Why are some countries "rich" and others "poor"?

A PowerPoint posing the question “Why are some countries “rich” and others “poor””

This makes for a great 45 minutes to an hour lesson and is quite thought provoking.

The first part is a teacher-led review of the slides. If your school hates teacher led instruction then perhaps get a group of students to do it whilst you have a coffee, but it’s going to be much better if you do it because you will simply have much more knowledge of the subject than your students. Honestly, you wouldn’t want a set of passengers to work together and come up with ideas about how to land the aircraft that’s taking you on holiday, would you?

Sorry for that rant. The students seem to really appreciate the contrasting photographs in this presentation and say that it helps them to understand the huge gulf of difference between high and low income economies. This in turn helps them not to suggest “Make the income tax system more progressive” as the key to solving South Sudan’s problems in the exam, which is going to be helpful.

After you have done your bit, adding in any useful personal contextualisation you can think of, it’s time for some managed group discussion using the slides at the end of the presentation.

I have used this many times over the years and it makes for a good and engaging lesson. The only think missing is that it doesn’t really include any assessment of learning. Greater minds than mine will be able to tackle that, or you could just take a leap of faith and believe that everyone is going to learn something useful from an hour or so diving deeply into this subject - I think you are probably safe to do so.

This is free for you to copy, use, share or do whatever you like with. All I ask for is a positive review if you think it is a useful resource.

Good luck to all teachers - you do an amazing job.