Liberty and Leadership
TFAS has reached 53,000 students and professionals through their academic programs, fellowships and seminars. Representing more than 140 countries, TFAS alumni are courageous leaders throughout the world – forging careers in politics, government, public policy, business, philanthropy, law and the media. Join TFAS President, Roger Ream, as he reconnects with these outstanding alumni to share experiences, swap career stories, and find out what makes their leadership journey unique. The Liberty and Leadership podcast is produced at Podville Media in Washington, D.C. If you have a comment or question for the show, please drop us an email at podcast@TFAS.org.
Liberty and Leadership
Teaching the Economic Way of Thinking with Amanda Stiglbauer
Roger welcomes Amanda Stiglbauer, a longtime mentor and instructor with TFAS’s high school division, the Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE), for a conversation about teaching economics in a way that connects with students and helps them understand the world. Amanda, who recently joined TFAS as FTE’s economic education curriculum fellow, shares how her early love of teaching merged with a growing passion for economics and how discovering the economic way of thinking gave her a framework for understanding choice, incentives, prices and the world around her.
They discuss the challenges of improving economic literacy in American classrooms, the importance of active learning and the impact of FTE’s interactive programs. Additional topics include supply and demand, the true cost of tariffs, the differences between personal finance and economics education, the role of institutions in long-term prosperity, the relevance of the Economic Freedom Index and FTE’s new curriculum initiatives, such as The Realities of Socialism and Economic Forces in American Civics for the America 250 celebration.
The Liberty + Leadership Podcast is hosted by TFAS president Roger Ream and produced by Podville Media. If you have a comment or question for the show, please email us at podcast@TFAS.org. To support TFAS and its mission, please visit TFAS.org/support.
Welcome to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast, a conversation with TFAS alumni, faculty, and friends who are making an impact today. I'm your host, Roger Reed. I'm pleased to welcome Amanda Stigelbauer to Liberty and Leadership. Amanda is an AP economics teacher in Lexington, South Carolina. She is a master teacher at the Council on Economic Education and has also served as a mentor and teacher at our Foundation for Teaching Economics, or FTE. At FDE, which has been part of the Fund for American Studies since 2013, Amanda leads instruction in four program areas Economics for Leaders, Economics for Teachers, Economic Forces in American histories, and our newest curriculum, The Realities of Socialism. Amanda currently serves as FTE's Economic Education Curriculum Fellow and is developing economic forces in American civics to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year. Amanda is an author of several educational resources, including lessons on Econ Edlink and the Teacher's Guide for AP microeconomics and AP macroeconomics. She is the 2019 recipient of the John Morton Excellence in Teaching Economics Award presented by the Council on Economic Education, and she is a fierce advocate for the discipline of economics at the state and national level. Amanda, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much, Roger. It's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Clearly, you've devoted your career to the subject of economics. What inspired you to be so passionate about the topic?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. So from a very early age, I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. I think I was teaching my brother out of books probably by the age of three or four, and he was my loyal student. And it took me a while to figure out what I actually wanted to teach because I just loved learning so much. So when I went to college, I thought, well, maybe I'll major in elementary education because I love children. But I also had a really deep desire to learn more in history and then enter my first economics class. Economics truly enlightened me to how to understand the world around me. And from that time, probably a week or two into the course, I had my sorority sisters on my dorm room floor who did not understand economics that seemed really interesting to me. I mean, I had a natural knack for it. So I tutored them on Tuesdays and Thursdays on our floor in our dorm room. And it was then that I realized I really want to be an economics teacher. And so the rest is history. I've devoted the rest of my career to studying the different areas of economics and how it plays into history, how it plays into civics, the economics of the environment, and how liberty and freedom are important for economic institutions around the world.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you must have had an outstanding economics professor who taught you that economics is really about the way the world works and has these broad implications and applications as well. I want to dig a little deeper there because I feel the same way myself, but was it just kind of thinking about how through price systems and supply and demand resources get allocated to their highest use and it just kind of pulls everything together?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I think definitely looking at the pricing system and the importance of supply and demand and understanding that there's really no entity that sets prices. It's the interaction of supply and demand and the invisible hand that makes resources allocate to the places that they're most needed. And I also really enjoyed, I was one of those kind of strange people who really enjoyed learning about the Federal Reserve and how interest rates are determined in a market. And that kind of leads into a lot of implications for personal finance education as well. I also thought it was really interesting just to boil it down to the economics of choice. Every second of every day, we are making decisions. And those decisions are economics decisions. So we're weighing our costs and our benefits in every situation we face. And those situations are fraught with opportunity costs that we have to consider. And so as a young college student that was definitely at the forefront of my mind if I'm majoring in economics, it was truly an economic decision for me. I knew that I wanted to teach, but I also understood that after five years of teaching, most teachers find another career. And so I wanted to find a backup plan that I was very prepared to enjoy. And economics was definitely the one, the subject that turned me on the most.
