GOOD WORK!

by Tom Bender

Why are so many kids unhappy in school, dropping out, doing drugs? And what does that have to do with economics?

Maybe we should first ask what the kids have to look forward to. For most of them, drudgery-filled, underpaid, demeaning jobs – for the rest of their lives. They're not stupid. Let's admit it. Drugs give them, in the moment, something better than our culture offers them for life. And all drugs offer is failure. So let's go back to the values we base our lives on.

Economics is a tool for helping evaluate how our actions can support what we truly value. It isn't a science, or a solution in itself, but we're often clueless what it means to connect economics and values.

We're taught that work is something to be minimized. For business, it's a necessary evil, to be reduced as far as possible...

Education alternative - not just alternative education

by Ron Miller

In today’s increasingly complex world, families have access to a wider range of educational options than ever before. It is now possible, and it’s becoming more widely recognized as desirable, to choose a school—or nonschool—learning environment that best serves the specific needs and accommodates the unique personal qualities of every young person.

Despite the forceful push for standardization in public educational policy, which has reached a peak in the so-called No Child Left Behind legislation, students now have diverse opportunities to experience a truly individualized or personalized education. Growing numbers of parents and educators are starting to recognize that the one-size-fits-all system, devised for the industrializing economy of the nineteenth century, is obsolete, and that the current obsession with standards, testing, and authoritarian control is a desperate last gasp of a system in decline.