GranolaBox

One of my colleagues asked the students to share their thoughts about a recently completed economics problem. Since I like to feel that I played some part in this student honing his critical talents, I was proud of his response. Here, in its entirety, is Alex’s

PROJECT EVALUATION

I was relatively successful in my investments, its true. To be more successful I would definitely need a more active project, instead of relying on a single day of research, and then a lot of blind luck. To explain: just picking stocks doesn’t require any thought – so I suppose this is the perfect project for this particular class. An active project, in my own mind, would involve buying and selling stocks to maximize profit. Also – why limit to three stocks? Boring. Start with $10,000 and see what the students can really do playing an active market for themselves, and not mindlessly filling in checkpoints on a weekly basis (something that would take all of 30 seconds after six weeks of waiting anyways).

Another point of annoyance: “Graph all three stocks on the same chart”. Yeah, alright, because I bought them all so close together in price the scale will magically reflect the fractional changes in points. I’m lucky I didn’t purchase shares more than $20 dollars in difference – otherwise my ‘graphs’ would have been even straighter, more level lines. Three stocks, three different graphs.

Despite the apparent rant, I didn’t completely hate the project. I find the New York Stock Exchange an incredibly complex – and therefore interesting, living, breathing entity. Toying around with the most superficial details was moderately amusing for a few minutes, but beyond that I lost patience with the “checkpoints” and later on with the project as a whole.

I didn’t learn jack about the Stock Market because I didn’t have to do anything involving how or why the stock market works. Nor could I find any incentive for choosing successful stocks or even caring which stocks I chose after the first day. What would I do next time to be more successful in my investments? No – A better question: Why would I give a damn about how successful I am in my investments? Let’s say for a minute I cared strongly about my grade; a raging success reflects the same grade as a pitiable failure. But how can you grade based on stock success?

Make the students THINK about what they’re doing outside of day one. Instead of sitting and watching a stock go down the tubes, bail out, cut losses and find some other way to make money. Actively trading stocks on the market with a grade curve given based entirely on success and effort will definitely hold attention. A sharp, accurate log of purchases, sales, and holdings should receive credit, not a single graph with unrelated, unscaled historical prices created from a useless chart with information which is in a more useful form elsewhere.

Essentially I want this project to hold the individual student to a higher standard of performance and thought – a project requiring, and deserving, more attention than checking prices and scribbling down the DOW du jour. Admittedly, the project reflects the work ethic I see around me every day I spend in the class – perfect. But please, bag the essays and the worksheets – I challenge you to write a project to interest and inspire the already decaying, apathetic senior classes to come.

COMMENT!
Were you ever challenged to think in high school?
Are you ever challenged to think now?

Filed under: General Observations on July 19th, 2007