In economics, an externality is a secondary or unintended consequence. Pollution is the classic example. People build a factory that will employ many and up the area's tax base. Pollution from the factory or the traffic it will bring are externalities.
As a teacher of financial education, I ran into my first in-class externality the other day. To give kids a better feel for the weight of debt and how it can limit one's movements, I started giving out golf balls to kids who fell behind in "paying their bills", i.e., bringing in pieces of paper from the previous class. This time a handful of students deserved four golf balls. Those who had paid all their bills deserved zero golf balls.
The externalities immediately followed.
First, kids who received golf balls accepted them as gifts, not punishments. They bounced the balls, they rolled them, they had a grand old time with them.
Second, the kids who did not receive golf balls wondered why they were being punished. They wanted fun and bouncy golf balls to play with. I couldn't blame them.
Long story short, golf balls are out. I have nine days to come up with a more appropriate alternative.
The rest of the class was a hodgepodge of highs and lows. The kids did an excellent job of remembering the first two songs and dances we had come up with weeks before, but then struggled to get through this week's despite enjoying acting like Big Scary Number monsters. The lyric "crazy scary" especially eluded them. In the end they pulled it together for a spirited on-camera performance.
Parents will attend next class. This gives us an opportunity to show off what the kids have learned and to expose the parents to our version of the Marshmallow Test...the Cupcake Test.
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