Assignment Prompt: A Classroom Currency Experiment

Adapted from a prompt by Professor Benjamin Wilson (SUNY Cortland, Spring 2025), this assignment encourages students to perceive money and the labor it mobilizes as social forms that we can collectively remake. We share it here for educators and organizers invested in expanding the democratic imagination.

Introduction

Traditional economics defines and models money as a commodity like all other commodities—a modeling choice that renders money neutral or irrelevant to economic functions. This theoretical invisibility of money stands in stark contrast to lived experience, where virtually nothing occurs without monetary circuits connecting issuance to redemption, from securing food to maintaining shelter.

While orthodox economics treats money as merely facilitating trade, other schools of thought often characterize money as extractive or harmful, encouraging selfish behavior and decisions that may harm others. Even Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which centers money in its analysis, incorporates undertones of state violence and coercion in explaining money’s value.

Margaret Atwood offers a provocative alternative perspective in her 2008 work Payback, where she examines debt’s literary history and the stories used to justify extractive social relations. She argues:

“Like all our financial arrangements, and like all our rules of moral conduct—in fact, like language itself—notions about debt form part of the elaborate imaginative construct that is human society. What is true of each part of mental construct is also true of debt, in all its many variations: because it is a mental construct, how we think about it changes how it works.”

This observation raises compelling questions: How can we change how we think about credit/debt relations? Is it possible to change how money actually works?

The Experiment

Hypothesis: If money is a designed human construct, then we can design experiments that test various design elements to yield alternative outcomes.

Theoretical Framework

Our classroom monetary model incorporates two fundamental design elements that establish money as a public project:

1. The Tax Circuit: Following the model used by currency-issuing governments, taxation creates demand for the currency. The tax doesn’t fund government activity but establishes need for the currency, making it receivable throughout the economic system. This creates a circuit from issuance to redemption that gives money its social power.
2. Real Resource Constraints: While the currency issuer faces no financial constraints (except socially constructed ones), real resource constraints remain. If no people are available to do work, you cannot mobilize them through monetary payment. That said, real resources are also socially constructed, which means that such constraints are mutable over the long term. 

Implementation

Currency Creation as Governance: Students will earn classroom currency ([insert your currency name]) through productive activities. As the monetary authority, the instructor can issue unlimited currency but cannot create additional real resources (time, labor, expertise). This demonstrates money as a creature of law and governance, not alleged “market forces.”

Tax Obligation as Demand Creation: Each student enterprise faces a tax of [X amount] in classroom currency. This tax obligation creates demand for the currency and establishes its circulation within the classroom economy, completing the circuit from issuance to redemption.

Monetary Philosophy: Rather than treating money as a commodity or medium of dyadic trade, we define it as a collective relation and accounting tool. Money represents both credit and debit, asset and liability—an IOU or promise to pay. When students earn currency, they hold an asset while the instructor holds a corresponding liability, creating the collective relationship that gives money meaning.

Enterprise Structure and Goals

Organization

Students form social enterprises of [3-5] members. Each enterprise must collectively earn sufficient currency to meet all members’ tax obligations ([X × number of members]).

Objectives

The primary goal extends beyond mere tax settlement to achieving the highest level of public good production, including enhanced student learning outcomes. Enterprises may organize efforts in various ways:

• Collective action with shared responsibilities
• Individual optimization with separate efforts
• Hybrid approaches combining cooperation and specialization

Earning Opportunities Through Public Purpose

Students can earn classroom currency through activities designed to serve public purposes while providing personal development:

1. Community Service: Volunteer work with non-profit organizations, mobilizing underutilized labor for social benefit
2. Academic Engagement: Attendance and participation in approved campus cultural and intellectual events
3. Research Participation: Data collection exercises supporting academic research
4. Enhanced Class Participation: Above-and-beyond contributions to class discussions and peer learning support

[Instructors should customize these categories based on institutional resources and learning objectives]

Strategic Considerations

Enterprises should consider these questions when organizing their efforts:

Impact Assessment:

• Can your enterprise create impact across all earning categories?
• Will you specialize in particular areas?
• How will you measure and assess your impact?
• What quantitative measures will you track (people reached, events attended, meaningful contributions?

Organizational Design:

• What institutional parameters will you establish to generate collective success?
• How will these parameters evolve during the semester?
• Will leaders emerge naturally or be formally designated?
• How will you resolve conflicts and make decisions?

Learning Outcomes

This experiment illuminates several key concepts about money as a public project:

• How monetary circuits from issuance to redemption create social relationships
• Money as a creature of governance and law rather than so-called “market forces”
• Alternative values and motives beyond profit maximization
• Non-zero-sum approaches to production through public purpose
• The interplay between competition and cooperation in productive activity
• Benefits of effort and work outside traditional wage relationships
• How different monetary designs generate different forms of production and returns
• Money’s role in mobilizing underutilized resources for public benefit

Assessment and Data Collection

Qualitative Assessment

Students submit reflection essays addressing:

• Enterprise impact and innovation strategies
• Leadership emergence and conflict resolution
• Changes in understanding of money’s function as a public project
• Implications for real-world monetary systems
• Comparative experiences (e.g., non-profit vs. retail work)
• Collaborative work satisfaction and challenges

Quantitative Metrics

• Hours of community service and resource mobilization
• Data collection contributions
• Campus event attendance
• Course assignment performance
• Comparative class performance (if applicable)

Timeline and Payment Schedule

Tax Day: [Insert date – typically end of semester] Payment Opportunities: Regular class sessions and approved events Documentation: Students must complete effort verification forms and obtain appropriate signatures for currency payment

[Instructors should establish specific procedures for currency distribution and verification]

Research Questions

This experiment helps verify or reject our central hypothesis while exploring broader questions:

• Can monetary systems be designed as public projects to improve human happiness and well-being?
• How do circuits of issuance and redemption create different social relationships?
• Are such improvements subject to diminishing returns?
• Does this demonstrate money’s potential as a tool for mobilizing underutilized resources?

Adaptation Guidelines for Instructors

Customization Considerations:

• Adjust currency amounts based on class size and semester length
• Modify earning categories to reflect available institutional resources
• Adapt enterprise size to accommodate class enrollment
• Establish verification procedures appropriate to your context
• Consider incentive structures that align with your learning objectives

Implementation Tips:

• Clearly communicate the experimental nature and learning goals
• Establish partnerships with campus organizations for earning opportunities
• Create simple tracking systems for currency distribution
• Plan regular check-ins to monitor enterprise progress
• Prepare discussion prompts to connect experiences to theoretical concepts
• Emphasize money’s role as governance tool rather than market mechanism

This experiment transforms abstract monetary theory into lived experience, helping students understand money as a social technology and public project that can be redesigned to serve different purposes and values through circuits of issuance and redemption.