Campus Voices
Upper School
Seniors in AP Economics this fall are seeing their course work play out on television and in newspaper headlines. The present economic crisis is a worry for all of us but is pure gold (figuratively) for an economics class. Markets are now the main subject of many everyday conversations. Any introductory course in economics begins with the basics and the past month has allowed us to immediately apply basic concepts to the daily reports of the stock market plummeting, credit markets drying up, and unemployment rising.
Over the past couple of weeks, Massachusetts officials have been publically grappling with a projected shortfall in state revenues and the inevitable cuts in services that will follow. A few weeks back, the class tackled a small project that put them in the middle of such a situation. They were asked to play the role of city council members faced with budget problems for the upcoming year. They were told that they could not raise taxes but would have to evaluate twelve new programs. Five must be eliminated. Their job was to decide which programs were kept and which received the proverbial axe. They were provided with the twelve programs which covered a cross section of municipal services. The class was divided into groups and told to make their case using the criteria of providing the most services to the greatest number, and also to be aware of the political implications for their reelection.
The ensuing debates were both interesting and led back to the title of the exercise which was: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want (But If You Try Sometimes, You Get What You Need).” As a learning experience, one of the most interesting outcomes (to this teacher) was the effort by the students to grapple with the issues of need, taxation, and scarce municipal resources.
In coming weeks and months we will be exploring concepts such as cyclical instability (we have all become familiar with this topic), specifically deficits, surpluses, and debt. I suspect that as we continue through topics such as the Federal Reserve System and monetary policy the headlines in the news will keep pace with the course.
While the present economic situation heightens our interest in economics it also calls to mind the old curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
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