Page 185 - Powerful Social Studies for Elementary Students 4th Edition

CHAPTER 7 How Can I Teach the Other Social Sciences Powerfully? 157
only a minority understood that using them generates bills and eventually reduces one’s bank account.
When asked about acquiring the money needed to start a business or purchase a home, students talked about building it up through savings or getting it as a gift or personal loan from a friend or relative, but not about securing a loan from a bank. When asked about prices (why things cost what they do), they talked about the presumed inherent value of the object, the need to pay the person who made the object, or the seller’s decision to set and insist on a given price, but they did not mention supply and demand or the idea that something is worth whatever the market will pay.
These and other responses to our interviews led us to include the following as main ideas in an instructional unit on money developed for primary-grade students (Alleman & Brophy, 2003b):
• Money is a medium of exchange, needed in all but the simplest and most isolated societies.
• Several denominations of coins and currency are needed to make it convenient for
people to compile exact amounts or make change.
• Before the idea of a medium of exchange was invented, people had to rely on trading
(barter).
• Money eliminates several problems associated with trading and makes economic
exchanges much easier.
• Early forms of money (such as wampum or precious stones) were less convenient to
store and use than more modern coins and paper money.
• U.S. coins and bills include a representation of a past president or another significant
American on one side and an American symbol on the other side, words and numbers in- dicating the value of the coin or bill, and other material such as slogans, information about the depicted person, and information about when and where the money was manufactured.
• Money is made in factories (mints) run by the federal government.
• Banks not only provide safekeeping for money but also pay interest on accounts and
provide loans, checking accounts, credit card accounting, and other financial services.
• Budgets are plans for managing finances (and in particular, keeping spending within
one’s means).
• Writing checks and using credit cards allow people to transfer money without having
to exchange bills and coins, but they need to keep track of these transactions because
the money is deducted from their accounts at their banks.
• When people want to start a business or buy a home and do not have all of the
money needed to do so, they can get a loan from a bank. (They will have to pay back the loan plus interest, but they are willing to do so because this allows them to start the business or purchase the home now, without having to wait until they accumulate the full amount.)
• The value of an item ultimately comes down to what potential purchasers are willing to pay for it.
• Most people earn most of their money by working at jobs.
• Ordinarily a country’s money is good only in that country, but it can be exchanged for an
equivalent amount of another country’s money, which then can be spent in that country.
Reprinted with permission from Social studies excursions, K-3. Book Three: Powerful units on childhood, money, and government, by Janet Alleman and Jere Brophy. Copyright © 2003 by Janet Alleman and Jere Brophy. Published by Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH. All rights reserved.
National Standards for Economics Teaching
Different groups interested in economics have different interests and thus different pri- orities concerning what ought to be taught in the schools. Academic economists would
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