cawacko
Well-known member
I have no idea why they've waited this long to teach economics in school but glad to see someone's doing it. Love that Texas is requiring they teach about a free market system and its benefits.
Could You Pass Sixth-Grade Economics?
Public schools are teaching more economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis
Wilmington, Del.
“What is the basic economic problem all societies face?” April Higgins asks her sixth-grade class.
Ava Watson, raises her hand: “Scarcity.”
The teacher asks for a definition and the class responds, in unison: “People have unlimited wants but limited resources.”
Not bad for a bunch of sixth-graders.
Scarcity, elasticity, and marginal returns are now being taught in some schools to children as young as 10 years old. The push, educators say, was spurred by the 2008 financial crisis and is designed to help students become more comfortable with economics, financial planning and entrepreneurship. Catch them young, the thinking goes, and adult activities like balancing a checkbook or taking out a loan will be easier.
“The 2007 to 2009 crisis called a lot of attention to the importance of financial literacy,” says Stephen Buckles, a senior lecturer of economics at Vanderbilt University who has also been involved in developing national economics education standards and curricula. He adds that since the crisis, “we do a better job now at making students understand core issues.”
In 23 states, high schools are required to offer economics, up from 17 in 2007, according to the Council for Economic Education, a financial advocacy group. Some school districts begin in kindergarten with concepts of money for goods. By fifth grade, students are learning about supply and demand. Some, like Delaware, emphasize economics as part of the social studies curriculum.
At John Dickinson High School in Wilmington, Del., which houses Ms. Higgins’s sixth‐grade class, the immediate goal is to grasp scarcity. Students are each assigned to a Babylonian city‐state—Eshnunna, Assur, Ur and Mari—that has limited resources. They need to trade with each other to build shelter and transportation in the form of pint-size cardboard houses and toothpick ships. In the end, the city‐states will compare what they have built to see how trade improved their standard of living.
Ms. Higgins teaches an intensive economics unit for about five weeks in 90-minute blocks, two or three times a week. The rest of the school year she teaches history, geography and civics, but always with a special emphasis on economics.
As part of her training at the University of Delaware and through courses offered by the Council for Economic Education, Ms. Higgins learned how to teach economic theory to children. As she hands out resources like scissors and construction paper for the Babylonian city-state exercise, she notes that children this age love to trade. Negotiation is fun for them.
She shouts, “Go!” and students begin swirling around the room, trading paper for glue, toothpicks for scissors. Ms. Higgins set up the exercise so that some city‐states are rich in resources, some desperately poor.
Elizabeth Brubaker, 11 years old and from the city of Ur, is in need of scissors and glue to build houses and ships. “I’ll give you 10 strips of paper for two scissors,” she tells Ava, 12, from the wealthy city Mari. Ava says that she only has one scissor to spare. Elizabeth asks about the glue stick. An unconventional deal is struck. Ten strips of paper for one scissor and Ur can rent the glue stick from Mari for 12 minutes.
The U.S. falls behind the OECD average on financial literacy for 15-year-olds. Now, 17 states require a personal finance course for high school graduation, up from seven in 2007, the Council for Economic Education says.
“Most people go through life terrified by economics,” says B. Douglas Bernheim, chairman of the economics department at Stanford University. Even if young students don’t remember the particulars of a class, he says, they feel comfortable with the language of economics and that translates into more confidence in the subject later in life.
“It’s easier to learn history later if you know economics,” says Ms. Higgins. “It’s also personal. It helps children make sense of their lives. Why did we have to move? Why do we have money for this, not that?”
Educators say that taking economics in high school improves saving rates later in life. With an eye to building a more resilient workforce, entrepreneurship classes have also become popular, many based on the television show “Shark Tank,” in which contestants pitch a business to investors.
Some schools discuss the benefits of capitalism over communism. The Texas education code states that economics must be taught with an emphasis on the free market system and its benefits.
Gale Mitchell teaches an economics course to gifted seventh and eighth-graders in Tucson, Ariz. She prefers to dig deep into the nuances of microeconomics.
“Marginal analysis is really hard for them,” she says. The assessment of the benefits and costs of an activity can be too abstract for children. To teach the idea, she buys a big box of doughnuts and chooses a student to eat them in front of the class. The student is asked to discuss his level of satisfaction with each additional doughnut.
.
“We are all watching this kid eat doughnuts, and he’s so happy in the beginning,” says Ms. Mitchell, who makes her own textbooks because there are so few available. “But at some point the total utility is no longer positive. You can see it on their faces.”
Prof. Bernheim cautions that economics lessons should not come at the expense of math. In his Stanford economics students he places a high value on their applied math skills.
In Ms. Higgins’ classroom, the lesson shifted to economic models. The city states of Babylon were once run as a command economy, where prices of goods and peoples’ incomes are decided by the government. The students concede that while the market economy has made them wealthier, trading for the good life is exhausting.
“To be honest I like the exercises that center on a command economy,” says 11-year-old Mairead Chase of city state Eshnunna. “I like authority. I like to have a goal,” she shrugs and smiles. “Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/could-you-pass-sixth-grade-economics-1456857573
Could You Pass Sixth-Grade Economics?
