Using a trash can, a green highlighter and two groups of students, Stephen Jayaraj gives his ethics class at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School a lesson in privilege.
The students sitting closest to the target easily toss the marker into the can. Those across the room have a much harder time. The only student in the second group who manages to hit the target does so after Jayaraj moves the trash can closer and sits it atop a desk.
When Jayaraj asks the students in the second group how they feel about the experiment, they quickly cry foul. Those closer to the target clearly have an unfair advantage, they say.
Those who aren’t born into privilege often have a much harder time making ends meet than middle- and upper-income people realize, the teacher reminds his students, mostly high school juniors. To further illustrate his point, Jayaraj recently spent seven days walking to and from school and living on a minimum wage salary.
Jayaraj’s class at the Sandy Springs private school is studying the moral and ethical aspects of the minimum wage debate. They are also researching the economic side of raising the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour.
The 40-year-old teacher, who coaches cross country and track, is in better physical shape than most. He wore reflective gear, but still worried about getting hit by a car as he walked along the hilly route with a large bag he needed for school. In the mornings, he departed his home off Powers Ferry Road in Marietta at 5:30 to make the 3 ½-mile trek to Holy Innocents’ on Mount Vernon Highway.
He shared his experiences with students in hopes that the next time they pass someone walking, they might better empathize with that person. His students were also responsible for coming up with a budget based on a person working 40 hours a week at $7.25 an hour and 10 hours a week at $9.50 an hour.
After taxes, the students had about $327 left in the budget to pay rent, utilities, insurance and other essentials. Of that $327, they had about $60 left for groceries, toiletries and other incidentals each week.
Jayaraj pledged to live within that budget for a week. That meant eating rice, beans and noodles and drinking lots of water.
Carter Basham, an 18-year-old senior, said she learned “how hard it was to get everything you need after working so much and getting (paid) so little.”
Basham said the class experiment gave her a new perspective on how privileged she and other students are. The budgeting exercise would have been impossible if they had to budget for a family, she said.
Chase Rainbow, a 16-year-old junior, noted that saving money would be next to impossible. But raising the minimum wage is not just about fixing one problem, he said. He and other classmates have been studying the costs of raising the minimum wage for businesses, which may have to cut workers or raise prices.
Their next assignment is to interview teachers and employees at the school about whether the minimum wage should be raised.
As a religion and ethics teacher, Jayaraj looks for different ways to teach compassion and empathy.
“We are our brother’s and sister’s keeper,” he said. “For me to do this, I try to make it as true as possible.”
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