On-Line for 2010-2011 School Year
Teacher: Dr. Howard Richman
Email: howard@pahomeschoolers.com
Texts: Principles of Economics, by Gregory and Ruffin;
Teaching Company (SuperStar Teacher) lectures (audio
or video) by Prof. Timothy Taylor (third edition).
Costs and Requirements:
- Class tuition fee: $450.
- Class textbook, Principles
of Economics by Ruffin and Gregory, Seventh Edition. Last I looked, you could get the used textbook from the amazon.com for about $10 dollars. PA Homeschoolers
online store sells it for $20 when available; just click on “AP Online
Classes” once you have entered the store. [Note: If you cannot find Principles
of Economics inexpensively available used, you could get Principles
of Macroeconomics by the same authors. We will only be doing the
chapters that are published simultaneously in both books. The advantage of
Principles of Economics is that it covers both Macro and Micro,
should you decide to study for the Microeconomics exam.]
- SuperStar
lectures by Timothy Taylor from The Teaching Company. Every summer, The
Teaching Company puts them on sale (e-mail me if you missed the sale).
Your options are (1) audio downloads available for $49.95, (2) new
cassettes or audio CDs available on sale for $69.95, (3) VHS Videos
available for $79.95, or (4) DVDs available for $99.95. If you buy hard
media you can sell them to me for half price at the conclusion of the class.
If the used lectures are available for sale, you will find them in the
online store at http://www.pahomeschoolers.com
if you click on "AP Online Classes" once you have entered the
store.
- Unlimited Internet access.
- A scanner for scanning in
hand-drawn economics graphs will save you time. (You can make do, although
it takes longer, by drawing simple graphs using either Microsoft Word or a
computer drawing program such as Paintshop or Photoshop.)
- It is strongly recommended
that you download AOL Instant Messenger
(AIM) for your computer. I will usually
be available to answer your questions on AIM
between 8pm and 9pm, Tuesday through Thursday (that's
just before the game board gets advanced to the next day's position).
Highly interactive rated 3: Students discuss economics, respond to
each others’ essays, and play economics games on the class website. Students
are expected to log on to the website every weekday, but there are no class “chats”
that would require logging on at any particular time of the day.
Time Requirement: This class requires an average of about 90 minutes
per weekday from Labor Day until the end of February with two weeks off for
Christmas and 1 week off for Thanksgiving.
Class Description: Are you the sort of person who likes to talk about
the effects of government policies and what the government should or should not
do? You may be a born economist. Macroeconomics is the part of economics that
studies government actions and looks mostly at problems of the economy as a
whole such as inflation, unemployment, recession, international trade, and
long-term growth. We will specifically learn about economics theories of
important economists from Adam Smith, to Keynes, to Milton Friedman.
In this class, you will learn how to predict the effects of government
actions. For example, "What happens to unemployment rates when the
government raises the minimum wage or cuts taxes?"
You will learn the skills necessary for analyzing economics problems: how to
use the vocabulary of economists, how to draw “supply” and “demand” curves, how
to read economics graphs, and how to pull the economy out of recessions or
inflationary spirals.
The most fun part of the class is the economics simulation games. Each
game will be played twice (each run lasting two weeks), and there will be four
games during the year.
- The Business Game: You
will either be a burger retailer or a wholesaler. Wholesalers arrange
sales to retailers and decide whether or not to build new factories and/or
invest in improved technology. Retailers sell to a fictional public and
the amount they sell depends upon their market share, price, and
advertising. This game teaches the microeconomics of supply and demand
through a business simulation.
- Guns or Butter Game:
You are the absolute dictator of a country and you need to decide how to
spend your money. You can also trade with your allies to take advantage of
each country’s comparative advantages. But watch out, if you don’t build
enough weapons you could be attacked. This game teaches about the
importance of investment, maintaining defensive strength, and comparative
advantage in international trade.
- International Growth Game:
You are both a government and an investor. As a government you use fiscal
and monetary policies to try to attract investment. As an investor you try
to pick the best countries (from among the other countries) for your new
factories. This game teaches some of the relationships between money
supply, government spending, taxation, interest rates, and private
investment.
- Exchange-Rate Game:
You will be either the business or the government segment of a country.
Businesses are trying to make more money than other businesses and
governments are trying to enhance worker income while avoiding a
wealth-destroying devaluation. This game requires an understanding of
international capital movements and foreign trade, the main factors that
affect the relative prices of currencies.
Throughout the year, class participation, good quality work,
and extra-credit work will be encouraged and the harder that students work the
more points they will earn. Your final grade will be determined by a
combination of the number of points accumulated and your score on an actual AP
Macroeconomics exam that I send to your home as a final exam.
We will finish up all of the macro-economics class work by March 1. You
would just need to review in order to prepare for the AP Macroeconomics exam in
May. If you also want to prepare for the AP Microeconomics exam, the textbooks
and tapes for the macro-economics class cover both macro and micro, so you
wouldn’t have to buy any additional materials.
Who can apply: Registrations will only be accepted for homeschooled
students who will be in 11th or 12th grades during the 2010-2011 school year.
All 11th or 12th grade homeschooled students who pay tuition on or before
August 15 (or until 50 students have registered, whichever comes first) will be
accepted. There are no class prerequisites.
