This quote, from a successful basketball coach, reveals an aspect of learning which is poorly understood by people who have spent “too much” time in school. Teachers try to teach as much as possible because, in part, they know that there is so much more to learn. Even so, some students think that what they are learning has relatively little value. Or, they are tired of learning and want to apply what they already know. The point of this post is to remind you that there are many opportunities to learn outside of a classroom. At times, what you learn during these opportunities reveals that you should have paid more attention in class.
Very few 20-year-old students, and few 40-year-olds, fit into the category of “know it all”. I once read a teaching philosophy which compared a student’s mind to a backpack. In that comparison, the student’s pack is empty on the first day of class and a good teacher tries to make sure that the pack is full on the last day. That is silly. The lessons of an introductory class are refined in an intermediate level class. Even for an advanced undergraduate course, there are graduate level courses. When employed, special workshops offer even more specialized or recent knowledge.
Using class time well often leads to questions. Some of those questions have been asked many times before. Good questions can reveal the weaknesses or incompleteness of received wisdom. A few people take the next step and find an innovative answer.
This blog asserts that five basic principles can be used to create good questions on topics in microeconomics. They challenge ideas which are poorly thought out. If the answer is truly innovative then the person who asked the question may become a Nobel Laureate. Several Canadians have been recognized for their contributions to “Economic Sciences”: including David Card (2021), Michael Spence (2001), Mundell (1999), Myron Scholes (1997) and William Vickery (1996). Often, this recognition was for work done decades earlier. They solved problems for which, at that time, the only available solutions were considered poor. Now, some of those solutions are discussed in undergraduate textbooks.
It takes practice to learn how to ask a good question and more time to understand the full implications of a good answer. There are many opportunities to develop this skill and, in my opinion, too few students take advantage of them. For students of business or economics, meeting with industry experts on a field trip or participating in a mentoring program is an obvious and excellent opportunity. They expose you to new ideas without too much academic jargon. For example, an industry expert might say
- “When approaching a buyer, we worry that charging too high a price is a deal-breaker”
- “Our production costs fell last year after our five-year capital improvement plan took effect”.
A good student would recognize that
- “Their demand curve slopes downward”
- “It took them five years to change the inputs to the production process which are fixed in the short run.”
A thoughtful student would follow up with questions which apply classroom theory, such as
- Do you notice any differences between different types of buyers? (i.e., is there a predictable difference in their elasticity of demand which could be used to choose prices more strategically?)
- During that time, how many new competitors entered the industry? Did profits rise because of the investment?
You might be surprised at the answers.
Learning in a classroom may not be as exciting as real life, but other quotes indicate that learning in the real world is harder.
5 Basic Principles of Economics 
Leave a comment