Skip to main content

Teaching for the presidential election

I must be a complete glutton for punishment but I think I want to completely re-arrange the schedule for my Principles class. Yes, classes start next week and yes, I probably am crazy! But while listening to Barack Obama speak last night*, it occurred to me that although I plan to talk about two of the topics that are going to be front-and-center during the election - namely, how our income tax system works and the asymmetric information problems that are crucial for understanding health care - I won't get to them until AFTER November 4th (for non-economist readers, these are both topics that tend to be on the 'optional' list for what to cover in an intro micro class so they are often tacked on at the end of the term, if at all). It seems to me that I should move them up much earlier in the semester so we can use these tools to analyze the candidates' proposals.

I spend the first four weeks of the semester talking about the core principles of economics, including opportunity costs, thinking on the margin, cost-benefit analysis and incentives. I also cover the positive/normative distinction and the equity-efficiency trade-off. After the first mid-term, we get into basic supply and demand, followed by elasticity. I'm thinking that that is where I would then go into asymmetric information, followed by the tax system (taking us up to the end of October). For any economist readers, what do you think? Would this make sense? For non-economist readers, am I crazy to try to re-arrange my schedule at this point? I'd appreciate it if you would leave opinions in the comments!

* One editorial comment about Obama's speech: Wow! Whatever your political leanings, it has to make you incredibly proud that we have reached a day when an African-American man is a serious contender for President!
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousAugust 29, 2008 at 11:20 AM

    I think its a GREAT idea, though it may be hard to fully accomplish the things you will try to do in such a limited time to prepare it. I know health care to young people seems like a complex issue, and possibly hard to understand. The tax idea is absolutely a great idea, but I think you already knew where I stood in terms of mixing these lessons together.

    It would seem to me that Elasticity would be the biggest part that would be important to focus on, especially in terms of understanding the gas and oil situation which many people will relate to and fight it easier to understand. I think that would be the best topic to start with to make it the likeliest of possibilities that students become engaged in what your saying, because they can relate to it. Maybe also a cost benefit analysis in terms of health care and insurance companies, but maybe I'm off base with that.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu...
3 comments
Read more

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing effective courses means thinking through the WHAT and the HOW (in that order)

I think most folks have heard by now that the California State University system (in which I work) has announced the intention to prepare for fall classes to be primarily online. I have to say, I am sort of confused why everyone is making such a big deal about this - no matter what your own institution is saying, no instructor who cares about their own mental health (let alone their students) should be thinking we are going back to 'business as usual' in the fall. In my mind, the only sane thing to do is at least prepare  for the possibility of still teaching remotely. Fortunately, unlike this spring, we now have a lot more time for that preparation. Faculty developers across the country have been working overtime since March, and they aren't slowing down now; we are all trying to make sure we can offer our faculty the training and resources they will need to redesign fall courses for online or hybrid modalities. But one big difference between the training faculty needed ...
Post a Comment
Read more