I will be in Indianapolis as an FTE representative for the Liberty Fund “Co-Sponsored Alliance Meeting”, March 17-19, 2008.
This meeting will consist of two Socratic sessions on the morning of the 18th followed by 4 breakout sessions relating to the logistics of Liberty Fund conference.
Socratic Session One
Why Liberty? A Collection of Liberty Fund Essays
On Liberty - JS Mill
The Use of Knowledge in Society - FA Hayek
Capitalism and Freedom
Socratic Session Two
Why Liberty? A Collection of Liberty Fund Essays
A Place of Learning - M Oakeshott
Breakout session one
Discussion Leading
Database Management
Breakout session two
Program design and best practices
Conference guidelines and administration
Breakout session three
Liberty Fund Conference Program
Proposal Development
Breakout session four
Readings and copyrights
Conference evaluation and feedback
Monday, March 17, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Economics of Disasters
On March 6 the FTE was in Tempe for:
The Economics of Disasters workshop. Registration and a continental breakfast began at 8:00am for all our participants. The general program began promptly at 8:30am with an introduction to disasters by Kathy Ratte.
Kathy provided an excellent overview of lesson one in the five lesson curriculum sequence that makes up the FTE Economics of Disasters. During the course of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to engage with the following activities:
Are Disasters Good for the Economy?
Price Gouging Activity
Nobody Knows Everything - Game Slides (Adobe PDF/Powerpoint)
Her presentation was followed by an in depth application of economic reasoning to the topic of disasters by Dr. Daniel Benjamin.
Dan presented the economic impact of disasters and extended the discussion through an analysis of the role of the government in the mitigation of the results of disaster.
The Arizona Council on Economic Education’s goals are to assist teachers in improving their students’ economic and financial literacy and decision making skills, by providing them with content, methodologies and practical tools.
The Economics of Disasters workshop. Registration and a continental breakfast began at 8:00am for all our participants. The general program began promptly at 8:30am with an introduction to disasters by Kathy Ratte.
Kathy provided an excellent overview of lesson one in the five lesson curriculum sequence that makes up the FTE Economics of Disasters. During the course of the workshop, participants had the opportunity to engage with the following activities:
Are Disasters Good for the Economy?
Price Gouging Activity
Nobody Knows Everything - Game Slides (Adobe PDF/Powerpoint)
Her presentation was followed by an in depth application of economic reasoning to the topic of disasters by Dr. Daniel Benjamin.
Dan presented the economic impact of disasters and extended the discussion through an analysis of the role of the government in the mitigation of the results of disaster.
The Arizona Council on Economic Education’s goals are to assist teachers in improving their students’ economic and financial literacy and decision making skills, by providing them with content, methodologies and practical tools.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Your view of the economy in 2008
This is a follow up to a post from last month.
Just how badly is the United States really doing? Take a minute and vote on the survey to your right,then read on.
My colleague James D. Hamilton writes in the March 2, 2008 San Diego Union writes:
Sixty-one percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is already experiencing a recession, reported a recent AP/Ipsos poll. People who study the economy for a living are also concerned, but they are not quite as pessimistic. In a survey of economic forecasters by the National Association for Business Economics, 55 percent of the respondents declared that we're not in a recession and are not going to have one this year.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080302/news_lz1e2hamilton.html
Just how badly is the United States really doing? Take a minute and vote on the survey to your right,then read on.
My colleague James D. Hamilton writes in the March 2, 2008 San Diego Union writes:
Sixty-one percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy is already experiencing a recession, reported a recent AP/Ipsos poll. People who study the economy for a living are also concerned, but they are not quite as pessimistic. In a survey of economic forecasters by the National Association for Business Economics, 55 percent of the respondents declared that we're not in a recession and are not going to have one this year.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080302/news_lz1e2hamilton.html
Sunday, March 2, 2008
What U.S. Consumers Know About Economic Conditions
This post is prompted by a discussion about critical thinking and online facilitation in the UofW graduate online course Collaborating Communities. That discussion revolves around the role that facilitator feedback might play in facilitating critical thinking.
As I thought about this discussion, I reflected on the role that knowledge and a simple recall of that knowledge played in critical thinking. That is, can humans construct critical thinking in the absence of knowledge?
Richard Curtin
'The natural inquisitiveness of people was noted long ago when Aristotle began his book Metaphysics
Curtin's paper goes on to attempt to reconcile the Aristotlean view of the nature of humanity with actual behavior.
