by gabesullice
18 days ago
The article's argument is that experience is a better teacher than a person with a curriculum and a chalkboard, which I agree with, but the proposed solution: "so, let's just give them experience!" is a shallow proposition—I doubt anyone knows how to start 4 million small businesses per year, with meaningful revenue, using a workforce that hasn't (yet) graduated high school.
Experience is hard (if not impossible) to scale. And it could easily backfire: imagine the scenario where the experience is miserable and results in failure. What if the students' lesson learned is "why bother trying?"
The most effective way we have to scale experience is through simulation. And we know how to provide that pseudo-experience to young kids without a lot of investment: story telling.
Maybe we should scour the globe for compelling stories that teach lessons about delayed gratification, the value of saving, and self-confidence vs. vanity in terms of spending money, so that we could start telling them to students at an early age.
I have kids, there's no need for simulation. We have Roblox.
Which has been a surprisingly useful [1]real-world/low-stakes financial literacy course for them.
- They have been scammed.
- They have blown money on stupid useless stuff and cried with regret.
- They've applied for jobs (seriously, there was an application process and interview).
- They've made hundreds if not thousands of decisions balancing entertainment, commerce, utility, and budgeting.
It's all of the true feel-it-in-your-bones financial literacy that the article advocates for being delivered to them in the guise of blocky figures and them playing with friends.
1 - You buy Robux (the in-game currency) with real money, and for years, it's been the number one thing they've asked for as a gift.
Unfortunately you run the risk of your children learning "financial literacy" of the form "scamming people is lucrative, and gambling is fun and zero-consequence because it's all funny money anyway".
I mean I cut my teeth on RuneScape and it was the same kind of deal. I learned that cow hides rose in value as you bring them closer to the crafting centres and that middlemen who want to do it for you can take a generous cut for themselves.
I still don't understand how the Robux stuff is legal.
That sounds like RuneScape for me as a kid. I got scammed, made money, made friends, had pathetic swipes at romance etc.
What are the downsides to Roblox in your experience? It feels like crack cocaine for kids
Read the Hindenburg article about Roblox
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Financial video games, where the player never sees "finance!" in any of the media marketing of the serious educational product sold as a toy. Seriously, the "rules" of finance pale in complexity when compared to how much intricacy and never-actually-pointless complexity put into simulation games. I expect there are already finance/stock/economic simulation games of a serious nature; make and promote watered down versions and market them in cooperation with serious money paid to the people that actually successfully sell pop culture game software. Yes, a hard sell, I know, I came from those industries, but it can be done.
Isn't Eve Online essentially that.
Starting a newbro corp with a bunch of unemployed high schoolers and decent taxes would make a great lesson on why you want to run a corporation and not be an employee.
I don't play, but from discussions with an addicted buddy, sure sounds like they do serious finance and economic projections as a part of their play strategies. He was in the middle of that event a few years ago where some huge amount of Eve Online players had some giant battle, and the amount of game money destroyed made the mainstream news.
The article also references a low capital required list of business ideas for high school children. No one is arguing for million dollar projects. The argument is for hundred/thousand dollar projects.
When I was at primary school - specifically, around year 5 when I was about 9 - our class did a "small businesses" unit. We had to create business plans including a marketing plan, and yes a financial plan. What were we doing, how much were the inputs, how much are the outputs, how much time, what do we make per hour?
We did it in groups although some did it individually. One group did a carwash that also made you a coffee while you waited. My team was three of us and we put on a school disco (actually two, senior and junior). We had to organise lighting, music, equipment. We had to sell tickets. It was so profitable it paid for the entire school camp for our whole class, and the next year's too.
I don't know how much we actually learnt and I am sure our parents helped but I doubt it was entirely ineffectual. Probably more useful than many of the other activities we did.
Point being: there is no reason kids can't experiment with business as children, whether it is a lemonade stand, a carwash or a school disco.
I also have to point out for the record that if ever there was a win for capitalism over top down social planning, it was that the disco organised mainly by three 9 year olds was not only by far the most popular and enjoyable social event of my entire time at school (including high school) but it was also as far as I know the most profitable.
When I was in elementary school, the class ran a business making and selling box kites. It was part fundraiser, part economics, part engineering.
We took orders, budgeted materials, then built the kites out of straw, string, and paper over the course a quarter. Something like this [1].
I thought it was a really valuable introduction to econ and business for a group of 10 year olds. I remember calculating how long it would take to fulfill remaining orders, and if I could could make my own kite business and undercut the class price as a private business.
https://www.instructables.com/Tetrahedral-Kite-1/
> using a workforce that hasn't (yet) graduated high school.
Later, in court:
- Your Honor, honestly, I thought "small" businesses could only use child labor.