(Hemera)
This bleg comes from reader Wayne Smith, who asks for suggestions on which economic concepts are the most important for kids to learn:
What topics do the Freakonomics readers feel are most important to teach kids 8-13 years old? Aside, of course, from the fact that the man keeps you down.
I was listening to The History of Sesame Street audio book the other day and thought that it would be nice to come up with a YouTube show with decent production value that outlines basic economic concepts in an entertaining way. Concepts like capital, value, supply/demand, trade, time value of money, interest, saving and borrowing, opportunity cost, taxation,and so on. This would be more narrative than something like Khan Academy. Naturally each concept can have an episode devoted to it and each concept can be addressed in different ways in different episodes, but in scenarios geared toward kids. What do the readers think about this as a concept?
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You’ve got my attention already!
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I think this is an amazing idea. I taught for Junior Achievements for a year during college, and it’s surprising how kids can grasp these concepts so easily and actually apply them to their everyday life. It definitely would give them a head start in today’s fast paced world!
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I like this idea. Here is an interesting approach for teaching two the macro theories of Hayek and Keynes. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk
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Unfortunately, thanks to our worship of standardized testing, kids today can graduate Highschool having never taken any economics. I would be happy if the typical American understood the simple concept of supply and demand. After that I would say opportunity cost/time value of money would be important.
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I think it’s an excellent idea! Make sure u let us know when u have finished something for our kids to watch
This is a great idea. When I was young, like most kids my sister and I would set up a lemonade stand in our front yard. Usually we didn’t get many customers and would abandon the idea after a few hours until the next summer. However, my father who studied Economics as an undergrad, took this opportunity to teach me about price discrimination. His basic example was that if I were to see a Mercedes-Benz pull up to the stand, charge them a higher price than I normally would. However, if I saw a old beater pull up, to charge a lower price. He explained it simply enough that I understood the concept reasonably well, and I even ended up following in his footsteps and am currently studying Economics at Clemson University. I think the main thing I took away from his mini-lecture was that prices can be flexible, and there are more things behind a price than just production costs. As you can imagine this was an amazing concept to a young kid.
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-Sunk costs
-Comparative advantage and trade
-The importance of delayed gratification (More personal finance than economics, but a very important concept)
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Gotta include using data, risk/reward, trade offs, and incentives.
Opportunity cost should be #1, and probably #s 2-5 as well. Anytime I end up discussing the economics of an issue, whether it’s US policy, or our household budget, opportunity cost is the key issue I’m thinking about. And if I’m talking economics with someone who never studied econ, opportunity cost is the first issue that gets brought up to show how it’s useful for making an economic discussion. Just about any economic concept will be explained naturally by applying the idea opportunity cost to the appropriate situation. It’s also an issue that children don’t grasp naturally, but isn’t too hard to explain with some simple examples either.