If you’re an NPR listener, you might remember a book that came out a few years ago by an extraordinary 5th grade teacher in the LA schools named Rafe Esquith. It is a fun read, for all sorts of reasons, and I commend it to your attention. But one chapter troubles me. He sees, but he doesn’t see.

The chapter is called Taxman.

In brief, for readers unfamiliar with Hobart Shakespearean economics, all children in Room 56 apply for a classroom job the first day of school. Students are given a list of job opportunities and descriptions of the work. There are janitors, bankers, ball monitors, office messengers, clerks, police officers, and other occupations. Each of these jobs differs slightly in pay. Janitors, who work daily, earn more money (simulated cash) than students whose jobs require their services only two or three times a week. Each child usually gets one of his first two choices.

With the job comes a monthly paycheck. The children deposit this with their banker. They need to save their money because all students pay rent to sit at their desks. The closer a child sits to the front of the room, the more expensive the seat …

Students have to pay rent each month to sit at their desks. However, if a child can save up triple his rent, he is allowed to purchase his seat and call it a condominium. Some kids even carefully save enough money to buy the seats of other students and charge them rent every month!

As the clever students buy up property, they begin to understand the value of ownership. Each month they see their peers scramble to pay the rent while their own bank accounts bulge. They begin to empathize with the plight of their parents. The property owners in Room 56 discover that owning their own homes leaves them with disposable income to spend on exciting treasures at the monthly auction. As the months fly by, they learn through firsthand experience the benefits of saving money and owning property. The students who continue to pay rent learn the same lessons – and probably with more poignancy.

The goal is not to create a real-life Monopoly game in the classroom, but rather to expose the students to the benefits of ownership. The sad reality is that not one student in Room 56 lives in a family-owned home; all of them come from families who pay rent. One day, I want each of them to own his or her own home.

While I applaud the curriculum Mr. Esquith has developed to pack as many different kinds of experiences and learning into a single school year, I hope he might, at some point, take the next step in considering the significance of rent – that is, the value of location – and who is entitled to that value. His exercise is a fair analogy to the way things actually operate. (All the desks, presumably, are pretty much identical, and the difference is in the quality of the locations they occupy.) Should private individuals be able to privatize the value of the best locations? Fifth graders aren’t too young to consider the implications of the question!