SPEAKER_01:What has been your experience in terms of how the subject is generally taught in American classrooms? Do you think students find these principles hard to grasp? Did your sorority sisters, for instance, find them hard to grasp, but more so at the high school level?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So I think that both at the college level and at the high school level, sometimes these are hard concepts to boil down to basic human understanding. I think that one of the things that really turned me on to economics and helped me to propel into a good economics teacher is to making economics applicable to what's going on around in the world and being passionate. So students, even my sorority sisters at the time, when I was 18 years old, they saw that I was really passionate about what I was sharing with them. And even though it was hard to understand at the time, boiling it down to the basic principles and the ideas of choice, those things really resonated with them. So whether it was talking about if you're if you're gonna spend the night studying or if you're gonna spend the night out at a fraternity party, those are economic decisions that they faced. And those were definitely things that they were able to relate to. So whether it was talking with college students or the high school students I see every day, making it about them and making it something that they're interested in and truly showing them how passionate you are about the subject really makes a difference.
SPEAKER_01:FTE has taken great pride in adopting an approach that uses activities in the classroom to illustrate economic concepts and hopefully give those concepts a stickiness that stays with the students who do our programs. And I think some of this stemmed from the influence of Rose and Milton Friedman, who were very involved with FTE in the 1980s, and Rose Friedman, I think at least served on the board of the organization for many years. But what kind of strategies and classroom activities have you found effective in making the economic way of thinking come alive for students?
SPEAKER_00:So I think that one of the reasons that I'm the teacher that I am today is because of the interactive simulations that FTE has tried and tested and proven for so many years. So in my classroom, my philosophy is that whoever's doing the talking is doing the learning. And so I love for it to be a very active and for lack of a better term, loud atmosphere where students are talking about the concepts or they're interacting in a simulation that is based on market principles of supply and demand, where they are either producers or consumers and they're trying to either purchase or sell a good like a computer chip, like one of our favorite FTE activities in the chips. And so that is an interactive simulation where it's truly a marketplace and it gets really loud, but that's where the learning occurs. So we could lecture all day long about how the interaction of supply and demand and the creation of that X between them creates a price and quantity. But as students are able to see and actually feel that price emerge in the market through simulations like in the chips, that's where the real learning occurs. And so I think not just that activity, but others as well, really helps students to solidify not only their understanding, but to create a passion and love of economics from an early age.
SPEAKER_01:So do you think, related to what you just said, that you can help your students then connect the economic concepts not only to their everyday life, you know, whether to study or go out and party, but about kind of current events and issues that we grapple with in our country.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So even with the most recent example of in the chips, that how prices are determined in a marketplace, it's so common to hear students and adults say, well, the president sets the price of gas. And so doing a simulation like this, we can turn them around and say, well, we have a very market-based economy with very little government intervention. And so did we see that the government sets the price of gas, or do the interaction of producers and consumers together create this magical price and quantity that is exchanged in a marketplace?
