I was looking through various pages the fed has and found an old speech from June 1999 on Economic Literacy. I saw the following quote by Alice Rivlin and it made me wonder if this is how my students see my lectures. Those who have read do not have this problem but those that have not may!?
"Economic literacy is akin to having a working knowledge of a foreign language. If you are with a group of foreigners and don't speak their language at all, especially if its sounds and intonations are strange and unfamiliar to your ears, you tune out. You feel excluded, perhaps uneasy. If you have a rudimentary working knowledge of the language, you can at least follow the drift of the conversation, ask a few questions and feel that, even if you are not getting the fine points, you are not totally left out and you have a basis for acquiring more knowledge. That, it seems to me, is what economic literacy means—a rudimentary working knowledge of the concepts and language of economic activity and economic policy."
How much of rudimentary working knowledge do they have? Can I congratulate myself on discussing terminology and boring the heck out of my students before moving on to exciting debates?
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