How Not to Get an Education

A student came in a few days before the final for help. She asked about a concept in the first chapter that was going to be covered on the test. I explained. She asked about a word in my explanation.

The word she asked about was "input." Inputs are the resources used in production to produce output. In pizza production, inputs are cheese, pepperoni, electricity, ovens, labor, etc. I probably used the word 1,000 times. Apparently she did not understand any of it.

I said, "When you hear a word that you do not know you should ask."

She said, "I am too scared to ask."

I said, "Then you will suffer, because you will miss so much of your education. And in the job market, it will be hard to compete if you are too shy to ask for the information you need. You have to overcome this."

She said she accepted that. I told her to at least ask the professor after class or during office hours.

It hurts to see a student underperform so badly because of fear. Since I give out Snickers bars--the normal size, not minis--to encourage participation, call on students to keep the discussion going, and constantly ask if there are questions, I cannot understand why someone would think that I would mind if someone asked a question.

Sitting and failing is such a waste. And waste is the worst sin in economics.

Viewpoint

For the first time I am writing a story about someone from the backwoods. Since my relatives are from the backwoods, I know the language intimately. Heck, I speak it fluently. I also understand the culture.

My third cousin, for instance, was the only person in sixth grade to be able to legally drive his pickup truck to middle school. There are plenty of family stories about fishing in the morning before school, owning one pair of shoes that you only wore to church, driving the wagon into town in the winter with heated bricks wrapped in cloth for warmth, cattle theft, backwoods murders, and marriages between young folks.

For the story to have an authentic voice, a first person viewpoint would be nice. I think this sentence--"I hunkered down and snuck up the hill to our family plot, thankful for the quiet pine straw under my toes."--reads better than-- "He hunkered down and snuck up the hill to his family's plot, thankful for the quiet pine straw under his toes."

But with horror and misery, first person viewpoint is so difficult to balance. First person misery can become whining.

Almost as much whining as this post.

Using Technology

My middle son's best friends live in another state. He went to school with them before we moved. He now chats with them on the phone for hours a day, plays games with them on the Wii and XBox 360, IMs with them, emails with them, voice chats on the 360 with them, etc.

One of his friends visits over spring break. That friend is also flying in today for a summer visit. Of course we need his flight information in order to pick him up. Transferring that information to us was hard, somehow.

We already know he's flying into Atlanta. The information we need is (1) arrival time (2) flight number (3) city of origin. We don't really need to know the city of origin, but it helps when locating the flight on the Arrivals screen at the airport.

Julia and I figured that it would take one minute to put this information into an email. Quick, easy, saved. They wanted to fax it. I don't have a dedicated fax line, so I would have to set the machine up. The print quality on my cheapo fax machine is not good, either. Not a good idea. Could you email it?

So his family said, "We'll scan it and put it in an email." My son was on the phone with them at the time.

We said, "Just type it into an email." So the friend starts calling the information out over the phone. So I need to stop what I'm doing and write this down? Send an email! No, don't scan it. Just type the information into an email. It is the equivalent of 3 words.

You spend all day communicating over various electronic media with my son, remember? You can use the communication for useful things, not just for yakking about video games.

I am at risk of an electronic aneurysm.

I Was Too Slow

Quite a few of my students use laptops in class. I know I would.

One laptop users has unsuccessfully taken my course multiple times. Now and then, in walking around class, I would see that he was surfing the web instead of taking notes. At other times I would see him furtively clicking away what he was doing when I approached.

I never said anything to him. I'm not that kind of guy.

He took my course this summer, too. He sat in the back with his laptop. I assumed he was still surfing in class. And every day he would leave after one hour of a course that lasted an hour and forty minutes per day. He missed a few days here and there, too.

When he turned in his final, he told me, "I hope I never see you again."

I nodded. About the time he walked out, I realized what my reply should have been.

I should have said, "I barely saw you this time around."

Learning by Doing

Economics is about choices. But many students have not made some of the choices I teach them about. Some have only held one job. A few have never held a job. Many have never seen an involved production process.

I often mention pizza in the course. My first economics teacher used pizza often. Most students like it and can relate to decisions involving consumption of pizza. And, though few have made pizza, they understand the involved process by which it is made. But there is no substitute for "doing."

Every year I get more students who have played interactive online games in which they make lots of decisions--some production decisions and some trade decisions.

In the virtual world, they have owned their own business and have striven to get ahead in a competitive economy. These students should understand more about economic decision making than other students (other things being equal, such as real world experience).

I never found a good database, though. In particular, I find the students around me have all had high school economics. Few online gamers have had economics. There is some crossover, who have had economics and gaming experience, but not enough to clearly show in the data.

I know that other researchers have had such data problems before, but this is my first.

Professors who review my work have suggested that I use the online games in class to test their effects, but I am reluctant to do so. The games are addictive. I might turn half my class from decent students into excellent gamers, but terrible students.

Research is not pretty. Maybe you remember my poem on the subject.

Freedom?

Today I showed a news video that I recorded long ago about a man in the D. C. area who was jailed for planting trees on his golf course in the wrong place.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24166

The county gave approval to the man, then later the county hired a new arborialist (what a title!) who interpreted zoning regulations differently. The property owner was ordered to change $125,000 worth of landscaping. He refused and was thrown in jail for contempt of court.

He had planted trees too close to the neighbor's yard according to the new arborialist. The neighbor was the property owner's father, who did not care where the trees were.

The county also required that the man construct a nature trail that led to an eight lane highway. Further, a hill behind the clubhouse was in violation of zoning ordinances, but the commission refused to say what was wrong with the hill (too high? too low?).

Eventually the county required that the man plant more trees.

The Declaration of Independence says that we are endowed with the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. "The pursuit of happiness" meant property rights.

When government takes away property rights at will, then we are one step from slavery.

The Inside

Things are bigger on the inside
When tables, wall paper and La-Z-Boys cohere
Into the shape of rooms.

When God picked up this house
I saw it could never have fit
On the lifeless dirt and broken Coke bottles beneath.

I remember a ghost house
That I lived in, eating spirit food
Cooked on kitchen apparitions.

Now the incoherent surface of the moon
With moon ash, moon rocks, and moon-scorched microwaves,
Is all I can see.

Later, when even the ash is gone, I will wonder how
The humongous haunted house ever fit within the chain-links.
Things are bigger on the inside.