Reviewing the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston educational materials for kids

I continue to feel stunned. I just read my first download of kid’s educational material from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, a 20-page trippy comic book called “Wishes and Rainbows,” written in 1980.

A synopsis of “Wishes and Rainbows” (Note: I am not making this up.)

Roota, our heroine, lives in an underground tiny world that has no color –only white, gray, and black. One day she is playing hide and seek in a cave and discovers golden sunlight seeping through a crack. She follows the light and stumbles onto a world of color and flowers. Roota picks a red tulip and returns back home to her colorless world, eager to share the red flower with her grandmother, who is delighted. Roota then plants the tulip in the town center so everyone can enjoy it, but soon the tulip withers from lack of sun, leaving three seeds.

Roota and her friend try to fetch more colorful flowers for people in town –everyone wants one! But the passageway to the sunlit, colorful world is now blocked by boulders. Roota succeeds in finding light seeping through another high crack. She plants the three tulip seeds in the soil beneath the light and soon three new tulips grow. Roota ponders who in town should get the three new tulips –the mayor, the richest person, the eldest? She decides that the fairest system is to make a list with everyone’s name on it. The people at the top of the list. The oldest people, will get the first three tulips. Then, Roota will plant the seeds from those three withered flowers to grow new ones, and give the fresh flowers to people next on the list, and so on. This plan succeeds wonderfully, and in time a new sunlit spot opens, allowing even greater cultivation of flowers.

What this has to do with the Federal Reserve or banking eludes me.

I’m impressed that the Federal Reserve would turn to such interesting allegorical material and, further, that it would make our heroine a girl! I agree that girls are good candidates for devising a fair economic system that offers satisfaction to the greatest number of people. And that fairness means regulating the economy so that everyone’s needs are met.

But is this what they intended to say in this comic book?

According to the teacher’s guide, the story is about “one society and its attempts to assimilate, with least disruption, a rare and much coveted new resource,” the colorful flowers. The story is about scarcity. There is a high demand for the colorful flowers but little supply. Since the flowers are scarce (a limited resource), Roota suggests that they ration the flowers, and this works as the story concludes.

But it might not work for long, since the demand for flowers is so high and people can be self-interested. Readers are encouraged to imagine what could transpire in the near future in this village. With the help of investments, might someone try to meet demand by boosting production of the flowers, whether by exploring the caves for more sunlit planting areas, or by developing rock-moving technologies, or by creating fake flowers? Or, as the guide also suggests, perhaps the village mayor will fund increased production of flowers with tax money and share all the proceeds with the people.

I'm happy that the teacher's guide emphasizes the value of "unrestricted imagination" in thinking about future scenarios. This spirit is far too scarce in most economic classes or books.

Let's boost production of the imagination!