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Wealth

Jim Jaeger

A scenario that I posed to my classes: As agrarian areas developed into city-states a single ruler might control a large region of towns and cities and in the process becoming wealthy.

In the 21st century, extravagant displays of wealth remain a means to show great affluence. Is it possible that this will be frowned upon and change in the near future.  If so, why?

We had a few interesting ideas on our end.  Any thoughts from the community at large?

  • This is an intriguing idea.  Another angle might be -- assuming you had great wealth and your wanted the world to know -- what would you purchase/do to convey to the general public, without words, that you have a great deal of wealth?  How would the people from the various societies. we have studied answer that question?  This might be a fun way to explore the way priorities change in different cultural settings.

  • in reply to Denise Ford

     This is a fantastic idea!  I have students mostly from Arizona, but some are from out of state and even out of country. It can be tough to get them all to the same lesson based on time zones, but it would be a fascinating discussion to hear their answers to your prompt!

  • This is really interesting, Jim! Did you pose this question in a class discussion or did your students conduct a bit of research to answer the question. I can totally envision this question working for a lesson where students do research on a particular civilization, where wealth was a big factor. Then, students can answer the question using their opinions, while also supporting their thinking with some evidence. Can even bring some current events into this activity as well. 

  • Interesting question that hits some major themes going on in the world today. It's a good question because it can fit as a HOOK to activate learning at the start of a lesson, or you can use it as a larger assignment depending on what your goal was or where you wanted the students to kind of head to, with as other teachers said, research or an end product. 

  • in reply to Adriane Musacchio

     I used this as a hook at the start of a lesson. I wish that we would have had the time to connect this to a larger study as you posed.  It was more of a one-off.