Grumbling 6: Less is More and Longer Lasting

It was another magical, mystical Rightwood morning; soft rays of sunlight slipping and skipping through the morning mist over leaves of scarlet, orange, and brown, serenaded by soft sighs of soothing autumn breezes. I was sitting outside the bakery with a good friend, Julia, who is one of two Econ teachers at Rightwood High. She has a new colleague, Charley, who is fresh out of the credential program. He is extremely smart, which can be a problem. He is teaching the general Econ course for the first time and thinks that his students should know Algebra 3 and other important stuff. 

Julia, ever the optimist, explained her strategy for converting the bright young lad into a great high school Econ teacher. She gave him a multiple-choice exam. 

The first question was:

What is the purpose of your one-semester Econ course?

a. prepare your students for a Ph.D. program and the Nobel Prize

b. prepare your students for their college micro and macro courses (2% of high school students will take a college Economics course! The Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol. 15, no. 3, 2001)

c. keep your students from graduating, ensuring that they go to summer school so they can really learn this stuff

d. demonstrate your incredible intelligence

e. teach your students how to graph

f. teach your students how to balance a checkbook

g. teach your students how to become rich in the stock market (Wish I knew!)

h. arm your students with Economic reasoning skills to help them achieve their goals

He chose b, c, d, e, f, and g. (While unfortunate, it is true that many Economics teachers agree with Charley. Remember, we are not describing the AP courses.)

Julia was somewhat disappointed. So she tried question #2. 

Would you be happy if your students

a. consider the cost of a choice before making a decision

b. apply benefit-cost analysis, using resources efficiently and effectively to achieve their goals

c. make marginal thinking an integral tool in all of their decisions

d. develop their human capital to prepare for their future

e. use supply and demand analysis to explain the cause and impact of current events

f. use economic reasoning to engage in civil discourse concerning economic policies, identifying distributive effects (who wins and who loses), and unintended consequences

g. achieve prosperity and tranquility 

After teaching Economics for close to fifty years (thus the Grumpy old Economist) I am convinced that the second list is the correct one, especially for the high school course.)

Charley thought that all of these (a-g) would make him happy. Julia is making progress. Charley, however, still thinks that it will be easy to teach all of these skills plus achieve the goals of the first list in one semester. He is a confident young man. He says that all it will take is a tightly organized syllabus which he is prepared to develop and follow to the letter. Julia has reminded him that the course is offered in the second semester of senior year and there are likely to be some distractions. He is going to have to be economical in the use of his (and his students’) human capital. 

It’s unclear that he is convinced. Maybe the “Less is more and longer lasting,” idea takes some time to recognize and accept?

Julia and I agreed on two things. 1. The longer we teach, the less we teach. We have learned to prioritize those Economic reasoning skills that students will be able to use to make informed decisions throughout their lives. 2. The coffee was pretty good that morning, accompanied by excellent maple bars. 

Our conversation was about a week ago. Today, the soft breezes have turned into mighty windstorms, the leaves have turned an ugly musty brown, the lawn has turned into a wet leaf bog. I’m using benefit-cost analysis to decide whether to outsource the leaf cleaning job or do it myself. My bias, supported by the law of comparative advantage, is to pay our local yard-cleaner-upper if I can get her to do it before the snow falls! Then comes the shoveling. There are advantages and disadvantages to living in the mountains!