Public schools are teaching more economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis
Wilmington, Del.
“What is the basic economic problem all societies face?” April Higgins asks her sixth-grade class.
Ava Watson, raises her hand: “Scarcity.”
The teacher asks for a definition and the class responds, in unison: “People have unlimited wants but limited resources.”
Not bad for a bunch of sixth-graders.
Scarcity, elasticity, and marginal returns are now being taught in some schools to children as young as 10 years old. The push, educators say, was spurred by the 2008 financial crisis and is designed to help students become more comfortable with economics, financial planning and entrepreneurship. Catch them young, the thinking goes, and adult activities like balancing a checkbook or taking out a loan will be easier.
“The 2007 to 2009 crisis called a lot of attention to the importance of financial literacy,” says Stephen Buckles, a senior lecturer of economics at Vanderbilt University who has also been involved in developing national economics education standards and curricula. He adds that since the crisis, “we do a better job now at making students understand core issues.”
In 23 states, high schools are required to offer economics, up from 17 in 2007, according to the Council for Economic Education, a financial advocacy group. Some school districts begin in kindergarten with concepts of money for goods. By fifth grade, students are learning about supply and demand. Some, like Delaware, emphasize economics as part of the social studies curriculum.
At John Dickinson High School in Wilmington, Del., which houses Ms. Higgins’s sixth‐grade class, the immediate goal is to grasp scarcity. Students are each assigned to a Babylonian city‐state—Eshnunna, Assur, Ur and Mari—that has limited resources. They need to trade with each other to build shelter and transportation in the form of pint-size cardboard houses and toothpick ships. In the end, the city‐states will compare what they have built to see how trade improved their standard of living.
Ms. Higgins teaches an intensive economics unit for about five weeks in 90-minute blocks, two or three times a week. The rest of the school year she teaches history, geography and civics, but always with a special emphasis on economics.
As part of her training at the University of Delaware and through courses offered by the Council for Economic Education, Ms. Higgins learned how to teach economic theory to children. As she hands out resources like scissors and construction paper for the Babylonian city-state exercise, she notes that children this age love to trade. Negotiation is fun for them.
She shouts, “Go!” and students begin swirling around the room, trading paper for glue, toothpicks for scissors. Ms. Higgins set up the exercise so that some city‐states are rich in resources, some desperately poor.
Elizabeth Brubaker, 11 years old and from the city of Ur, is in need of scissors and glue to build houses and ships. “I’ll give you 10 strips of paper for two scissors,” she tells Ava, 12, from the wealthy city Mari. Ava says that she only has one scissor to spare. Elizabeth asks about the glue stick. An unconventional deal is struck. Ten strips of paper for one scissor and Ur can rent the glue stick from Mari for 12 minutes.
The U.S. falls behind the OECD average on financial literacy for 15-year-olds. Now, 17 states require a personal finance course for high school graduation, up from seven in 2007, the Council for Economic Education says.
“Most people go through life terrified by economics,” says B. Douglas Bernheim, chairman of the economics department at Stanford University. Even if young students don’t remember the particulars of a class, he says, they feel comfortable with the language of economics and that translates into more confidence in the subject later in life.
“It’s easier to learn history later if you know economics,” says Ms. Higgins. “It’s also personal. It helps children make sense of their lives. Why did we have to move? Why do we have money for this, not that?”
Educators say that taking economics in high school improves saving rates later in life. With an eye to building a more resilient workforce, entrepreneurship classes have also become popular, many based on the television show “Shark Tank,” in which contestants pitch a business to investors.
Some schools discuss the benefits of capitalism over communism. The Texas education code states that economics must be taught with an emphasis on the free market system and its benefits.
Gale Mitchell teaches an economics course to gifted seventh and eighth-graders in Tucson, Ariz. She prefers to dig deep into the nuances of microeconomics.
“Marginal analysis is really hard for them,” she says. The assessment of the benefits and costs of an activity can be too abstract for children. To teach the idea, she buys a big box of doughnuts and chooses a student to eat them in front of the class. The student is asked to discuss his level of satisfaction with each additional doughnut.
.
“We are all watching this kid eat doughnuts, and he’s so happy in the beginning,” says Ms. Mitchell, who makes her own textbooks because there are so few available. “But at some point the total utility is no longer positive. You can see it on their faces.”
Prof. Bernheim cautions that economics lessons should not come at the expense of math. In his Stanford economics students he places a high value on their applied math skills.
In Ms. Higgins’ classroom, the lesson shifted to economic models. The city states of Babylon were once run as a command economy, where prices of goods and peoples’ incomes are decided by the government. The students concede that while the market economy has made them wealthier, trading for the good life is exhausting.
“To be honest I like the exercises that center on a command economy,” says 11-year-old Mairead Chase of city state Eshnunna. “I like authority. I like to have a goal,” she shrugs and smiles. “Sometimes it’s nice to be told what to do.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/could-you-pass-sixth-grade-economics-1456857573
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