Simply Put: A Study In Economics {A review}

 

One of the required High School courses for our state is a half credit of Economics.

I honestly don’t remember anything about Economics from my high school education.

I lived in fear of teaching it.  I mean, I’d like to think I know, but do I?

I was beyond grateful to be able to review Simply Put: A Study In Economics. Written by Catherine Jaime. 

This book 139 page book covers:

• 36 lessons
• Review questions for each lesson
• Mid-Term Exam
• Final Exam
• 8, yes, 8 different appendixes
• A Bibliography and suggested additional resources
• A glossary of terms used throughout the book and economics in general

Each lesson covers a certain topic.  The lessons are short in reading and give a general overview and sometimes an example of when something has happened in our history. 

Catherine Jaime says that the book is written from a classic liberal point of view.  Often known as conservative.  I felt the book showed pros and cons of many economic situations.

My 9th grader has been using this book.  He has done about 2 to 3 lessons each week.  I began by having him read one lesson and then do the review questions.  I have recently changed to having him read and I read then we meet and discuss what we think.  I often use the review questions as starting points in our conversations, but not always, sometimes we just have a natural conversation about our reading.

 

My 9th grader and I were both very concerned that this book would be boring.  I just kept telling him that it was required to graduate and just have an opened mind and get through it.  Once you get started, it seemed hard for us to stop after just one lesson. Sometimes we didn’t. 

Since starting this book he has enrolled in an online personal finance class with an overview of economics.  He chose to take this class since he has been enjoying this economics book so much that he did want to learn more. 

A few of the chapters covered in this book are:

Lesson 9: Standard of Living

Lesson 15: Voluntary Exchange and Free Trade

Lesson 28: Competition vs. Monopolies

Lesson 30: Minimum Wages

Lesson 33: Unemployment and Unions

There are review questions on each chapter that range from about 3-10 questions each.

The mid-term and final exam are 30 questions each.

This and the accompanying teacher guide can be purchased as a download from Currclick. 

My family isn’t the only lucky ones who got to review this.

Check out the Bow Of Bronze Launch Team to see what other’s thought of this.