By Julie

Last night I finished reading Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping, a chronological series of essays on consumer culture, globalization, and their environmental costs, coupled with the author's personal challenge of not buying anything beyond the necessities for an entire year. I didn't necessarily agree with everything she said in her analyses, but I found her personal journey inspirational. While archiving our blog entries from last year, I came across an entry in which I asked whether it was possible to live within a culture without totally buying into it. I feel like this book is helping me answer that question, at least for myself.


Monday I attended the first awards assembly of the year at Alex's school. This one was just for the Kindergarteners, 1st graders, and 2nd graders. Each teacher picked a handful of students from his/her class, and as the child went up, the teacher would explain which one of three reasons they were receiving the award: high academic achievement, most improvement, or good citizenship.

When Alex went up, his teacher said that she chose him for his award not only because he's a good student, but also because he's always helping classmates when they're working in the computer lab. I was really proud of him. (But I didn't cry!!!)

The assembly also included a presentation about the philanthropic project everyone at Alex's school is undertaking for the next few months -- collecting pennies to help a tiny school in Kenya build a library. I've always wondered about the six degrees aspects of these projects, and this time I wasn't left hanging. Apparently, the son of the school's founder works for our school district!

I appreciate these projects because while I agree parents should have primary responsibility for teaching their kids about morality, kids do spend an awful lot of time at school, and I like the tone they set for how the kids should behave towards each other. I also like the emphasis on pennies vs. checks with lots of zeros because it makes kids feel like no good deed is too small.


That night, Ana took on the herculean task of picking all of the pennies out of Kevin's change bucket. She managed to fill up that entire pickle jar with pennies! But I doubt that would be enough to buy a single book for this library, let alone dry wall and roofing material. I think we'll have to supplement with nickels.

Labels: books, kids, parenting

1 Comments:

• At 8:23 AM,  zhuni said…

  I read that book a few years ago. It really did make a big dent in my mindless Target and holiday spending.
  I am assuming you live a community like ours money-wise. Its amazing how much people spend on things they don't really need but think they do need.
  Whenever I think of this book my next thought is to read Animal, Vegetable miracle again. Which is about a totally different subject (a year of eating locally) but just as inspirational in terms of what one family can do to make a difference.
  Marcus was shocked by the food pantry at church "people don't have food?". So he started saving his change to buy food for the pantry. He is getting really excited to buy the food!

   

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