Collection
Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues

Help your students to think critically about ethical issues and understand why ideas of right and wrong are vital to economic decision making.

 

In this collection of lessons, students will create and support an argument for or against a sweatshop boycott using primary and secondary sources; consider perspectives related to whether or not businesses have a social responsibility during a simulation, primary source discussion, and creating a marketing pitch for a company’s board of directors; play the roles of doctors and patients, demonstrating the motives of self-interest, duty, and character in economic transactions; learn how their bias impacts their decision-making and research.

Lesson

Can We End Housing Insecurity?

Students compare the economic costs and benefits of helping people who are experiencing housing insecurity and consider the ethical implications.
Key Concepts: Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Role of Government
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Should Private Companies Operate Prisons?

Students analyze and rank the four general goals of corrections to help them determine their personal beliefs about what prisons...
Key Concepts: Incentives, Opportunity Cost, Profit…
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Can You Be Fashionable and Ethical?

Students “produce” blue jeans and make business choices about production to simulate the decision of changing from more expensive, but...
Key Concepts: Costs of Production, Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Externalities…
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What Can We Do About Pollution?

Students play charades to mimic noise pollution and consider the question "what can be done if someone's choices are putting...
Key Concepts: Externalities, Markets and Prices, Role of Government
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What is the Most Ethical Way to Fund Public Schools?

Students analyze documents, create a school-funding graphic organizer, and write an email to their state representative with their plan to...
Key Concepts: Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Opportunity Cost, Role of Government
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Can You Allocate Ethically?

In Lesson #4 from the Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues curriculum, students work in groups to analyze allocation methods, apply...
Key Concepts: Allocation, Decision Making, Incentives…
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Does Self-Interest Prevent Economic Justice?

In Lesson #7 0f the Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues curriculum, students explore basic ideas of justice by examing government...
Key Concepts: Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Incentives, Veil of Ignorance
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Should I Join the Sweatshop Boycott?

In Lesson #8 of the "Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues" curriculum, students study primary sources to learn about the choices...
Key Concepts: Economic Development, Economic Growth
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Do Businesses Have Social Responsibility?

In Lesson #6 of the Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues curriculum, students will participate in a simulation and discussion to...
Key Concepts: Business Costs and Revenues, Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Profit
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Can You Conduct Research Ethically?

In Lesson #2 of the "Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues" curriculum, students learn about positive and normative economics and how...
Key Concepts: Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Normative Economics, Positive Economics
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Is Efficiency Ethical?

In Lesson #5 of the Ethics, Economics, and Social Issues curriculum, students role-play to understand both the power and limits...
Key Concepts: Decision Making/Cost-Benefit Analysis, Marginal Analysis, Scarcity
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