Education, Shopping, and Flat Tires

1. A nation’s crops affect how it educates children

This month I listened to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a fascinating book with many stories and examples worth checking out. I thought the most interesting background in the book was the difference in educational philosophy between the West and Asian countries.

Western educators developed a view that a child’s mind was fragile. If school was too intense or too long, the children would be overwhelmed and actually injure their minds. This belief drove U.S. public education reform in the 1800s, including eliminating Saturday classes, shortening the school day, and creating the long summer break. That approach has been dominant in American schools until the recent increase in year-round school schedules.

In contrast, children in rice-growing countries work much harder and longer in school. There’s an attitude of constant practice and work to develop expertise, particularly in math. The language also helps (in Chinese, for example, strings of numbers are easier to remember, and arithmetic is easier to perform, due to the structure of the language).

The intriguing part is that these attitudes have been shaped by agriculture. In Western agriculture, crops must be rotated and the land must be rested every few years or it’ll become depleted. The land is also empty in winter, and the summer months are slower paced than spring and fall. In rice-growing countries, though, the more the land is used for rice crops, the more fertile it becomes. Growing rice is also much more labor intensive compared to Western crops, and two or three crops are cultivated in a paddy in a typical year.

Agriculture isn't nearly the controlling economic force that it used to be, in the U.S. at least. But back in the 1800s when 95% of Americans were involved with farming somehow, the farming analogy was a major influence on education, and we still see some of those effects today.

2. There are lots of ways to save money, if you’re on the lookout

Don’t you enjoy saving money on stuff you were going to buy anyway? It’s also fun to buy stuff you want at a cheaper price, too! I recently watched an interview with Brad Wilson of bradsdeals.com; he’s just published a book called Do More, Spend Less. Doing more with less always sounds like a good plan, so I asked the library to order a copy.

The book is divided up into three main sections: travel, shopping, and personal finance. Since Becky & I are vacationing in a travel trailer these days, I skimmed through the travel section and didn’t find much of interest to us. The personal finance section includes a number of things we’re already doing, so I flipped through that section quickly also.

I did find a couple of useful tidbits in the shopping section, though. Have you heard of Amazon Grocery? I hadn’t, either. That part of the website has over 45000 grocery items, many in multi-packs like Sam’s Club. If you have an Amazon Prime account, the shipping on most items is free. You can also start a monthly subscription to items of interest, and they’ll get shipped to you automatically. We already buy many bulk items at Sam’s Club, so I think the next step will be to compare prices on some of our staple items to see who has the best deal.

The other thing Brad mentioned in this section was the Dover Thrift series of books. These are literary classics printed as inexpensive paperbacks and available for a few bucks each. I hadn’t heard of the series before, so as a test I got on Amazon and ordered The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dubliners. They remind me of the Scholastic books that were for sale each year in grade school. Definitely cheap paperbacks, but the font looks good and if something happens to them, no big deal. More books – woo hoo!

3. Have a flat tire? Fix it yourself!

We were leaving a restaurant the other night (“So Italian!” – love that place). Our daughter, Amy, had met us there after work. I happened to glance at her car in the parking lot, and saw a front tire was almost flat. I used a mini air compressor from my truck to air up the tire, but it definitely needed attention.

When we got home, I jacked up the front of the car and removed the offending tire. There wasn’t a screw head or anything obviously visible, so Becky made a soapy water mix and we brushed that on the tread. Sure enough, a section of tread started bubbling up, and after probing with needle-nose pliers I found an embedded nail. This was Saturday evening, and Amy needed the car for work the next day, so we were on our own to fix it.

I went out to Meijer and bought a tire plug kit made by Slime, similar to this one on Amazon only a few dollars cheaper. The instructions were easy to follow, with one exception: jamming the plug through the hole using that needle-like tool is HARD. Next time I’m going to do a more aggressive reaming job first. I finally got the plug inserted, though, and the tire held pressure.

It’s now a week later and the tire is still holding pressure, so it appears to be a good repair. According to the package this is supposed to be a temporary fix. I’m not sure I’ll take it to Sam’s Club for an official repair, though. Don’t the pros use plugs to fix nail holes like this? If the tire keeps holding pressure, I’m going to leave it alone.