SPEAKER_01:Well, for people listening today who might not be that familiar with our Economics for Leaders program, could you describe what it is and also how you got first got involved in FTE?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. So the Economics for Leaders program is, I think, one of my absolute favorite FTE experiences. So we recruit high school students, generally sophomores and juniors in high school, who have an interest in both economics or business and leadership skills as well. And so we bring them to college campuses around the country. So whether it be Yale, SMU, Ohio State, Berkeley, a lot of the prestigious universities that they want to get a first-hand glimpse at. And we teach them economic principles in the morning using our amazing professors who are vetted by FTE. And we also conduct the economic experiments and simulations with a mentor teacher like me in the mornings as well. In the afternoons, they um they learn more about leadership principles. So not only do they they have lectures, but most of it is activity-based, where they get the hands-on experience of what the characteristics are of good leaders and how to exhibit those as well. So that's a little synopsis about the EFL program. I first got involved with FTE as a first-year teacher. I think, I think it's pretty evident that I really love to learn. And so I'm a sponge that loves to soak up everything. I started my career as a middle school teacher, and uh I wanted desperately to teach economics in high school. Job market was really tight at that point. It was before the 2008 financial crisis. And so it was hard to permeate that market, especially as a 21, 22-year-old person who was straight out of college. So I wanted to gain as much knowledge and experience as I could with best practices in teaching economics. So I found FTE. My husband is also an economics teacher, and we just latched on to as many of the workshops as we could. And I still use so many of the principles that I learned in the very first workshop with my students today.
SPEAKER_01:You made a mention earlier of personal finance courses. And I know there are a number of states, I think it's more than 30 now, that require some sort of course in high school in either economics or personal finance. And I know those are very different courses, and both probably very important courses, but is there sometimes confusion between students who are taking personal finance versus really learning the economic way of thinking in an economics class?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there has been such a growing trend with personal finance education, sometimes at the expense of economics education. States are passing laws that say personal finance is now a requirement. You can take personal finance instead of economics. And I know some states have scrapped economics altogether, which is really sad because they are, as you said, two very different subject areas. When their parents come in on open house night, they think, oh yes, you're going to teach my student how to write a check and you're going to teach them how to balance a budget. And in South Carolina, where I teach, that's actually true because we have what we call a hybrid course in economics and personal finance. But now there's a push to have both standalone economics and personal finance courses. So there is a lot of confusion. Most people, a lot of times, unfortunately, I feel like they err on the side of we need personal finance. And as you said, personal finance is so important. But economics and understanding the world around us, the policies that we're voting for or not voting for, and how the world around us works is equally as important.
SPEAKER_01:There's obviously a lack of economic literacy in our country. And at the highest levels, you see that I haven't seen any recent surveys. In fact, we should probably conduct one of members of Congress to find out how many have taken at least one economics course, how many have majored in economics, or have come from careers in business. Most of them are lawyers. I saw something the other day. There are only a handful of engineers in Congress. It's almost all lawyers, and lawyers tend to obstruct progress and building and creation. But do you think if we had better economic literacy in this country, it might mean better trade policy, better regulatory and energy policy, and improve the conduct of economic policy at the highest levels?
SPEAKER_00:Loaded question. But yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Very loaded, very loaded.
SPEAKER_00:When I teach about some of these hot topic issues like tariffs. Tariffs are one of my favorite things to teach about now. I like to code it with economics, it doesn't have to be so political. Economics is economics, and a tariff is a tax on a foreign good. And what we have seen over and over again is that a tariff is not paid by the foreign country. It is paid by the American consumer in the form of higher prices. And so when we have so much rhetoric around higher price levels, we have inflation, and we continue to implement tariff policies 50%, 100% tariffs on other nations, it makes things pretty difficult for the American consumer. And so I think like that idea of economic literacy, understanding what the policies are that we are supporting, what impact those will have truly on the American people is so important.
SPEAKER_01:And I think FTE has developed an activity on tariffs as well, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So FTE has a great program for tariffs. There is an activity that we call Tic-Tac-Toe Tariff. And just like any other simulation we do, most of them involve some sort of candy. And so the students in the activity are asked to rate their favorite dum-dum flavors. So the activity centers around the trading of dum-dums.
