It was a block lecture of Economics. Two back to back Economics classes – the thought itself is dreadful to many students. But my students are smart and they are always ready with some or the other plans. I was prepared with my daily lesson plan. We were to understand, know, discuss and evaluate ‘Market Economy’ and ‘Planned Economy’. While Texts book was available with adequate information covering concepts and related topics, I was ready with two relevant videos discussing present day forms of these economic systems.
The class started very well as per the plan…..only to take a detour. Suddenly, half way through first period, students started demanding for a story. They wanted me to tell them an interesting story to bring some spice in the block lectures. Fifteen year old students asking for story telling in the middle of the class was weird and irritating. But class was getting restless and a quick action was needed.
Anyway, that was a challenge well accepted with one condition – students would actively participate to understand ‘Market Economy’ and would write their own notes. If the condition is followed, second period would be ‘STORY’ period. Students eagerly agreed to the deal and were enthusiastic to proceed. It was my turn to get ready with ‘STORY’ – a RELEVANT STORY! I must thank my parents for inculcating reading habit in me long back. A story I read few days back came handy. The story was a narrative of a professor from India visiting East Germany for teaching assignment. The story was based in the period around 1980’s, time before ‘Fall of German Wall’ and revolved around the life of a ten year old young boy affected by the socio-political upheavals taking place around him. More than I thought, students got involved in the story which depicted the contrasting life style of people from East Germany and West Germany. ‘Boy’ the central character of the story represented a generation not just experienced burnt of controlled system but also was relieved by its welfare support. The boy and the surrounding incidences from the story unfolded the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of both the economic systems we had planned to study. Bell rang just at the time when my story ended. It was right time to leave the class with the boy.
My lesson for the day didn’t follow the plan. Objectives were unfinished and few expected outcomes were still in question. NO problem! My next class was easy to plan and it did succeed as decided. Students were eager to go back to story. They wanted to talk about the boy and I wanted to talk about the system. They looked from the human perspective and I spoke from the governance perspective. They compared situations in East Germany v/s West Germany and I discussed Planned Economy v/s Market Economy. It was easy to chalk out details of both economic systems. It was easier to critically evaluate the positive and negative sides of both the systems. It was all the more easy to derive the importance of most followed system of present day – ‘Mixed Economy’.
Image credit: Emi Evrilia
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