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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.
Sorry, I've done both jobs. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort or time to inject a little practical information along with content. It also makes the more lesson more interesting and lasting. If you're unable or unwilling to veer off the dry rote learning, perhaps you're in the wrong profession.
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.
If you teach economics, you're teaching conservatism. There's no getting around it.
Example: Tax an activity and you discourage it. It's undeniable. The current adminstration has pledged to increase tax on corporate profits. That, in itself, will decrease corporate profits, ergo depress the DOW, ergo depress the economy.
See, I never mentioned politics or ideology; just a simple economics fact. If you teach enough facts, students will form their own ideology. And THAT is probably what most of you teachers are afraid of.
If you teach economics, you're teaching conservatism. There's no getting around it.
Example: Tax an activity and you discourage it. It's undeniable. The current adminstration has pledged to increase tax on corporate profits. That, in itself, will decrease corporate profits, ergo depress the DOW, ergo depress the economy.
See, I never mentioned politics or ideology; just a simple economics fact. If you teach enough facts, students will form their own ideology. And THAT is probably what most of you teachers are afraid of.
You are absolutely right that economics should have been taught at the school you attended.
I don't think schools teach anything in terms of practical economics, finance, or international finance.
There's a big difference between passing a class in econ or passing a test, and being able to explain this financial mess. How many highschool seniors could accurately explain it on graduation day? I bet very few, maybe 10-25%.
In the classes I took in highschool and college, there was too much focus on "rational man", man is always rational, and weighing the pros and cons of taking an action. There isn't enough pyschology in econ classes to accurately explain what's going on. Some people are just plain crooks
And international finance...could many highschool seniors explain why the worlds wealth has moved east in the last 10-20 years (to Singapore, Japan, China)? Could they name the top creditor nations in the world?
I learned virtually nothing about China in...a total of 16 years of school? K-12 and four years of college. They only have, 1/6 of the worlds population, they're our largest creditor...no big deal
See, I never mentioned politics or ideology; just a simple economics fact. If you teach enough facts, students will form their own ideology. And THAT is probably what most of you teachers are afraid of.
Isn't the goal of education to create students that can form their own ideology? What would make a teacher afraid of that? I don't understand.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Eeeee22895
...... We should teach kids that corporations invest capital, provide innovations, make necessary goods and services, and create jobs. Government does none of these.
.....
That's popular opinion in this country for people who listen to radio talk shows, but in fact govt does all those things. Think about it.
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.
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