SPEAKER_01:Which are lollipops of some kind, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Lollipops of some sort. So there are about 15 different flavors of them, and they rank them. And during the course of two different rounds, they are trying to improve their satisfaction. They're trying to get the lollipops that they desire most. For me, it would be the bubblegum lollipops. I would try to get a market basket of three bubblegum lollipops, but I've learned that our students, they love the blue raspberry lollipops. So they're trying to improve their satisfaction from their original basket to the one that they have at the end of each round. And in round one, they are faced with trade with a tariff. So divided into two different countries, Country X and Country O, they're still allowed to trade because just like with a tariff, you're still allowed to trade with another country, but you still must have to pay a price. And when we look at that, that cost is playing a game of tic-tac-toe with a person from another country that you'd like to trade with. So we increase the transaction costs like that so that they can see that a tariff imposes barriers, imposes a cost on the producer and the consumer. And then we have them compare in a second round how that compares to a round of free trade, in which there is no tariff, there's no game of tic-tac-toe or cost associated with trading with a person from another country. And it's really interesting to see. We do a very quantitative look at this, what their happiness points are from round one versus what their happiness points are with free trade in round two. And always we see a rise in consumer satisfaction.
SPEAKER_01:When I introduced you, I mentioned that you were awarded the John Morton Excellence in Teaching Award from the Council on Economic Education. Tell me about that award and what that recognition meant to you as a sign of your effectiveness as a teacher.
SPEAKER_00:It's one of my favorite memories. I was nominated by my state council. So the John Morton Excellence in Teaching Economics Award for the Council on Economic Education is essentially the National Economics Teacher of the Year award. So select one middle, one high, and one elementary school teacher each year. And the state of South Carolina submitted my name and application in 2019. And I had absolutely no idea that I would be considered one of the top economics teachers in the country. So I found out that I had been awarded the Morton Award as my family and administrators and council members came into my classroom on pajama day. I was wearing a Grinch pajama onesie. So it was just absolutely phenomenal. So they surprised me with the award and flowers, and my children, who I think were, oh gosh, they were tiny at the time, twin girls. They all showed up in my classroom and my principal awarded the award. And it was truly one of my most memorable moments, I think. And then from there, they flew me to LA, where the conference was that year. And I was able to give a speech to all of the attendees about the importance of economics education. And I really started to push for the importance of economic education and personal finance education. And that economics should never be at the expense of personal finance as the growing tide was seeming to come.
SPEAKER_01:One of the things I know you've just been putting some energy into is the America 250 celebration next year that our country will be enjoying. Can you comment a little bit on the connection between economics and kind of the American founding and how economics plays a role into that conversation?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. I am so excited that this is the program that we are working on during this year, and especially as important as it is to celebrate America 250. So as we look at the creation of this program and the celebration, I think it's so important to highlight some of the key ideas that our founding fathers had. The importance of making sure that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is just as attainable today as they desired it to be 250 years ago. When we think about this from an economic lens, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of happiness many times leads us to the idea of prosperity. And so what we have seen over the course of the last 250 years is that America has been able to uphold these important institutions, rule of law as established by our Constitution, and so many of the principles that our Constitution upholds, separation of powers, which we see on full display even today, federalism. And we also see these ideas of free markets, free and open markets with very little government intervention. We see the idea of the encouragement of entrepreneurship. Those ideas are upheld within our constitution. So these ideas of the things that have made America prosperous are the foundation. The foundation was established through our constitution and continues to be so important to us today and our progress.
SPEAKER_01:And in the standard economics for leaders program that we offer students, there is an emphasis on the importance of institutions, right? In terms of a healthy economic system?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell There is, yes. So throughout the course of that week, we continually go back to the idea that the importance of the four institutions, private property rights, rule of law, entrepreneurship, and free and open markets are the basis for establishing a nation that is prosperous.
SPEAKER_01:When I talk to young people, I love talking about the index of economic freedom. Because they can just look at the world and see that countries with the greatest degree of respect for those four things you just named: private property and open markets and rule of law, those kinds of things lead to economic prosperity. And it's evident when you look at the rankings that the freest countries are the most prosperous, the healthiest and cleanest environments. And do you find that that is something you use as well in your teaching?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. I love the index of economic freedom. We have a couple of activities that even like pinpoint why that index is so important to look at. And one of the most recent pieces of curriculum that we've put out, entrepreneurship. There is an activity in which students are tasked with trying to find the perfect country to locate a business. And they're given some information about some of the different countries. They go to the CA World Factbook and look at some information regarding four different countries that they're investigating. And they're trying to figure out where to establish the headquarters for a business that is creating a new app to help other people. So maybe that app is helping you deliver your groceries, or maybe that app is, you know, to help you walk your dog when you're at work. But it's a helping app. And so at first they center around this idea of just focusing in on how many internet users they have and what is the Wi-Fi speed in those countries. So they they have a very narrow focus when they're looking at the CIA World Factbook. But then when we reveal the Economic Freedom Index, they have a completely different lens and they're able to look at it through that idea of, well, what about the institutions that these countries uphold? And how does that play into their ability to support business? And as you said, those places are the ones that we see the most prosperity and economic freedom.
