While visiting Indiana last month, I took a trip to the Children’s Museum, one of the best of its kind in the country.

One of the temporary exhibits is called Moneyville, and I was struck at the feature’s realistic, generally optimistic portrayal of money, markets, and trade. Granted, the exhibit was underwritten in part by Nasdaq. But museum curators and museums in general tend to be pretty progressive (or whatever other misleading label the left is using these days). So it was refreshing to see unfettered capitalism depicted so positively. The free trade section in particular was excellent, stressing how voluntary trade between countries creates wealth, and makes everyone better off. It gave obligatory nods to the labor and environmental components of free trade, but each in its proper context. From the website:

Do you know where your shirt was made? Explore world trade by collecting data about where your own clothing was manufactured. First, check the “Made in …” label inside of shirt to find the country of origin. Then, on a nearby map, determine what region of the world that particular country is in. Next, add a data point on a large T-shirt and help create a bar graph that reveals where in the world visitors’ clothing is made. Discover why people and nations trade to get things they need and want and how trade connects people and allows for economic growth.

…young visitors learn why we trade, who our major trade partners are and how trade connects us to other nations.

Kids can also learn the value of entrepeneurship by setting up a lemonade stand, or develop a portfolio and follow a very cool, screen-projected, simulated 12-month stock market game (though in the latter, it was amusing to watch the dads play the faux market through the kids).

This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2005 at 12:00 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.