In which we become acquainted with one aspect of the classroom culture in the younger Free-Ride offspring’s second grade.
Younger offspring: In my class, we earn ten play cents for coming to school on time, and I earned sixty play cents for bringing back those signed forms, and for bringing in my emergency card, and for bringing all my school supplies.
Dr. Free-Ride: You get paid a bonus just for being on time?
Younger offspring: It’s not real money.
Elder offspring: So what do you do with it? What can you use it for?
Younger offspring: Once a week, there’s a classroom store, and you can spend your play money to buy something from the store … a big eraser, a bouncy ball, cards, maybe even a book.
Dr. Free-Ride: In other words, they’re turning you into good little capitalists.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Actually, into good little consumers. To turn them into good little capitalists, there would need to be some mechanism for creating new classroom wealth.
Dr. Free-Ride: By exploiting the labors of one’s classmates, no doubt.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: They’re just making the system of rewards for good behavior more explicit. Last year, they had the marble jar … but I guess that was for the class collectively, rather than an individual reward.
Younger offspring: When the marble jar was full, the whole class got the reward, like a pizza party.
Dr. Free-Ride: Yeah, the classroom store seems more geared to buying something you want.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Can you buy something together with classmates?
Younger offspring: Huh?
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: If three of you are interested in a book, but none of you has enough classroom money to buy it, could the three of you put your classroom money together to share it?
Younger offspring: I don’t know.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s actually a good question. You know, back and college, LO and I were co-owners of a T-shirt.
Elder offspring: Was it big enough for both of you to wear it at the same time?
Dr. Free-Ride: No, we took turns with it. It was a $12 T-shirt, and we both like it, but neither of us had $12, so we each paid $6. I wonder if you’re allowed to do that with the big ticket items in the classroom store, or if joint ownership is forbidden.
Younger offspring: Also, if you do something bad, you lose some of the play money from your bank, and if there’s no money left in your bank, you have to stand on the red X.
Elder offspring: What about if you spend your money at the classroom store?
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s a good question. If you have an empty bank just from buying something at the classroom store, rather than from misbehaving, do you have to stand on the red X?
Younger offspring: I don’t know. I think I’ll ask about that tomorrow.
Dr. Free-Ride: That would be like a classroom rule against vagrancy. If we find you without any money in your pocket, you’ll be punished.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Hmm, does that make sense? If you lose your last classroom dime on misbehavior, you’re not just being charged a dime, but you’re also doing your time on the red X. So once your bank is empty, you couldn’t pay the fine as well as doing the time in the event of misbehavior. But maybe you weren’t going to misbehave …
Dr. Free-Ride: This may come down to whether the classroom is being run more like a government or a checking account.
Elder offspring: So it’s ten cents every time you misbehave?
Younger offspring: I think.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmm. I wonder if any of your classmates would rather spend their classroom currency on misbehavior than on bouncy balls or books. I mean, if you have seventy classroom cents, you could buy six violations of the rules and still not drain your bank.
Younger offspring: I wouldn’t spend my money that way.
Dr. Free-Ride: I didn’t say you would, but it seems like you could if you were in a mood to be bad.
Younger offspring: But then I might not have any money left if I misbehaved in music class, and then I might have to stand on the red X.
Dr. Free-Ride: Why would you want to misbehave in music?
Younger offspring: I don’t want to misbehave in music, but what if it happened anyway?
Dr. Free-Ride: So your classroom bank is like an insurance policy.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: What is this classroom money like?
Younger offspring: It looks like dimes, only it’s plastic, so you can tell they’re not real dimes.
Dr. Free-Ride: Hmmm … presumably your teacher didn’t mint these plastic coins herself. If she bought them somewhere –
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: Someone might buy the same kind of play money and introduce counterfeit classroom money into the system.
Younger offspring: But she marked all the plastic coins with green to show that they’re classroom money from our class.
Dr. Free-Ride: A security device!
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: That makes it harder for counterfeiters, but not impossible.
Dr. Free-Ride: Speaking of security, where are these banks kept?
Younger offspring: We each keep our bank way back in a corner of our desk so no one can see it.
Elder offspring: And your classmates are never alone in the classroom where they’d have the opportunity to steal someone else’s money?
Younger offspring: I don’t think so.
Dr. Free-Ride: Does your teacher maintain any kind of written records of who has earned how much money and who has been charged money at the store or for misbehaving?
Younger offspring: I don’t know.
Dr. Free-Ride: I wonder if there could be any kind of student-to-student commerce with this classroom money.
Elder offspring: I’ll give you ten cents for a pencil. Or forty cents to be my best friend.
Dr. Free-Ride: Or fifty cents to copy your homework.
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half: And suddenly the classroom workforce includes hired goons.
Dr. Free-Ride: In some classrooms, you might have to pay for your handouts or your turn at the board. That would be an excellent set up to study the history of unfair labor practices.
Younger offspring: I’m going to ask my teacher about whether you have to stand on the red X if you spend all your money at the classroom store, but not about this other stuff.
Dr. Free-Ride: That’s probably a good idea at this point in the school year. It’s a little early to have to explain that, for any given system, your parents will look for the ways it might break.
Nice conversation
You’ve got a great blog with interesting articles 
best regards.