This blog is being created to fill a gap in economics education. While there are many economics blogs, and some of them touch on education, there seems to be no blog about teaching high school, or secondary school, economics. For this simple reason, I am starting this blog.
In this blog I will comment on my experiences with teaching high school level economics, materials that would be of interest to high school economics teachers and ideas, issues, and other blogs that high school economics teachers might find useful. The goal is for this blog to be a tool for improving the level of economics being taught in high schools - hence the title.
Quite simply, I have found that most of the material developed for teaching high school economics is not very good - and a good deal of it is awful. It is either very basic or is Advanced Placement (at some point in the next few weeks I will post my thoughts on AP economics). The reason for this is pretty simple. Most professional/academic economists cannot be bothered with high school economics. I expect that many just consider it of no importance - typically they will note that exposure to economics in high school has little impact on a student's college economics grade. For them the focus is on the college level (for many, "real" economics does not begin until the graduate level). On the other hand, most high school teachers have a weak grasp on economics, particularly in areas of theory, policy and analysis. More importantly, most teachers do not know where to begin in developing any economics knowledge. Typically, they have been assigned to teach the class because nobody else wants it or they are interested in the stock market. Generally, in preparation to teach economics, they revert back to their college economics textbook, which they find as inscrutable as they had found it in college (on a side note, while economics professors know economics, they are as a group not very good teachers). And as a result, they teach economics badly - which only confirms the expectation among academic/professional economists that there is no purpose to teaching high school economics. While, the simple solution would be for professional/academic economists to do more to promote high school teachers knowledge of economics, that will not happen - there are no incentives for them to do this. So, economists and teachers might as well live on different planets.
However, I believe that there is a real need to teaching economics in high school and that it not be done badly. However, the only way this will happen is if there is some way to bring economics to teachers. That is the goal of this blog.
I am starting this blog at the start of summer vacation to get in the habit of blogging over the summer (since a blog needs new posts to remain relevant) and also because I will be overhauling my whole economics class over the summer. This overhaul is necessary since the economic crisis that began in earnest in 2008 has been causing huge waves in economic thinking and economic policy. Up to this point, I have been adapting my economic course to include the issues of the crisis. However, this has been inadequate. So, over the summer, I will be recording the process of re-building my course (explaining my reasoning and including the links to the materials I am using), and then in the fall I will be commenting on my experience with this new course format.
So, let's begin.
