Money looms large in the thinking of children themselves, but not in educational programs.
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Children and money. A timeless theme for educators and parents. In the Soviet Union, at best, a heavy 20-kopeck coin hung in a child’s pocket. That is, money and children, in fact, did not exist. And the thing was: on TV, in the newspapers, they argued and broke spears (and then the 90s came, and children began to wash cars at crossroads, and no one said a word). Today, of course, everything is different, and the children have money. How much – but who has how. If the parents are rich, it can be ten thousand. If the child is “smart in life” and squeezes a penny out of his peers, too. But even in children’s provinces a thousand rubles is not such an exorbitant amount. And it turns out that there is money, but it is not particularly talked about. Has the problem been resolved? Is everything clear to everyone? Or did they all just give up on the problem?
This is a special discussion topic. And today we ask our now regular 16-year-old author Nikita, a ninth grader, to reflect on this. They, the adolescents themselves, how do they see this issue? What is money to them?
– They don’t really talk about money anymore. I mean mentors and educators. I do not know why. If we have capitalism, it would be good to talk to children about how to earn money, how to manage it. If we do not have capitalism in its purest form, it is even more important to give children a concept of what money is, how to live with it and manage it. But there is none of that. Money looms large in the thoughts of children themselves, but not in educational programs.
Perhaps no one knows what to say, in fact, and how to say it. It’s not a question, I’ll give you a hint. Try playing a game with teenagers – you have a huge amount, how do you get rid of it? Teenagers themselves have such conversations with each other. what i noticed If a person has an iPhone that is not the latest model, he will buy a latest model iPhone. If a person in the family has a car, he will buy a car for himself. Fantasy, of course, at the level of “what I see, I fantasize.” Nobody will buy, for example, an airplane. Because no one has a plane in front of their eyes. And no one even asks the question: well, you bought an iPhone of the latest model, so you still have millions and millions left, so what? And no one will think in the first place, for example, about charity, about good deeds. Even in this context: to do something that would benefit you and others. For example, open a restaurant where ordinary people eat for money, and the poor eat for free. That is a social business. And for me this is a mystery, because there are such businesses, we see them, but they are not, so to speak, a children’s dream. Not interested? Bored? Don’t children see powerful and respectable people who organize such businesses? May be.
But with us from time to time they talk about what is the highest value. But I cannot convey in what form it is transmitted to us. It seems that there is not a single image of higher value. The highest value is something like this. Massive and important. You can’t miss school. You have to study well. Mom can’t express herself. That is the highest value.
At the same time, the children themselves think very seriously about the highest values, because, well, it’s interesting, and I can’t even begin to convey what kind of conversations are going on. Many children yearn for the USSR, which they have not seen, and say that everything was fine there with the highest values. I think that the USSR made some things clear, for example, films with understandable thoughts, songs, including Viktor Tsoi, who is not losing popularity, and this is an understandable set of symbols that is alive, although the USSR itself has long been . gone. If there is understandable and incomprehensible, you will prefer to capture the understandable.
It seems to me that the highest value is the activity that a person appreciates the most and puts in the first place in his life. From this it is clear that for each person the highest value is different things. It can be family, work, hobbies, money or leisure. It is different for each person. And here you will learn one interesting thing, if you ask me, what about money? After all, a lot of people love money, right? So can money be the highest value?
I have many friends at school who say that money cannot be the highest value in our time. They say that the greatest value is perhaps starting a family, getting an education, etc. “After all, money is not the most important thing in life” – this can be heard quite often. And here, of course, a heated discussion begins.
After all, everything costs money and you have to pay for everything. Suppose a person likes to travel, he is obsessed with this dream. You need money to travel, right? Yes! And when such conversations come up, I always jump in and start trolling: trips for what kind of shisha? If money is rubbish for you, but you want to see other countries… just compare these two ideas and answer how they fit in your head.
And then, of course, put where the money comes from at the center of the conversation, that is, talk about the profession, about choosing the path of the future. And then it turns out that, perhaps, traveling is the highest value (although, in itself, shlendran through countries, hotels and airports, probably, cannot be the highest value), but for the sake of this value more high, it needs to have another value, money, the more turns out to be the higher. And to have money you need a profession, a business, and it turns out that a profession and a business are the highest value. However, it is not always possible to draw this line clearly in a dispute. Especially to convince someone.
It seems to me that the main running gag here is this: things can’t have the highest value when you just need to spend. Unfortunately, if you suddenly hear teenagers talk about family as the highest value, you shouldn’t be flattered, because in the coordinate system of youth this is also about “spending”. We are talking about a new apartment, a country house, a beautiful car and other things, but not about a “family” as such. Because it is difficult to expect adolescents to have the same vision of the family as adults. So, teenagers want to spend money, they vaguely understand where to get it from, and this is the highest value.
All this is quite sad, and exactly what I already wrote about: children do not know who they want to become, respectively, they do not think about it, they are practically not told, which means that their ideas about life are the most primitive. People just say that they want money, people who have read several books say that “money is not the main thing” and refer to the ideals of the USSR that they are unaware of, but in reality they also want to spend the money that comes out of nowhere. . . When school is over (for many after the 9th grade, that is, already), these questions will go from theory to practice, and then the real fun will begin.
FROM THE PUBLISHER. Not everything in these arguments is exactly verified, much is naive, but it seemed to us that there is a correct idea. In the USSR, children were taught to give these conditional 20 kopecks, because everything was fine with professional guidance and several years separated the child from tens and hundreds of rubles. Construction equipment. seasonal harvest. You never know. And 50 or a hundred rubles at 16-18 years old – this is already a huge amount. Where to go to work, there was no problem. Required here yes required there. We will teach everyone. A singles hostel is provided. I don’t even want to compare that with the current situation. Today, only the criminal world can offer a teenager quick money. Yes, offices require young and creative people, but surely with work experience that is nowhere to be found. Some factories suffer without staff and even try to train workers, but it turns out where it is. In short, the country needs a clear and understandable career guidance system. And from it the highest values u200bu200bwill appear by themselves.
