Empowered Parent Series Highlights Economic and Financial Literacy Program at KPS
Ethics and economics are all around us.
Think about your favorite snack. You open the bag, pull out a potato chip, take a bite, and it’s crisp and delicious. The second bite, however, just doesn't seem to bring as much satisfaction. Do you know you were experiencing the economic principle of “diminishing marginal utility”?
And the bag itself — it seems to be different from the one you bought a month before. Does it look smaller? Feel lighter? The questions to consider are these: Is it ethical for a company to keep the bag size the same but provide less product? Or to shrink the size of the bag but charge the same amount as the former bag size? How can the chip company stay profitable and please its shareholders? To whom does the company have greater responsibility: its customers or its stockholders?
These were just two examples of what was discussed in October as part of the Empowered Parent Series, which highlighted the Economic and Financial Literacy Program at KPS. Parents met Elaine Schwartz, who teaches at KPS and writes extensively about economics; Economics and Financial Literacy Coordinator Alicia Rodriguez; and Director of the Ethics Institute Karen Rezach to learn about continuing programs, such as the tiny-house project in the Primary School, the eighth-grade interdisciplinary study of consumption, and the Upper School initiatives to provide role models and expand the math program to include topics in financial literacy.
Parents participated in activities that revolved around the potato-chip dilemma and completed a student-created economic quiz about Barbie. They said they left the session feeling enlightened — and empowered to help develop economic skills in their children.
Alicia Rodriguez, Economics and Financial Literacy Coordinator at KPS