How does your vision of education in 2010 address anticipated wealth transfers in the information based economy? Frankly, I hadn’t considered wealth transfer as an relevant topic before I read the following.
The next 50 years will bring the greatest transfer of wealth in history, experts say. At least $41 trillion will pass to the next generation by 2044, estimates Paul Schervish, director of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College.
According to CWP, the increase of personal affluence and wealth has put before increasing numbers of people the opportunity to decide something substantial: whether and how they wish to move from an emphasis on the quantity of their wants to the quality of their needs
Carey Goldberg recently offered a journalistic review of research about how wealth affects people’s well-being.
Boston College Professor/Chairperson of Sociology Juliet Schor reminds us that children are also being harmed by the pursuit of wealth. In her book, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture, Schor shares her extensive research findings and critique of metropolitan Boston schoolchildren living in a materialistic world.
Probably, like research about smoking, most of us will say after considering such data, yes we should balance consumerism with something else in schools. With what else, moralisms, self-respect lectures, budgeting?
I suggest we consider giving priority in schools to showing students how to act as entrepreneurs and how to build something rather than to rely on someone else to provide it so they can buy it. Show them how to use their Tablets, UMPCs and other advanced technology devices to design products and services. In this way, teachers help transfer a wealth that resides in personal skills not just bank accounts and income streams. Would such a position by educators in a world economy assist or harm students in 2010?