This blog is presently reporting on the writer’s attempt to
develop a unit of study. The topic for
this unit is foreign trade and that trade’s effect on the availability of jobs
in the US economy. In the last posting,
as a first step, the writer/developer identified three insights. This posting will take up each of the
insights and describe a corresponding lesson “idea” that will later, if chosen,
be situated with the other lesson ideas to formulate a series of lessons that
will make up the unit.
Now, the lessons are merely tentative
and each will not necessarily be part of the unit. The developer needs to see all of them listed
and proceed to evaluate them. It should
be remembered this is being done in real time so the reader can get a good
sense of what a teacher goes through in developing his/her lesson plans. The
lesson ideas can be further tweaked or eliminated. If a lesson idea survives that process, then
they will be arranged according to a presentation order and converted into
formal lesson plans.
Such plans spell out the
instructional steps the teacher will take in presenting the lesson to the
students and they will also identify the following: what the expected actions students will
perform, the timing of the activities, the materials needed, and any further
assignments the students will be given.
The lesson will first identify the
objective of the lesson and it will be stated in as specific a language as
possible. For example: Given a set of relevant statistics, the student
will identify a social/economic condition that offends federalist values. This form for an objective not only
identifies what the student will be able to do, but to what standard he/she
will be evaluated. The reader should
remember that this blog has presented a federalist moral code with a list of
values; these are the values referred to in this objective.
The last element of the objective
points out that its corresponding lesson is situated within a civics course in
which federalist values have been derived.
That is, students should have already become aware of what the essence
of federalism is and have either been instructed what a list of federalist
values are or have actively formulated a list of values that logically are
derived from federalist principles.
With that, one can begin the process
of developing appropriate lessons. The
first insight, identified in the last posting, is:
Displaced workers who have lost their jobs to workers
of other countries cannot follow those jobs to those other countries. There are three reasons for this
inability. There are language barriers,
cultural barriers, and, compared to what their lifestyles demand, depressed
wages.
What occurs to the developer is that the last presidential
election entertained this condition. So,
the use of an account of the rhetoric of that campaign would probably highlight
the initial conditions that motivated that rhetoric. The developer recalls an article that
reported on the disaffection by displaced workers which was written by George
Packer for The New Yorker.[1]
A roughly stated
objective for a lesson using this article could be: given the information contained in the Packer
article, “The Unconnected,” the student will identify the problems American
workers have in securing employment in an age of globalization. Perhaps a small group of students (three to
five) can be assigned to read an edited version of the article and report to
the class their summary of its contents or their answers to questions handed
them to guide their attention.
The second
insight is:
Along with competition
emanating from imported goods and foreign producers, there is also competition
factors relating to technology that further add to the disadvantages of US
workers. Specifically, the introduction
of computers and all related technologies have proven to further assist
shifting jobs abroad and to introduce automation domestically. While both are hurtful to US workers, it is
foreign competition that is most detrimental in that it physically takes jobs
away.
This insight focuses directly with the loss of manufacturing
jobs, but adds another factor, technology, for consideration. This other factor is important in that it
both helps explain what is happening to the job market domestically and how it
augments or makes possible the loss of jobs to foreign sites.
Again, a small group, one working simultaneously with but apart from the
group working on the “The Unconnected” article, can read a report to the class
what the article states. This article is
available online – accessed on 9/4/17 – https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/ and entitled, “How Technology Is Destroying Jobs.”
The third insight is:
Agreements among nations that have very detrimental effects on the
availability of jobs in the US have been the North American Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Currently, another potential agreement is the Trans Pacific Partnership
(TPP). NAFTA was agreed to in 1993 and
WTO in 2003. TPP is still under
negotiation and President Trump has drawn the US out of what, to date, had been
agreed. In addition, NAFTA is presently
under renegotiation talks.
The supporters of these agreements have argued they create new
jobs; lead to higher wages; and will make available greater diversity of
consumer goods. Opponents argue that
they send good paying jobs elsewhere; decrease wages; and increase
inequality. The developer would add
another benefit; these agreements have led to lower consumer prices.
Another small group can look at the
effect international agreements have had on job availability in the US. For this group the article entitled, "NAFTA’s
Impact on U. S. Workers," can be helpful; it is published by Economic Policy
Institute. This article is available
online – accessed on 9/4/17 – http://www.epi.org/blog/naftas-impact-workers/ .
In addition, students can be encouraged to look up the WTO and TPP.
An ongoing feature of the unit is a
listing of factoids or statistics that can be featured somewhere in the
class. To begin, the following
statistics can be posted:
·
In 2013, the gap between
America’s upper-income and middle-income families has reached its highest level
on record. The median wealth of the
nation’s upper-income families ($639,400) was nearly seven times the median
wealth of middle-income families ($96,500), the widest wealth gap seen in 30
years when the Federal Reserve began collecting data.[2]
·
The median income – median
meaning half of those measured fall above and half below – for the middle fifth
of income earning households rose a mere 13% between 1970 and 2014 – an average
rise per year of just under 0.3% – and a lot of that increase was due to the
influx of women workers into the workforce during those years.[3]
·
Overall median income rose
0.3% between 2000 and 2004, while those of Canada and Great Britain rose circa
20% during those same years.[4]
·
Since the mid-1980s,
inequality of income in the US has grown faster than any other advanced
economy; it's higher than any other Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) countries except for Chile, Mexico, and Turkey.[5]
·
In the years since the
mid-1980s, the US has had the fastest rate of growth of people living in
poverty than any other OECD country except for Israel and near last in economic
mobility and the percentage of working aged individuals with a job.[6]
This is first batch of lesson
ideas. The following postings will
identify further insights to be possibly used and the lesson idea
together. In addition, the next posting
will review a concept forming activity that can be conducted to have students
conceptualize three ideas: productivity,
balance of trade/payments, and relative advantage.
[3] Edward Alden, Failure to Adjust: How Americans Got Left Behind in the Global
Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield Publishers, 2016).
[5] Ibid.
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