Business is rightfully concerned about the education of youth, for the schools are educating the workers of tomorrow. How businesses in California are reaching out to schools to provide help for economics education is described. (RM)

Foreign Currency Exchange is the largest business in the world. The New York Institute of Finance estimates that somewhere around 1.5 trillion dollars changes hands every 24 hours. The trading of international currencies has made overnight millionaires. No other marketplace in the world can give a person more significant opportunity to make money…

In this unit of study, students demonstrate a familiarity with the school's layout and the jobs people do there. The unit has students discuss jobs in the community and match simple descriptions of the work with the names of related jobs and with the equipment required for the jobs. They also compare and contrast jobs of today with jobs of long…

As Californians put on another sweater, light candles, and open their electricity bills with shaking hands, the rest of the nation wonders who or what caused the problem and whether they will be next. Mixing with accusations about deregulation, there are also insistent voices blaming misguided and heavy-handed government for dimming the lights in…

This unit, designed for grades 9-12, introduces students to economic concepts of international trade through the case of the international coffee industry in California and Brazil. The following concepts are among those examined: commodities, factors of production (human resources, capital resources, and environmental resources), imports and…

In this 9-week unit, students compare and contrast goods and services and discuss economic activities that occur in cities, sorting them into the production of goods or the provision of a service. Students examine how people use money to purchase goods and services. Wants are defined in terms of trade-offs or choices that must be made. Job…

This lesson asks 12th grade students to imagine that they are special assistants to the Undersecretary of Commerce for a foreign country who must answer a letter from a U.S. company planning to move its manufacturing operations overseas. The lesson also asks them to design a business brochure that will convince the company to come to their…

This handbook provides valuable information for educators to use in developing a one-semester high school course on economics. The volume includes activity outlines, a model for assessment, and a list of resources to enhance instruction in economics. The handbook identifies methods to enrich instruction using the state-mandated economic component…

This lesson requires student teamwork to gather data and create a plan that describes the physical look of money in the future and how it will be distributed in the United States in the next millennium. To do this, the lesson states, students review present-day monetary policy, read about future suggestions for money, visit Web sites on these…

This documents consists of 12 issues of a journal that seeks to provide information and reviews concerning social studies textbooks; each issue consists of 16 pages. Contents in the 12 issues include: (1) California control over textbook content; (2) "skills" teaching in elementary-level social studies texts; (3) readability formulas;…