A recent recording of my television show (The K-12 Revolution with Dr. Gary Marvin Davison, MTN Channel 17, Wednesdays at 6:00 PM or on YouTube at Holly for Grace) featured my work with a Grade 7 student who is from the most impoverished family with whom I've ever worked--- and my forty-plus years in inner city K-12 education have led me into the homes of the economically poorest members of our society.
Damon Preston (data privacy pseudonym) has been featured in previous articles posted on this blog for his astounding academic progress and the implicit conquest of very vexing life challenges.
During the recent television recording session of reference, Damon and I proceeded to get most of the way through my chapter on Economics from my nearly completed book, Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, so that he was able to demonstrate just how much a Grade 7 student from exceedingly challenged circumstances can master of a high school course on economics (micro- and macro-).
In the course of the hour for recording the show, Damon and I discussed various matters pertinent to microeconomics, such as consumer influence on supply and demand; the Consumer Confidence Index; determination of wages and salaries; personal investment portfolios, including purchase of stocks and bonds, and acquisition of real estate; and tax and FICA deductions from the paychecks of wage and salary earners.
Damon and I then turned to matters of macroeconomics:
We discussed fiscal and monetary policy, so that Damon understands that the former involves the budgetary matters of expenditure and revenue while the latter concerns money supply.
Damon also understands the difference between federal deficit (annual budgetary shortfall) and debt (accumulated budgetary shortfall) and the various political disputes that swirl around such matters.
Damon fully grasps the essentials of the Federal Reserve System (including the essential functions of Federal Reserve Board led by Janet Yellen and the three ways that the Fed has of controlling money supply [establishment of reserve ratios, adjusting interest rates, and bond buying and selling]).
And Damon and I discussed the three great economic thinkers Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard Keynes, with their various degrees of faith in pure capitalism and the way in which the ideas of these thinkers still define our national debate on matters of economic policy today.
Thus, Damon now not only has received the essence of high school courses on both microeconomics and macroeconomics; he also possesses knowledge that many university graduates would do well to have rocking around in their brains.
All of you reading this blog should be very clear that what I'm up to in the overhaul of K-12 education is the provision of the only genuine route out of poverty via the democratization of the United States through the provision of an equally excellent K-12 education to all of our precious children.
Damon Preston offers a particularly impressive case of a student for whom severe poverty in the context of the United States standard of living will not be an impediment to a life of cultural enrichment, civic participation, and professional satisfaction.
You have and will continue to read about many such cases in the articles that I post on this blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment