Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders
Below is a link that gives a good example of the kinds of things we should be teaching in our primary schools to ensure that classical liberal ideas such as the free-market and individual choice are well understood by our children. This can also help innoculate the young from being taught "bad economics" by socialists as they get older...
Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders
Teaching Basic Economics to Fifth Graders
posted by Technical Bard | 16:11
4 Comments:
wonderful to teach our kids about trade and money. i think they get these ideas rather instinctively. however, along with the good bits of free markets, shouldn't we also be honest with our kids regarding the not so good parts? enron leaps to mind as one example. it ain't all profit and swimming pools on the free market afterall.
There needs to be lots more of this. Miseducation and bad ideas about economics cost society massive amounts of money when they translate into mistaken policies like susbsidies, protectionism, excessive taxation, etc... Knowing why free trade is good is way more important than knowing the capital of Uruguay, or what a gerund is; in fact its probably as important as anything on the curriculum.
If we could eradicate economic misconceptions, and did nothing at all to improve the rest of education, we'd be streets ahead of the rest of the developed world.
Thanks for this link! I wrote a post on it and my experiences. I wish I had had this teacher in school!
That was a great article. The beauty of those lessons is they teach economics by example rather than by presenting abstract graphs. I wish I could get them to teach those lessons at my daughter's school.
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