VCU news

By Leila Ugincius

Let’s be honest: The word “economics” can paralyze students and adults with fear. At Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business, term associate professor Stephen Day tries to demystify it.

Day, Ph.D., is director of the VCU Center for Economic Education, which serves Virginia schools through teacher professional development sessions and other programs. It reaches about 500 teachers a year, who in turn work with thousands of students. Day is also a dad, and his Paper Robots blog connects his academic and parental roles to help families talk about money, life and work.

His upcoming book, “Teach a Kid to Save: The No-Nagging Guide for Helping Parents Teach About Money, Work, and Life,” offers helpful advice to grown-ups and kids based on academic research — mostly economics — and real-world experience with his own children.

VCU News asked for some relatable insight into economics.

Can you offer a simple description of economics as a field — and a thought on why it tends to intimidate us?

Economics is the study of how people make choices. The basic principles of economics are simple: We have goals. We can’t reach all our goals with the resources we have, so we have to prioritize. Prioritization means that whenever we choose something, we have to give something else up. That means that the cost of something is what you give up to get it.

Did you find that last sentence confusing? A lot of people find econ intimidating or confusing, but others find it enlightening. I think this split happens because the principles of choice-making begin as simple common sense, but as we start to stack the principles up and build them out, it’s difficult to keep them straight at the same time.

People think, “Oh, no! I understand all those words, but I still don’t get what he said!” And some say “Aha! This explains everything!” Economics is a system for analyzing information, and it can be tough to keep the whole system straight in our minds. To keep all this logic straight, we sometimes use math. But a lot of people are intimidated by math, so for some people, that makes things worse!

Assuming it’s smart to start young, take us inside the Day household. How do you get your kids to think or act with economics in mind?

I think it’s really important to teach elementary-age children basic economic concepts, like the ones I listed above. Kids need to know that “we can’t get everything we want, so we need to choose,” and “we can choose something little now or save up to get something big later,” and “learning helps me be more creative.” Not only are these important life lessons, but they help kids use logic to make sense of our choices.

I have four children, ages 6 through 12. I teach my kids by using a household mini-economy. We have jobs, businesses and a kitchen-table store. Even the parents have jobs! It makes it easy for us all to talk about money in a low-pressure way in which parents and kids can participate equally. I’m writing a book about it – “Teach a Kid to Save” will be published by Revell next winter.

I also ask kids questions about the world around them, like, “Do you think this new building will make rent in the neighborhood go up or down?” and “If you want to save more money, which would you do: Spend less or earn more?”

I have a blog/newsletter to help other parents have money conversations with their kids, too. “Paper Robots: Helping Families Talk About Money, Work, and Life” is on Substack at drstephenday.com. It’s supposed to be fun for everyone to read, not just parents. I even write about economics in the kids' TV show "Bluey!"

You initially were a high school social studies teacher. For those teenage students, give us an example of how you connected that field to economics.

I taught world history as well as civics and economics. In my history teaching, I started to apply economics by inquiring into the choices that historical actors faced.

I searched through the textbooks for these choices but couldn’t find anything. Basically, I noticed that the lesson plans we got always talked about what happened, but not so much what could have happened. So I started to introduce more material from the point of view of the historical figures and what choices, incentives and trade-offs they faced. I think it helped build empathy for them and better understanding of their historical context.

What has been a shortcoming of how we’ve taught economics — and what is a current trend or practice that offers hope of improvement?

The advantage in teaching economics is that there are so many real-life examples available. Economists usually do a good job using these in teaching. Economics professors can also use in-class simulations to reconstruct economic processes and have students investigate compelling questions using data.

Students should understand that economics will sometimes involve math and complex and counterintuitive logic, but it’s worth the effort. That’s because the world and human choices are complex and counterintuitive. Sometimes it takes a few classes for economic thinking to set in and become natural. Econ is a great subject to learn both for the job market and for understanding human action in a fresh and rigorous way.