Category: Uncategorized
Hot Topic: Why Is There Corn In Your Coke? (April, 2013)
LearnLiberty, a project of the Institute for Humane Studies (a non-profit dedicated to “learning about the ideas of a free society” ) has generously invited the FTE to use their videos in lessons on economic reasoning. The provocatively titled “Why Is There Corn in Your Coke?” explains how the institutional “rules of the game” can affect even such mundane choices as whether soft drinks are sweetened with sugar or corn syrup, and sets the stage for understanding the power of special interest groups in our current national debates over gun control and immigration policy.
Economic Reasoning & Immigration (March 2013)
Immigration reform is front and center in the news and emotions are high. It’s ‘hot.” It’s also the first in our new series of Hot Topics in partnership with Gooru Learning.
Check out our new Hot Topic blended learning format. FTE – Gooru Hot Topics provide students the background instruction, reading, and viewing that allow you to run engaging simulations, discussions, and group projects using economic reasoning in the clasroom.
Institutions Matter: Experiments in Real Life
We don’t usually think of conducting experiments in social science. What would the mad social scientist do – imprison two groups of people in plastic bubble-biomes and use one as the control group while administering different economic or social policies to the other? Not likely! But, every once in awhile, social science ‘experiments’ happen on their own, and when we are alert enough to recognize them, we can learn a great deal.