Yearning to Learn Free

Based on the two-year median household income in 2008, I don't make much more than half the households in America so I shouldn't feel much guiltier than the median amount of guilt when I think about the people in the country who are less fortunate than me. Except that the weekly publication to which I subscribe has several articles covering each continent (Antarctica is an exception) and are constantly detailing the poverty that pervades much of the world. And when you take their incomes into our median I jump up the percentile/guilt ladder quite a bit.

It is in the thralls of this guilt that I make a monthly donation to Doctors Without Borders (by the by, I have never gotten the monthly report they promised to send), and a religious organization (I won't mention it by name as I doubt they would like to be associated with these posts).

This proactive approach actually saves me money, because when the telemarketers call asking for my donations for a variety of causes I can explain to them that my charity budget has already been allocated for this fiscal year. When the commercials come on asking for a dollar a day to feed the world the waves of guilt crash against the unmovable walls of my steel-clad financial planning. If they really wanted my help, they would have arranged these commercials or phone calls to reach me back on May 25th 2009 when I was wrapping up the Fiscal-Year 2010 budget.

However, sometimes a little excess guilt creeps through and I take care of that by giving blood, or volunteering at the local thrift store which employs low-skill members of the workforce and use the profits for a variety of humanitarian efforts. In my most recent visit I got to stamp the prices on the donated books, and organize them on the shelves.

Now, I tell you all of that to tell you this: In the storage/work area in the back where we performed our repetitive tasks of sorting and stamping there is no stimulation besides the mindless tunes from a pop station on the radio. Perhaps I'm a snob, but in this environment where low skilled, poorly educated people are stuck for 8 hours a day it seems like anything educational or instructive you could broadcast would be better than the same 75 songs and 15 commercials cycled over and over again.

Play a language-learning program, audio recordings of Dickens, Twain, or Joyce; or some of the MIT open course lectures. They wouldn't have to write essays or explain the concept they were learning, but just to be exposed to something new, something to expand the vocabulary and familiarize you with history has got to be better than having the exact price of a new car stereo, or the latest deal on gutter cleaning drummed into your consciousness.