Understanding Grade 11 and 12 students’ need to experience real-life skills in Economics and Business & Management, Mr. Gangi and Mr. Garland recently introduced two new currencies to their classes: the Ganjero and Jacks.
One of the main purposes of releasing two currencies is to create a currency exchange and trading speculation competition between the Economic and Business and Management class. Up to now, both classes are providing the same system, which states how students could earn and spend the currencies in class. Grade 11 and 12 students can now find the exchange rate for Jacks and Ganjeros on the Economics and Business & Management class blogs. Gangi and Garland have also created a Twitter account (@GanjeroJacks). This rate can fluctuate depending on the average “income” earned in each class, which is determined by individual and overall student class performance in addition to external economic and business events, just as in the real world.
There are several questions which arose about how releasing a currency in classes could create a positive or a negative effect on student. On his side, Mr. Garland said, “It is important on how they earn the Jacks not how they spend them.” He believes that the currencies will create incentives for students to be more engaged in class activities. Additionally, the use of the currencies will allow students to learn about real-life issues and events that cause real-world currencies to fluctuate and change value every day.
Mr. Gangi, a month after releasing the Ganjero into his Economic class, said he believes that “it is quite successful so far,” even though “some student find the Ganjero more valuable than others do.” He also believes that the main goal of the currencies is to “create incentive in the class.”
As it can be seen now, both Mr. Garland and Mr. Gangi are ready to have friendly currency competitions based on their students’ “income” levels. So which class would have a better currency at the end of class years 2012-2013?
Below is a detailed conversation with Mr. Gangi about his currency, the Ganjero.
What is the purpose of producing the Ganjero currency? Why have you created it?
The purpose is really first to create the incentive in class. Like any other economy, there is some sort of incentive you get out of whatever your labor is doing. So, labor being the student and the currency is the incentive, that ensures you need something to be able to do with that currency, which creates motivation. So there must be a value in it and so I had to look at what students thought. What I think students think is valuable so make-up tests, having beverages in class, being comfortable in class, music in class, homework passes and so on. And so they had something to work toward. So if you put work in you get something out of it addition to (better) grades. But more than that, we are (exploring) some good economic ideas based on this whole idea, especially that we have a second currency and a second economy being develop next door.
As the first class of using the currency, do you see any positive or negative effect of producing this currency?
No, I think it been pretty successfully so far. I think some student find it more valuable than others, but I think over time, as that starts to develop, it will probably cause more students to get interested in. Of course, as we develop the idea and maybe make more things valuable, others student might find other values in this.
How many classes are using the Ganjero currency? What grades are you focusing on?
So both grade 11 and 12, of course, there are probably going to be different things affecting the economy. Different discussions, being that grade 12 is working more with international and exchange rates and grade 11 is working more with macro and microeconomic topics. But overall, I think we can look at grades as the final product. Mr. Garland and I have decided that economic growth is grades and so the more growth we have the more incomes student get and the more ability they have to make purchases.
“Money is the root of all evil” What is your perspective on this as an economics teacher?
Money could potentially be an issue. Greed is built into the system, but I think with any economic system, we should take that into an account. So for example, you can be quite greedy and in this economy, what are we getting out of that is students participating more, students doing more. That might create some kind of corruption (such as counterfeit printing of money). This is when the government needs to step in, that’s me, and try to make sure that there is policy to deal with that. There is a limitation on all the possibilities in regard to make sure greed is not the only factor that driving people.