Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Education > Teaching
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Closed Thread Start New Thread
 
Old 02-27-2009, 02:18 PM
 
1,336 posts, read 1,527,482 times
Reputation: 202

Advertisements

I say it's economics and what the political parties are really about. If every child were taught something about spending within your means, America wouldn't be putting up with these horrendous giveaways and pork barrel spending we are seeing the past month from the Obama administration.

Children should be taught the basics of national economics. Corporations are NOT evil; they are the very backbone of our economic system. We should teach kids that corporations invest capital, provide innovations, make necessary goods and services, and create jobs. Government does none of these.

Children should be taught to challenge the notion that high achievers should be punished by being disporportionally taxed. Kids have an instinctive understanding of fairness. Try this exercise. Ask the students how they would like to study two hours every night, do extra credit projects, and stay after school for homework help while their classmates go home and do nothing but watch TV and play video games while eating chips and drinking soda, THEN have the lazy classmates receive the better grade? That's basically what's going on with the bailout of people facing foreclosure.

Along the same vein of fairness here's another game: Child A and Child B are running for class president. Child A promises the class that he will pay each a dollar if they vote for him. Child B just promises to work hard if elected, and pledges to try to get the whole class to work harder in school. Child A then steals a $20 bill from Child B, gives a dollar to each class member and keeps the rest for himself. Child A then tells the class how generous he is for giving them money and how Child B is selfish for not wanting to give. Yet it was Child B's money all along. The poorest kids elect Child A, because they wanted the money and didn't want to have to work hard. Child A wins.

Ask the students if they think the above scenarios were fair. Then explain to them that is exactly how the two political parties operate.

Here's a final exercise:

Two people each started a business. Person A spent money very carefully. He saved what he could then bought supplies for his business only when he had enough money. He worked hard, figured out how to draw new customers, served the customers well, and earned money. He then invested that money and opened three other stores, hired a lot of people who worked hard and satisfied the customers.

Person B didn't save enough money to buy a business but he lied about his income and fooled a bank into loaning him that money. He didn't work hard, didn't serve his customers, and didn't invest his money. Instead, he lavished his money on friends and on people who helped him lie to the bank to get money. When his business started to falter, he made up more lies, fooled more banks, and borrowed more money. Finally, he told the banks he wasn't going to pay them anymore, closed the business, and the few workers he had lost their jobs.

Teachers, you don't even have to mention political parties. You don't have to. Just tell them those things are really happening with the two political parties. Appeal to their sense of fairness, and encourage them to develop the political philosophy of their own choosing. If generations of American kids were taught wonderful lessons like this every day in class, our nation would be much more prosperous, there wouldn't be as much dependency, and above all, we wouldn't be electing the folks who caused our current economic problems to "solve" the problem.

 
Old 02-27-2009, 02:31 PM
 
2,779 posts, read 5,488,784 times
Reputation: 5068
Hmmmm...while I suspect that politically you and I would agree, I have to argue that it isn't a teacher's responsibility to preach politics to their students but to present various ideas fairly and allow their students along with parents and perhaps clergy members (if relevant) to teach the true value lesson.

Really if you think the country is headed in the wrong direction value-wised than I would concentrate your efforts on parents, not teachers.
 
Old 02-27-2009, 02:37 PM
 
272 posts, read 728,603 times
Reputation: 119
Raising your child is not my job.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 12:46 PM
 
Location: in a house
3,574 posts, read 14,322,164 times
Reputation: 2400
Isn't that a parent's responsibility? I have enough to do getting the subject matter covered. The most important thing(s) a teacher can teach (if even possible!) is to think critically and ask questions and read everything....
 
Old 02-28-2009, 01:58 PM
 
13,253 posts, read 33,437,211 times
Reputation: 8103
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eeeee22895 View Post
Teachers, you don't even have to mention political parties. You don't have to. Just tell them those things are really happening with the two political parties. Appeal to their sense of fairness, and encourage them to develop the political philosophy of their own choosing. If generations of American kids were taught wonderful lessons like this every day in class, our nation would be much more prosperous, there wouldn't be as much dependency, and above all, we wouldn't be electing the folks who caused our current economic problems to "solve" the problem.
Or they could just study the last administration about how we got into the current problems.
__________________
Please follow THESE rules.

Any Questions on how to use this site? See this.

Realtors, See This.

Moderator - Lehigh Valley, NEPA, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Education and Colleges and Universities.

When I post in bold red, that is Moderator action and per the TOS can be discussed only via Direct Message.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 04:15 PM
 
1,336 posts, read 1,527,482 times
Reputation: 202
Quote:
Originally Posted by swampwolf View Post
Raising your child is not my job.
I don't call imparting good sense "raising" a child. Do you think a teacher's job stops at X's and O's? If so, you aren't a very effective teacher.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 04:20 PM
 
1,336 posts, read 1,527,482 times
Reputation: 202
Quote:
Originally Posted by toobusytoday View Post
Or they could just study the last administration about how we got into the current problems.
This statement proves you yourself don't have a grasp of the situation.

For 100 years, mortgage loans were the safest and most profitable a bank could make. Then Clinton started enforcing the misguided "Community Redevelopment Act" which forced banks to make loans to unqualified applicants. If banks didn't have their quota, the Clinton. Then Democrat-led Fannie Mae bought thousands of these bad loans. Bush tried 12 times to get the regulators regulated, but Dems defeated in committee each time.

So in other words for you lay people, Democrat policy was at the root of this whole crisis and they refused to regulate themselves.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 05:35 PM
 
272 posts, read 728,603 times
Reputation: 119
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eeeee22895 View Post
I don't call imparting good sense "raising" a child. Do you think a teacher's job stops at X's and O's? If so, you aren't a very effective teacher.
Then you don't have a very good grasp of either job. Yours is imparting good sense. Mine is teaching skills and presenting content. Learning those skills and taking in that content is the student's job, hopefully after having good sense imparted by the parent.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 05:55 PM
 
412 posts, read 937,634 times
Reputation: 219
I think most schools do cover economics and federal government. Mine did, anyway. Personal finance should be included, since it seems like many people don't understand it.

However, I definitely don't think that schools should teach partisan talking points as undisputed facts.
 
Old 02-28-2009, 06:30 PM
 
13,979 posts, read 25,889,429 times
Reputation: 39902
Economics is a required semester course in our high school. Political Science is also.

No teacher should consider these classes as permission to espouse their own political agenda.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:45 PM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top