For those of us with experience in education the nature of human desire for knowledge is always floating about our design and delivery of our content and often springs to the front of our consciousness during assessment.
Curtin writes about the ideal that people desire knowledge that:Unfortunately, that is not the case. Nearly every profession has been disappointed with the amount
I look forward to any comments you might have about this topic and the question that Curtin ends the introduction of his paper with:
How can the often widespread lack of knowledge be reconciled with Aristotle’s view that people
Reading Russia
On the topic of reading, the following sources (short and long) are informative of Russia today and very reflective of what we are studying:
The Economist - Smoke and mirrors
The BBC - The Putin Project
The New York Times - Now Comes the Tough Part
Two books that I am currently reading may well be of interest for your summer reading list. These are for the generalist, if you are a history teacher I suspect that none of this will be new, although the presentation is provocative.
The first is Niall Ferguson's - The War of the World
Part 1 of the book deals with Stalin's USSR and extends and explains in depth the extent of the cultural, economic and legal impact of the command system on Russian society. Much of these deals with the period of WW II, although Ferguson does an excellent job of providing an historical context.
As you know, Ferguson is controversial and the reviews of this book were mixed, I suspect based upon ideological considerations. Part of a negative review from The New Yorker:
Ferguson's eight-hundred-page reevaluation of the Second World War presents itself as a grand theory about ethnic conflict, the end of empire, and the postwar triumph of the East. The exact contours of the theory, however, remain unclear. Ferguson argues that the central story of the twentieth century is "the descent of the West," but he never really clarifies what "the West" means - Russia sometimes qualifies, sometimes not, depending upon what point Ferguson is trying to make. Ferguson is a skilled storyteller, and he offers many striking reflections on the bloodiest years of the past century, including a compelling analysis of appeasement.
Jan Winik's - The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 takes an interesting and in the end very enlightening view of this critical period. Winik organizes his book with alternating chapters on The United States, France and Russia. The result is a set of connections that the general reader may never have made and a perspective that the historian may find useful.
The Economist - Smoke and mirrors
The BBC - The Putin Project
The New York Times - Now Comes the Tough Part
Two books that I am currently reading may well be of interest for your summer reading list. These are for the generalist, if you are a history teacher I suspect that none of this will be new, although the presentation is provocative.
The first is Niall Ferguson's - The War of the World
Part 1 of the book deals with Stalin's USSR and extends and explains in depth the extent of the cultural, economic and legal impact of the command system on Russian society. Much of these deals with the period of WW II, although Ferguson does an excellent job of providing an historical context.
As you know, Ferguson is controversial and the reviews of this book were mixed, I suspect based upon ideological considerations. Part of a negative review from The New Yorker:
Ferguson's eight-hundred-page reevaluation of the Second World War presents itself as a grand theory about ethnic conflict, the end of empire, and the postwar triumph of the East. The exact contours of the theory, however, remain unclear. Ferguson argues that the central story of the twentieth century is "the descent of the West," but he never really clarifies what "the West" means - Russia sometimes qualifies, sometimes not, depending upon what point Ferguson is trying to make. Ferguson is a skilled storyteller, and he offers many striking reflections on the bloodiest years of the past century, including a compelling analysis of appeasement.
Jan Winik's - The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 takes an interesting and in the end very enlightening view of this critical period. Winik organizes his book with alternating chapters on The United States, France and Russia. The result is a set of connections that the general reader may never have made and a perspective that the historian may find useful.
Millennials
As we have referenced the millennials, I thought you might find this article from the local Az paper of interest.
A review of the book:
Winograd and Hais combine "generation theory" with their own long experience in politics, survey data, and detailed observations about the unique values and expectations that Millenials bring to
I wonder how compatible these millenial values are with the values of education that are inculcated in our institutions of teaching and learning.
The 'millennials' A NEW POLITICAL GENERATION
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
Feb. 10, 2008 12:00 AM
Winograd and Hais are co-authors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics,"
The authors write:
Reared by indulgent parents and driven by deeply held values as adults, members of idealist generations embroil the nation in heated debates on divisive social issues as they try to enact their own personal morality and causes through the political process.
A review of the book:
Winograd and Hais combine "generation theory" with their own long experience in politics, survey data, and detailed observations about the unique values and expectations that Millenials bring to
I wonder how compatible these millenial values are with the values of education that are inculcated in our institutions of teaching and learning.
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