Elementary school lessons from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis use children's stories to teach lessons about saving, opportunity costs, entrepreneurship, spending and consumer decisions. One story, for example, tells of a Ugandan girl's goat and the animal's effect on her family to illustrate lessons about savings and the costs of a family's savings decisions. Various lessons also include activities that improve students' writing and mathematics skills. The Council for Economic Education's book "What Economics Is About" introduces students from kindergarten through high school to basic economic issues. The book discusses such issues as economic systems, entrepreneurship and the role of government in an economy.
The St. Louis Federal Reserve offers a series of middle school lessons that teach students about money, income, production, natural resources, unemployment, investment and the role of the Federal Reserve in the economy. One lesson uses one of the best-loved children's books, Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House in the Big Woods," to help students understand the economic production function as a combination of inputs, such as human labor, capital and natural resources, that produce outputs to meet human needs. Other middle school lessons include stories, simulation activities and exercises working with basic data.
As teenagers approach adulthood, it is important that they learn about wise spending habits; responsible use of credit; saving and investing; and features of the modern economy, such as globalization. High school lessons from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank reinforce these and other economic concepts, using hands-on activities. One lesson, for example, requires students to manage a portfolio of investments, deciding which ones might be most suitable for clients of different ages and socioeconomic statuses. Other lessons teach students about key events in economic history, such as the Great Depression.
Knowledge of economics not only teaches students about business basics and personal finance but it also deepens their understanding of world events and issues reported in the news. This better equips them to participate in the economy and political system.