Dow Breaks 12,000 (A Think)

The L.A. Times is running an article entitled, Dow Breaks Through 12,000 Barrier. The article states:

Investors' relief over oil's decline from a high of $78.40 has given Wall Street an unusually strong October; some of the market's worst days, including the 1929 and 1987 crashes, have been in October. And it was on Oct. 9, 2002, in the depths of the bear market, that the major indexes fell to their lowest levels in five and six years -- the Dow closed that day at 7,286.27.

To be honest, I was a little confused as to the exact definition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, so I did what any good citizen of the Internet age would do, I looked it up on Google. Investorwords.com defines the Dow Jones Industrial Average this way: "Simply put, the editors at WSJ add up the prices of all the stocks and then divide by the number of stocks in the index. (In actuality, the divisor is much higher today in order to account for stock splits that have occurred in the past.)"

Lesson Ideas:
1. Ask your students to define the word "ownership" in a quick-blog. Then ask them if it's possible for people to share ownership in something. Encourage them to explain their answers. Now ask students if it's possible for thousands of people who don't even know each other to own something together. If appropriate, tell your students that they have been asked to devise a way in which lots of people who don't know each other can own something together. Allow them to work in groups to devise this ownership system. (You might even encourage them to develop wikis to document their ideas.) At the conclusion of this activity, tell students what the word stock means.
2. Ask students to define the word "value" in a quick blog. Ask them how the value of something is determined. In groups ask them to make a list of the characteristics of something that give it its value. Ask students if a piece of paper has value. Ask if a company has value. Urge students to support their ideas thoughtfully.
3. Ask students if they think that people have value? What determines a person's value? Do people's skills have value? What determines the value of their skills? Can people be bought and sold? Can their skills be bought and sold? Ask students if they think that these questions are even appropriate to consider. Encourage them to explain their opinions.
4. Most students won't know what the Dow Jones Industrial Average is. Pose the following question ot them: Is the Dow Jones Industrial Average a useful measure for determining the strength of the American economy. In order to answer this question, students will obviously have to first investigate the definition of this statistic. They will also have to consider how you could effectively measure the strength of the American economy. Another option might be to have students develop news segments, which could be vodcast, explaining the role that the Dow Jones Industrial Average plays in American economics. You could ask them to offer their opinions as to whether this is an appropriate role.

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