Welcome to the world of economics! Despite what you may have heard, economics isn’t focused on graphs and numbers. Economics is about human beings in the marketplace, and its most valuable insights don’t require graphs, charts, or mathematical formulas. The importance of property rights, the rule of law, and limited government, the rights of free association and free exchange—the importance, in other words, of human liberty—flow from economic principles that can be easily learned and appreciated. Read more »
This course has been designed to help you understand how incentives and information influence the choices people make, and how governments influence economic progress. Your students will learn basic economic principles needed to explore and understand such issues as free trade, globalization, inflation, recessions, surpluses and shortages, global warming, energy, stimulus packages and bailouts. These topics dominate today’s headlines and are the issues we must understand in order to engage the world around us.
This one-semester course will take your students through the best resources currently available in economic education. It provides 16 weeks (90 hours) of instruction addressing concepts covered in microeconomics and macroeconomics, and it fully satisfies the ½ credit (Carnegie Unit) required by most high schools. The Teacher’s Pack includes a Teacher Guide and a four disc DVD Pack. The Teacher Guide contains weekly EBox activities, thorough answer keys and three major multiple choice exams. The DVD pack includes over 3 hours of videos illustrating economic concepts through real life applications. The Student Pack includes a Student Guide and a two disc DVD Pack. The Student Guide contains worksheets covering all the required readings as well as several multiple choice practice tests to help you prepare for the exams. The DVD Pack includes an engaging one hour lecture by Dr. Russel Sobel and The Common Sense Reader, a CD-ROM with articles and resources from the Heritage Foundation and the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy.
This program also contains many options for enriching your study of economics, such as critical thinking discussion guides, in-class debates, and engaging simulations. You can stretch this course well beyond 16 weeks if you choose to take advantage of all or most of the “optional” activities.
Upon completion of this course, you and your students will have a greater awareness and appreciation of economics, and of what America’s founders believed about the proper role of government and its influence on economic progress. Most importantly, my hope is that by understanding these ideas that shape our lives and our world, your students will be equipped to stand and speak confidently for the key principles of economic freedom.
Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free.
-Ronald Reagan, 1981