This Week: Money Problems

The economy may be beginning to bounce back this week. At least, that’s the spin this news cycle. Whatever your family has talked together about during this economic crisis, it continues to be a great opportunity to discuss financial wisdom and foolishness with your kids.

In addition to looking for natural opportunities to share from your own experience, understanding, and insight about the financial issues in play today, we’re encouraging parents this week to consider the ancient wisdom of Solomon about money as he expressed in Ecclesiastes 5. Consider reading that chapter as preparation for talking through the questions below.

Scripture identifies Solomon as the wisest and perhaps wealthiest man who has ever lived. Surprisingly, he was highly cynical about money. He saw money as fickle, limited, and ultimately disappointing. He urged his readers to develop the ability to enjoy what they had rather than making acquisition the point of life.

We’d love to hear if any of the following questions provoke some honest and productive conversations with your kids…

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We haven’t read the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, so we can’t really recommend it. But I was fascinated by this case study cited in the book in terms of it’s implications for training our kids in the arts and in life.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

There might never be a better time in their lives for your kids to try and fail and try again than when they’re in middle school and high school. Lots of hard-learned wisdom comes out of failed attempts. Help your students to get past the idea of being perfect students or artists or athletes. Encourage them to push beyond what they can safely do well to get some experience in falling short, sizing up mistakes, and trying again with a new strategy or approach.

(HT: Kottke.org)