I did this last night with my 14 and 11 year old boys. I asked them for their definition of socialism, how many classes there are in socialism and what is the best deterrent to socialism.
They both had the basics of what socialism is, they both knew there are only two classes (rich and poor) and my oldest knew right off that a strong middle class is the best deterrent. The oldest is home schooled and the youngest goes to a public elementary school.
There have been teachers who have tried to show this in the classroom. Grades, to students, are their salaries. You work hard, you get paid more (in the capitalist system).
In the exercise, which runs for a couple of weeks), students are randomly put into two groups. One group is graded individually. Individuals in the other group receive the average grade of their group.
It’s not surprising what happens. The individual performance group performs better. The group performance goes down over time. C and D students in that group figure the rest of the group will carry them and work even less. A and B students start out strong, but soon wonder why they should bother and perform minimally.
Haven’t heard about this for a while, but several years ago there were reports of teachers who did this exercise being reprimanded or suspended.