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Like many others, I've been wondering what lessons educators and students can draw from the current financial crisis.  Certainly, schools should do more to teach financial literacy:  Americans could stand to know much more about credit.  Schools could perhaps also do more to instill character in students:  Financial wizards could have done much more to rein in their greed.

But the crisis offers a third--and I would argue larger--lesson, a real teachable moment:  We're all in this together.

This fact seems lost on some people who readily understand the first two lessons.  One generally thoughtful education blogger argued against big financial bailouts on the grounds that borrowers who lived well beyond their means should experience a chastening dose of failure.  Many others have rejected bailouts on the grounds that Wall Street hucksters shouldn't profit from their sins.

OK--In principle, no one should be rewarded for ignorance or deceit.  Still, as someone who has always paid my mortgage on time and never lived beyond my means, I'm not willing to let irresponsible consumers, predatory lenders and greedy corporate executives take me and the whole economy down with them.

Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of safely watching the ignorant and the deceitful get their comeuppance. Even the innocent can't escape the consequences of widespread financial recklessness.  Is the $700 billion bailout scheme the best course of action, under the circumstances?  I wish I knew.  But it seems unwise at best to use moral outrage as justification for inaction.

Those free-market purists who resist any intervention in the crisis appear far too sanguine about the costs of inflexible adherence to principle.  Unfettered markets destroy too many innocent bystanders--many of them children who never took out a loan or sold a toxic derivative.

So, here's a lesson for students:  Our actions--and even our benign ignorance--can hurt people we never even met.  Reckless consumers in California can harm responsible families in Colorado or Connecticut.  Energy hogs in Michigan can hurt ranchers in Montana, or farmers in Malaysia.  Uninformed voters in one corner of the world can destroy livelihoods in another.  

Globalization and economic interdependence have become the ties that bind.

Photo:  old-photos.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html