How to register: Simply pay the tuition by August 15, 2010, using the store at
www.pahomeschoolers.com. I will take every homeschooled 11th or 12th
grader who pays tuition by that date. There is no application.
Teacher qualifications: This will be my eleventh year teaching this
class to homeschoolers over the Internet. I graduated with a BA in Economics
from Carnegie Mellon University and I co-authored a 2008 economics policy book,
Trading Away Our Future: How
to Fix Our Government-Driven Trade Deficits and Faulty Tax System Before it's
Too Late with my father, a Professor Emeritus in economics from the
University of Pittsburgh, and my eldest always-homeschooled son, a professor of
political science at Old Dominion University.
Class Goals:
- To help you learn how to use
the vocabulary and graphs of economics so that you will do well on the AP
test. Most of the assignments are designed to get you reading and writing
using the vocabulary of economics.
- To get you familiar with the
original writings of important economists who are passionate about their
opinions so that you will come to enjoy economics. For several of your
weekly essays during the first half of the year, you will read and write
about an original work by a important economist
of your choice.
- To help you see how economics
applies to real-world issues. During the first half of the year, you will
often apply what you learn to a current policy question of your choice.
(During the second half of the year, you will be applying what you learn
to AP Macroeconomics questions from past AP exams.)
- To help you learn how to
succeed with a college level class. I insist that you keep up with
assignments, which is the main thing that you need to do to succeed in
college.
- To give you the opportunity
to engage in Internet discussions with other homeschooled students who are
just as interested in the world as you are.
Class Schedule: The class will basically be on a five week rhythm.
Every week you will read a new chapter in the textbook and you will often
listen to or watch a lecture on a Super Star Economist tapes. The first week in
every five will focus on the new game we are about to begin, while the second
to fifth weeks will require you to write an essay.
Every weekday you'll be expected to log on to the web site and do all of the
following while you are there:
- Answer correctly at least
four more multiple choice economics review questions than you answer
incorrectly.
- Post at least one response
to a student's essay (first half of the year) or grade a sample essay (second
half of the year), or contribute to the class discussion on the class WWWboard.
- Make a move in the
economics game (during a textbook week).
- Participate in a class
discussion by posting on the class WWWBoard.
The class will start the day after Labor day with a
week off for Thanksgiving when I will send a midterm report home and two weeks
off in the winter that include Christmas Day and New Years Day. The daily
classes and assignments will end in early March, but you will still be expected
to take a final exam (that your parents administer at home) in late April. I
will score your exam before the end of April and send you a final report home
about how well you did in the class and on the exam.
Those who plan to take the AP Microeconomics exam as well can study for that
test in March and April.
Those who want to do some advanced reading for the
class are encouraged to read any of these original books by important
economists. You should be able to find some of them at your local library:
- An Inquiry into the
Nature of Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776) -- the
book that founded modern economics
- Capitalism and Freedom
by Milton Friedman (1962) -- an explanation of the benefits of capitalism
and why socialism inevitably takes away freedom.
- Free to Choose: A
Personal Statement by Milton and Rose Freeman (1979) -- free market
solutions to various problems.
- The Making of Modern
Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great
Thinkers by Mark Skousen (2001) -- a history
of economics thought with an emphasis upon those economists who understood
the benefits of free markets and capitalism.
Grades and standards: I expect everyone to succeed with the class
work and to do well on the AP exam, and I will try to make sure that you do so:
- You will be required to use
the vocabulary of economists (both phrases and graphs) when you write your
weekly essays.
- You will be required to
read each assigned chapter in your textbook and answer short-answer
questions on the class website (getting immediate feedback).
- You will be expected to
post essays when required (four weeks out of five). During the second half
of the year, you will be expected to write two essays per week, from
actual AP exams!
- You will be expected to
listen to or watch lectures by a SuperStar
economist and answer short-answer questions on the class website (getting
immediate feedback).
- Students who fall a few
days behind will be warned by e-mail. Students who fall one week or more
behind in their work will have their parents contacted. You and your
parents will be contacted again if you fall two weeks behind. If you fall
three weeks behind you will be dropped from the class. If you are planning
to go on a family vacation, you can do work in advance so that you will
not fall behind.
- You get points by doing
your required work well and by doing extra work (such as answering lots of
multiple choice questions on the web site, placing well in class games, or
writing helpful or thoughtful responses to other student's essays). Your
final grade in the class will be an average of your grade based upon the
points that you have earned and your grade on the final exam, which will
be an actual AP Macroeconomics exam. Your grade can be raised further,
however, if you score even higher on the actual AP exam taken in May.
- According to my students,
you can usually get an "A" by just devoting about 7.5 hours per
week (about 90 minutes each weekday) to the class. You will not have to do
any work on weekends.
Usually from 2/3 to 3/4 of my students get "4's"
or "5's" on the actual AP exam. During the 2008-2009 school year, the most recent year for which scores are available, I
had 29 students in my class. 28 of those students took the AP exam; the other
did not. Those 28 students had the following scores on the actual AP exam:
- 16 got "5's", the
equivalent of a college "A+"
- 10 got "4's", the
equivalent of a college "A"
- 1 got "3's", the
equivalent of a college "B"
- 0 got "2's", the
equivalent of a college "C"
- 1 got "1's", the
equivalent of a college "F"
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