My son missed a couple of days of school. His teachers gave him worksheets that have to be done by Monday. He’s had 'em for days, but just told me about them. One of them is called a “Personal Bathtub Analogy” and appears to have something to do with personal finances. He’s supposed to list things that fill his bathtub, and what keeps the bathtub full, and what drains the bathtub. He has no idea what it’s about, since he missed the lecture and it isn’t in his textbook. I googled the bejeebers out of it, and found the Web site for the curriculum, but you have to pay to download it.
Are any of you familiar with this analogy? Can you give me a quick explanation so I can help him?
From what I can gather, the analogy is that the tub represents your monetary savings. Water running into the tub represents income, and water draing out represents expenditures. So, some things that fill the tub might include:
I realise it’s Thanksgiving, but it seems you should be able to call the teacher for the 2 minute rundown.
My personal guess would be that it is an exercise in critical thinking. “My bathtub is filled with the work of my parents. It is kept full by the weight of centuries of labor by skilled craftsmen to improve and perfect their techniques of casting and piping. It is drained by the government which sees to it that my wastes do not harm the world around me.” The main question would then be how long it needs to be. I did it in three sentences, but you could give a full history on porcelain back through China and the poisonous pipes of ancient Rome for instance. The goal would, I think, be to get him to look critically at the world around himself and try to get an idea of the sheer amount of hard work that even such a simple thing as a bathtub is built on.