The funniest situations in class always come from asking the simplest questions. The other day I was reading part of “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” by f. Scott Fitzgerald to my class. We were talking about the country club atmosphere and how stuck up it seemed that a number of the characters were. I wanted to give my students some background on why these characters were this way, so i asked them a simple question, “Who can tell me the difference between new money and old money?”
     Immediately one of the girls in my class raised her hand. I called on here and she proudly told the class that the difference was that the “new money” had bigger heads (referring to the new bills that the U.S. Mint has put out lately). This of course got quite a large laugh out of the classroom. Perhaps some of them knew the answer, others were probably just laughing because I was. I hadn’t expected an answer like that and as rude as it is to laugh at a student, in this case I couldn’t help myself.
     I replied to her that, “yes, it’s true that the new bills do have larger heads than the old one, but were talking about something else entirely.” We were talking about the wealth of individuals back in the twenties. If you want to think of it in a metaphorical sense it was really the other way around back then. The old money were the ones who had the big heads. They were rather judgmental of the people who were becoming new money by all of their hard work.
     We talked in class about who was new money and old money right now. Bill Gates is the perfect example of new money. He’s has earned all of his fortune through hard work. There are also some examples of old money in town, with the Upjohns. By the time that we finished talking about it the students had a better understanding and they were all paying attention just because of the way that the whole situation started. It’s always good to have a little fun in the classroom.