Editing 79-04-B8 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Someone once called economics "the dismal science", but there's nothing dismal
about it for a few hundred junior high school students who are taking an unusual
course in the subject in Texas, Colorado, Iowa and California.

Called "Understanding Our Economic System", the course was developed by the
University of the Pacific's Center for the Development of Economics Education.
Basically, it is the study of how people produce, distribute and consume goods and
services. According to both students and teachers, the course is anything but dry.
By using examples of goods, services and institutions that touch on the youngsters'
daily lives it deals with things that interest them.

For example, the course has them trace the origin of a pair of blue jeans for
sale in a local store. The trail takes them to the manufacturer, the textile mill,
a cotton farm -- even the banks that lend the money to the various producers.

Dr. Elmer Clawson, director of the Center that created the course says "We
aren't teaching comparative economics or survival skills, but how the economy works."

Funding for the pilot course came from Foundation for Teaching Economics,
whose founder, J. L. Hume, reasoned that a lot of legislation and regulation which
hampers the smooth functioning of the U.S. economy has been the result of widespread
ignorance about the basic economics. "Jack" Hume believes that those junior high
school students who learn the basics today will be more savvy adults; adults who
understand that their own self-interest is closely linked to a smoothly functioning
market economy.

The same reasoning underlies another economic education institution, but this
one is beamed at workers in American business and industry. It's the Center for the
Study of Private Enterprise at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Headed by economist Dr. Arthur Laffer, this Center has as its purpose the development
of information programs about basic aspects of the economy which companies can give
to their employees. The causes and effects of inflation is one program. Through
newsletters, posters, payroll envelope stuffers and other media, the program traces
the history of inflation and nails the basic cause -- continuous government deficits.
There have been programs on the role of productivity, profits, taxes and such current
issues as the social security tax increases.

In the three years since it began, the Center for the Study of Private Enterprise
has developed a list of more than 2,000 U.S. companies which regularly get its materials.
Like the Foundation for Teaching Economics, this Center began as the idea of one man,
Justin Dart of Dart Industries, who believed that economics was not a "dismal science". 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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