Education Revolution

Can Money Buy Education?

March 5, 2010 at 1:49 pm | Posted in AERO, Education News | Leave a Comment
Tags: AERO, Higher Education, Home Education, Homeschooling, Shannon Hayes, Unschooling, Yes!, Yes! Magazine

By Shannon Hayes

Courtesy of YES! Magazine

Radical homemaker Shannon Hayes taught her daughter that their family doesn’t buy things they can make or grow at home. She then had to wonder: Does that include higher education?

This past November, I began a home school unit with my six-year-old daughter, Saoirse, on money. We opened our investigation by reading stories on the history of money. To paraphrase, early people originally made the things they needed. Then they began trading for the things they needed or wanted that they couldn’t make. The barter system worked out fine, as long as each party in the exchange had something that the other wanted. When that was no longer the case, money entered the marketplace as a tool to facilitate exchange. Eventually, in an effort to devise something that was relatively portable and of somewhat universal value, the Sumerians came up with the first silver coins.

From Ancient Sumerians to Modern Sustainability

Saoirse and I traveled around our home and farm and explored the different things we do to earn money, and the different things we spend it on. When it came to the spending, I explained the basic process that my husband Bob and I adhere to. When we are in a store and see something we think we want or need, the first, most important question we must ask ourselves is, “Is this something we can make or grow ourselves?” To illustrate, we talked about the grocery store. “Would we buy meat in a grocery store?”

“No,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“Because we grow it ourselves.” I smiled at the aptitude of my brilliant scholar.

Confident she was understanding, I continued my lesson. “If we decide that this is something we can’t make ourselves, then we must next ask three questions. One: Is it good for the planet? Two:Is it good for my community? Three: Is it important to me?” In an effort to keep things as simple as possible, I told her that typically, if you can answer “yes” to at least two out of the three questions, then you proceed to the final question: Can I afford it?

Read the entire article at http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/shannon-hayes/can-money-buy-education