How I Get 7th & 8th Graders to 'Buy In' to Economics
It is not hard to understand how economics gets such a bad rap. Traditional econ classes are often boring and abstract. My own college Intro to Econ class overlapped lunchtime, so I missed more than a few sessions. And since we weren't allowed to ask questions in the lectures, the dense materials and mysterious graphs flew over my head.
Once I had embarked on my second career, in education, I took a two-week summer workshop called Economics for Teachers. It completely changed my thoughts on economic education. The Thomas R. Brown Foundation, an Arizona non-profit that supports economic education for teachers, plans hands-on workshops and seminars facilitated by the esteemed professors from our Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, as well as by dynamic educators from across the nation. After hundreds of hours receiving economic education and decades of teaching economics, I won two prestigious awards and was even mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article.
The key to making economics education accessible and engaging is to create buy-in, and that can be done by starting an ongoing experience. It is crucial to show connections between economic theory and the students' world, particularly at the middle-school level of doubting thirteen- and fourteen-year-old "children." But creating real-world connections is not difficult; nothing is more real than economics.
The first day of class, I choose four students to perform a skit: "There's no such thing as a free lunch" (adapted by Roland Lewin of Dos Pueblos High School in California, from a 1980's textbook story). At the end, I dictate the definition we will use during this course: Economics is the study of how individuals, groups, and nations allocate their scarce resources in an attempt to satisfy their unlimited wants. The homework is to memorize the definition. Beginning the next day, each student has the opportunity to say the definition as a pledge, with arms crossed over the chest (to indicate supply and demand graphs, but they don't know that yet!). For up to two weeks, the recitation will earn students classroom money that will be used for a variety of things throughout the year. Thus begins ScarceCity, our classroom city of politics and economics.
One of my favorite activities lets students explore the production possibilities frontier, which is a fancy way of saying that the more efficiently resources are used, the more productive they will be. A simple sloping graph indicates efficient use of resources; anything inside that line is inefficient and anything outside is impossible. Students learn the variables that shift the PP curve: the quantity and quality of human capital, natural resources, capital resources, technology, rule of law, financial markets, infrastructure, and supply shock.
To begin the simulation, students receive prepared bags with a variety of resources: chocolate kisses, peanuts, various amounts of production money (different from class money), and dice or poker chips to represent technology. I write the recipe on the board: two kisses, two chips, one peanut, and $50 to produce a candy bar. The point is to team up or trade to accumulate the resources needed.
I extend the lesson by changing the recipe each round. Requiring more peanuts, for example, indicates a shortage of peanuts. Requiring fewer technology chips suggests improved technology. Students have a ball trading with each other and redeeming their resources for candy bars. They are paid for their efforts in classroom money at the end of the lesson by selling me the candy bars - unless they decide to eat them, which creates opportunity cost. But opportunity cost is another lesson.
The next day they review their notes from the simulation and the production variables. They analyze the recipe changes and how and why they affected the production possibilities; they identify whether the curve shifted to the right or the left. By relating these concepts to their hands-on activity, students understand and can apply the ideas later. The production possibilities frontier now makes sense.
My economics class is two semesters and meets for just under an hour daily and we cover a lot of material in that time. My scope and sequence works well for vocabulary and concept building, beginning with scarcity and resources; and then moving on to production, opportunity cost, economic systems, marginal thinking, and incentives. I hope to share more on those topics in the future.
So why do I teach economics? Americans say economics is an important issue in the upcoming election, but they can't explain why. Economics is not just money and business; it is a social science of human behavior. Students of economics benefit from learning to think and make decisions; they realize that today's actions have consequences in the future. If we tell stories, engage in hands-on activities and games, and relate economics to the real world, our students get it - and love it.
