This article presents findings from an investigation of the treatment of wealth distribution by high school economics textbooks. The eight leading high school economics texts in the United States were examined.

This article presents an overview of major factors contributing to the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Descriptions of teaching resources and ideas for lesson plans are provided.

High-stakes standardized tests in reading and limited instructional time are two powerful disincentives for teaching economics in the elementary classroom. In this article, integrating instruction in poetry and economic decision-making is presented as one way to maximize the use of scarce instructional time. Following a brief introduction to the…

Social studies teachers of all grade levels are responsible for (a) connecting students with standards-based content, (b) engaging students in their own learning, (c) expanding students' levels of understanding by co-constructing new knowledge, (d) motivating students to express and exchange ideas with one another, and (e) incorporating social…

This article concerns textbook analysis regarding the presentation of socialism in four leading high school social studies books, one in each of the following subjects: United States history, world history, United States government, and economics. Findings indicate that students relying on these texts to gain understanding of socialism and…

The issues surrounding the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit are complex, but not beyond the reach of young students. This study finds scant treatment of the federal budget, national debt, and budget deficit in high schools today. It is hardly surprising that high school teachers spend so little time discussing these topics in…

The typical method of presenting supply and demand in high school classes often leaves students with an impression that markets are simple and function effortlessly. In reality, the effectiveness of markets depends on the quality of complex institutions such as private property and property-rights enforcement. Students often do not realize that…

This article describes the Youth Enterprise Academy (YEA), a program developed at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Education through the partnership for a private foundation, the state government, a private not-for-profit organization, and the local public schools. The YEA is designed to improve the financial and economic…

Methods courses, the mainstays of preservice teacher education in social studies, are curiously understudied in general terms although there are numerous focused studies on such topics as methods textbooks, problem-based learning, and critical thinking, including an issue focused on reflections on the methods course in the "International Social…

The authors outline an innovative activity that helps teachers make the abstract concepts of scarcity and allocation concrete in the K-12 classroom. Students evaluate the scarcity of chocolate and often determine, incorrectly, that the candy is not scarce because there is enough for each student to have one piece. After students reveal their…

In this article, the author introduces Birka, a strategic trading game for high school economics students in either regular or advanced placement classes. For the game, students assume the role of Vikings who have returned to the medieval outpost of Birka to trade the loot from villages they have plundered. Playing cards represent the loot:…

As they work to master the supply-and-demand model, high school economics students spend considerable time studying competitive markets for such goods as wheat, apples, and corn. They usually spend less time studying markets for labor. That is a shame, because high school students have a vital interest in understanding why some jobs pay more than…

In this article, the authors provide a historical review of how the U.S. government has funded its participation in major wars during the past 150 years. They focus attention on five conflicts--the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Those conflicts were funded in different ways, with each funding method…

Although there is a strong case for teaching economics at the middle school level, there are practical hurdles to making that goal a reality. Academic economists, who are well trained in economic theory and its applications, are not trained, generally, in the theory and application of effective curriculum development and teaching methods for the…

For some time now, it has been the posture of major league baseball that taxpayers should bear some or all of the cost of new stadiums. They argue that the community will benefit both economically and psychologically from such an investment. A stadium, they claim, will bring new jobs, increased land values, enhanced tax collections, and perhaps…