Day 4: Purpose

(Yeah, I know we’re just going to skip over day 3. Learning so far – I’m not very good if I leave writing until the evening, it feels like a much bigger hill to climb!)

I’ve been thinking more about this issue of the learning question – why am I doing this.   I really like btw the way in which @ZahraDavidson and colleagues have presented their curriculums and I am going to play with a similar format at some point.  They have a good tool for the project they are using to help people think about learning goals.

If I was though to just rush in to framing an overall question a first go at this (literally in terms of writing it down) looks something like, “How can economics contribute to achieving a fairer society?” (with a particular focus on gender equality).  I just googled that and got lots of links talking about “stronger economy” and “fairer society” but I don’t think the majority of these articles/ policies/ manifestos are about shifting the fundamental economic reality?  (Aside from NEF and Owen Jones, who were both already on my study list)

I already feel having written that question down that some bespectacled ‘expert’ in economics (no offence to the sight impaired intended, just the image that loomed…) is going to descend on me to tell me that I am “TOTALLY, misunderstanding the purpose of the economy and economics……”, by even asking the question.  I’m pretty sure that is the main purpose of what I want to do but I am going to do the learning goals exercise, and there are a host of stepping stones questions that are needed to get me there.  Thinking about it now – why is the question of any interest to me?  What does it help me to achieve?  There’s obviously a missing element there that I need to work on articulating.

Day 2 [delayed]:thinking about purpose

Two things have prompted me to think harder about putting down the purpose or goal of my study into economics today (or indeed yesterday – but that lack of posting I am blaming on a wifi failure!)

I re-watched this short animation of Ha-Joon Chang from RSA which is just awesome in so many ways.  Firstly, it’s good to hear that I am not alone in thinking that ‘economics’ is this big, scary un-scalable thing that I feel I have to sit down and properly learn about, Chang compares economics experts to the Wizard of Oz and is convinced 95% of economics is common-sense.  The film also gave me some prompts on elements I should probably incorporate to my study, e.g. from the basic, ‘what is economics?’ to a basic outline of each of the 9 main schools (we’re not getting into the intricacies of the sub-schools yet!!).

More importantly, Chang appeals to a greater interest in economics as part of constructing the society that we want to live in.  While acknowledging that changing the economic reality is an exceptionally difficult task it is not considered impossible.  Alongside an excellent conversation I had yesterday with @ZahraDavidson about her new collaboration Enrol Yourself – a self-guided learning marathon – I am thinking more about what is the purpose of my learning?  Just learning more about economics would be worthy in its self if that is what I wanted but it is about something more for me and I need to frame that to make the study effective.  So learning questions, goals and I think deliverables are where I need to be at for the next few days….

Day 1: the plan so far

The 30-day challenge is something I learned about during an on-line Working Out Loud course I was delivering with John Stepper and others in June and July.  Visible work has for a while been the element of #WOL that I have struggled with more than the other 4 elements.   The 30-day challenge encourages you to ‘ship’ something every day for 30-days, to form habits.

As well as the habit of writing and the learning about the tech (expect the layout and pictures to be pretty bad for a while!) there was the inevitable next question – what to blog about?  That actually proved not to be as hard as I thought it would be: post-Brexit vote and my work with We Are Europe I picked up Paul Mason’s Post Capitalism: A Guide to our Future and reignited a long-held feeling that I need / want to know more about economics to understand the world in which we live.

So for my 30-day challenge I am sharing the development of my self-guided learning in economics (having looked at the cost of post-graduate study and quickly ruled that out 😉 ).  The plan so far (cossetted away in Trello) consists of:

• Starting a Working Out Loud relationship list to support what to read & who to talk to (obviously)
• 2 to 3 hours of the MRUniversity intro micro and macro economics course a week (thanks to this really helpful article from Mike Bird @Birdyword)
• & other stuff like perusing what the local (Macclesfield) library has to offer, looking for events, conferences etc

There is something of a structure – around the economics essentials, main schools of thought and some ‘modules’ of areas that interest me – everything from the economics of childcare as core social infrastructure to yesterday’s musings about the economics of ‘vintage’ paraphernalia.

I’ll be ‘shipping’ blogs about the process and reviewing the resources I have used and things learnt, potentially even my economics musings – once I have any.

So day 1 down – 20 minutes – and now just have to tweet it…..!