David Boyle and Andrew Simms’ 2009 book The New Economics: A Bigger Picture argues for economics being taken beyond its present focus on monetary wealth and consumption. One idea that I immediately saw as applicable to my own life is Time Banking.
In traditional communities, people help each other, and reciprocity is a matter of course. The idea of Time Banking is to reintroduce reciprocity into modern life. Those who receive public services are “asked to pay back in some way in their local community.” If you visit the doctor and use health insurance (as I do here in Japan), you’d be expected to call on and inquire after someone who is sick at home, to give just one example. “No more giving as convenient absolution by the wealthy, no more… grateful recipients. Instead, it means giving but asking for something in return.”
I work at a university and I'm always being asked by students to help them with their English out of class: explaining an email they got; checking a speech they’re giving in another class; suggesting how they can study on their own before taking the TOEIC test. We also, at the university, have a foreign language lounge where students choose (or are required for homework) to go and practice. So why not, from now on, after helping someone, ask them to spend the same amount of time in the language lounge, speaking to someone who is too shy or scared to talk to anyone else?
Last week, I helped a student with her English resume, and asked her to spend a couple of hours at her convenience talking to others in the lounge. She’s never been there, said she would, and opined that she needed English practice so it would be good for her, too. Which adds up to a heck of a payoff from a very simple idea.
--Julian
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