SPEAKER_01:Now, another area of the FTE program that you've been involved in is the realities of socialism, kind of a newer endeavor from the last few years in that we worked with the Fraser Institute to develop that. Could you just kind of briefly give listeners an overview of what that curriculum is about?
SPEAKER_00:It's really fun because when we put the title out there, The Realities of Socialism. Socialism is such a politically charged word today. And so so many people think, oh, wow, these people are coming in here and they're really trying to teach us like how to be socialists, right? And so we continue to build on the ideas of economic freedom. We actually do take a really hard look at the economic freedom of the world index in that program as well. Uh, but really comparing what socialist countries look like and what capitalist countries look like based on their institutions and their freedoms. And so what we have found is that most people see socialism as a welfare state. Basically, are we getting free health care, free, such a four-letter F-word in economics, right? Are we getting free or government-funded programs? Whereas when we define socialism historically, we're looking at government owning the factors of production. So there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the term socialism versus capitalism. And of course, capitalism continues to get a bad rap, but we have to continue to push this idea of, well, when we look at the economic freedom of the world index and we look at these countries on a spectrum of how well they are able to uphold these institutions, countries that are able to uphold the institutions like rule of law and uphold the idea of the importance of private property, these are the countries and societies where we see prosperity occurring. And those are not socialist countries.
SPEAKER_01:So the idea of city-run grocery stores may not be that successful if it's tried in New York.
SPEAKER_00:City-run grocery stores. Wow. You know, we even have an activity that tries to have students like get into the idea of, well, you're now running this. Decide on what it is that you're producing and how you're going to produce it. And they fail every time.
SPEAKER_01:And how you're going to price it.
SPEAKER_00:And how you're going to price it, right? So I like to tell them, my teachers and my students in this program that, you know, one day, Amanda's order might be uh a cinnamon dolce latte, half the sugar and oat milk. But the next day, it's going to be really hot outside. And so I don't want that hot cinnamon dolce latte oat milk, half the sweetener. That day, I might want an iced vanilla latte from Starbucks. Who has that knowledge? I am the only one who has that knowledge. Roger Ream can't decide for me what it is that I want. And if he tries to be nice one day and brings me coffee into the workplace, I'm going to thank him, but I'm also not going to be as happy as if I had the decision to go out to the market freely to purchase my own.
SPEAKER_01:One example of how powerful prices are that I recall from uh Russ Roberts is that if you go to the local bakery on Super Bowl Sunday to order a bagel, they surprisingly have bagels. Even though that day is the day they sell more pizza than any other day. You'd think all the dough in the country would be going into pizza crusts, but instead the bakery's full of bagels, and the market anticipates demand and provides us what we want. It's a remarkable the power of prices to allocate resources accurately. And entrepreneurial thinking, you know, adds to that anticipation. And I'm thrilled to have you on today, the Liberty Leadership Podcast, Amanda, because your passion for economics comes across so well, and you're doing such a remarkable job at FTE and helping us reach more students and more teachers and giving the teachers the tools to be effective in the classroom. So thank you so much for joining me today. Your opportunity costs are valuable, so I don't want to take up more of your time than necessary. I want to give listeners a real good sense from talking to someone who's on the front line of our programs, you know, with the impact we're having on not only record numbers of students now in the programs we hold, uh a record number of teachers coming to us for help on how to be more effective at teaching economics and this new initiative on Civics for Leaders program. So thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much. And we appreciate absolutely your support and your passion for economics and making sure that we're able to reach both our high school students and incorporate those best practices with our teachers as well.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Thanks, Manda. Thank you for listening to the Liberty and Leadership Podcast. If you have a comment or question, please drop us an email at podcast at tfas.org. And be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app and leave a five star review. Liberty and Leadership is produced at Podville Media. I'm your host, Roger Reim, and until next time, show courage in things large and small.
