A blocked path
People are digging up the pavement and you have to walk round. It is annoying.
What is worth remembering?
Step 1: What Would You Do?
There is often more than one good answer. Pick one and see what happens.
At school
Somebody cleans your classroom every day. You have never met them.
What could you do?
Step 2: What That Was
The name for what you just worked out.
Roads, water, bins, buses, hospitals. None of them work by themselves. People do them.
Mostly you do not see it
The bins get emptied while you are asleep. The water gets cleaned somewhere you have never been.
Noticing is nice
People who do jobs like this are often not thanked at all. Noticing them costs nothing.
Step 3: Try It
These ones do have right answers.
Who Keeps It Working?
Tap a thing, then tap who looks after it.
Match each one to the people who keep it going.
Tap a card on the left to start.
Step 4: Quick Check
Two questions, then you are done.
Question 1 of 1
Why do you not usually see the people who empty the bins?
Step 5: Your Life Mission
Something to do away from the screen. Nobody is checking.
Spot three
- Find three people today whose job keeps something working.
- Say what each of them does.
- Thank one of them if you can.
Why: Once you start noticing them, you cannot stop, and that is a good habit to be stuck with.
Step 6: What You Learned
- Shared things need people to run them.
- Most of that work is invisible.
- Noticing it costs nothing.
For the grown-up
Pointing out infrastructure work as you pass it — roadworks, bin crews, a delivery being unloaded — makes the invisible visible, which is the whole lesson.
This is the beginning of understanding public goods, which the Prepare band takes up as tax and contribution. Starting concretely at five makes the abstract version land later.
Thanking people doing service jobs in front of your child teaches this in a way that talking about it does not.