At 08:37 PM 10/16/1999 -0700, you wrote: >Michael, one more thought. I don't recall how old you are, but those of us >who were teaching during the Vietnam war all remember how much the vets >contributed to the classroom atmosphere. They probably had a great deal in >common with your prisoner students. I think that it's not just Vietnam vets or prisoners. On a mundane level, it's good to simply have _adults_ in my classes. Too many of my students are 18-year olds (who are usually much better as individuals than in a group, BTW). Maybe it's my personality, but I have a hard time motivating 18 year olds to be interested in econ. or political economy (though the problem is not their age as much as their lack of experience with the real world).They seem to want to simply know what's going to be on the test (though maybe it's because almost all of my students are frosh biz majors). The above 22-year olds, people who have been in the world working for a living, come to the class already motivated (even the MBA students I had last summer). They may have "wrong" opinions (by my lights), but at least they have opinions that are their own rather than their parents' (or 180 degrees opposite from their parents' opinions). I swear that teaching econ. to 18 year olds is a disaster. It encourages multiple choice and true/false testing and teaching from the textbooks. It's much easier to teach stuff where there's a correct answer and only one correct answer. Worse, the students often don't know enough about the world to question the textbook and are likely to be indoctrinated. If they have a perspective of their own that allows them to think critically about the course, it's taken from Ayn Rand or some other libertarian type (or Limbaugh). I would bet that the folks who are most behind the efforts to teach economics in high school are Chicago schoolers, who want to indoctrinate the students young (like the canard about the Jesuits). Students should take a year or two off after high school! Economics should be not be taught in high school. And strangely, I have a perverse wish that the new frosh econ. major who's a big Ayn Randite will take my intro econ. course next semester. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/JDevine.html
