• Economic View – Freshman Economics Won’t Be Quite the Same – NYTimes.com

  MY day job is teaching introductory economics to about 700 Harvard undergraduates a year. Lately, when people hear that, they often ask how the economic crisis is changing what’s offered in a freshman course.

  They’re usually disappointed with my first answer: not as much as you might think. Events have been changing so quickly that we teachers are having trouble keeping up. Syllabuses are often planned months in advance, and textbooks are revised only every few years.

  But there is another, more fundamental reason: Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.

  Nonetheless, the teaching of basic economics will need to change in some subtle ways in response to recent events. Here are four:

  tags: economics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

About the author:  Jason Welker is a teacher at Zurich International School in Switzerland, where he teaches Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Economics. In addition to maintaining numerous online resources for economics student and educators, Jason developed the online version of the IB Economics course for Virtual High School and is currently authoring a textbook for IB Economics students for Pearson Baccalaureate which will be available in Spring of 2011. His economics student wiki won the 2007 "Best Educational Wiki" award from the "EduBlog Awards".

Related posts:

1. Welker’s daily links 11/05/2009
2. Welker’s daily links 05/14/2009
3. Welker’s daily links 03/02/2009
4. Welker’s daily links 11/06/2009
5. Welker’s daily links 09/30/2009

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