Day 8: Economics and Service Learning

Day 8 found us at Lloyd-Ricks-Watson for a session on economics and service learning. The session on economics was very useful and touched on many key points that I frequently hit on throughout the year (what economics is, what it isn't, how understanding it can help us make better individual and collective decisions). There were two separate session on service learning. One face to face and one via teleconference. The first dealt with a project here at MSU that takes students to the Delta. The other one, at USM, has middle school kids going to nursing homes to learn about senior fraud, which robs people of about $3 billion a year....mostly through relatives and caregivers. The main difference between service learning and community service is that service learning is far more in-depth about causes and effects and solutions, where community service is a one-time deal. There was also a session on the extension service's personal finance programs for middle and high schools. Two points of note: During the personal finance discussion, things got a little interesting when discussion generational poverty and the reality facing people living in poverty. It is one thing to teach a skill set when it comes to dealing with money, it is another matter entirely when you have a whole lattice work of perception based on social class. How do you tell a kid in poverty to abandon his family and give up his relationships to "better himself"? "How," he might ask, "is making myself lonely 'bettering' me?" Things also got interesting when our morning facilitator brought up belief and how it impedes positive change here in Mississippi (but you could extrapolate it out to pretty much the whole South). How do you teach people about science and politics when "their pastor" is who many of them trust to basically think for them about such matters? It just about got real...and then it vanished with a poof.