Feducation Essay

• Introduction
• Taking the Fed Challenge
• The Fed Enters the Classroom
• "A Tremendous Resource for Teachers"
• Never Too Young to Learn
• Working Economics into the Classroom
• Saving Our Future: Economics and Personal Finance
• For more information

 

Never Too Young to Learn

Say the word “economics” to a group of adults, and you’re likely to inspire dreaded flashbacks of overhead projector slides and confusing line graphs. As a field of study, economics could use some PR help, Suiter admits.

“In general, economics gets a bad name,” she says. “People think of it as just supply and demand charts. They ask us, ‘How can you teach this to kids, and why do they need to know it?’ My answer is that we’re teaching kids how to make good decisions. We’re teaching them that scarcity exists and that you can’t have everything you want. You have to prioritize and make choices.

“Economics provides a framework for making decisions. If more kids and adults had that framework, they would also make better political decisions and be more informed voters.”

Most of the St. Louis Fed’s programs are open to teachers at all levels, including elementary, middle and high school. Suiter and her co-workers at the UM-St. Louis center have developed programs for kids at every grade level, including a program for first- and second-graders called “Do a Zoo.”

“Do a Zoo” invites children to bring in stuffed animals, classify them (as a fish, reptile or mammal) and choose which animals to include in a zoo display that will be attended by their classmates.

“In making choices, they’re using economic decision-making and learning about opportunity cost and how to choose between scarce resources,” says Suiter. “They also learn about capital resources when they set up the display.”

At the elementary school level—and even when they’re a few years older—kids have a tendency to believe that they can have everything, Pettit says.

“I don’t think young people understand that you have to trade off and make choices,” she says. “Studies show that kids have already made a lot of decisions by the time they get to sixth grade, such as what they’re spending money on and what they’re going to do. If you’re going to make an impression on kids and their choices, you need to get to them early.

Simple programs such as “Do a Zoo” can get that lesson across in a fun and painless manner, Pettit says. “Sometimes we make things more complex than they are,” she says. “You can’t teach monetary policy to second-graders, but you can teach opportunity cost. Taking economic concepts and making them simple is helpful for all of us. You’re opening minds and turning lights on.”

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