Thursday, October 15, 2015

Human Capital: People With Skills

Mr. Gingerich, from Goshen College, came up with a great lesson that we used today in class.  He introduced the concept of "human capital."

First off, he had students write down five unique skills.  They went around the room sharing them.

Then, he shared a unique skill: saying the alphabet backwards, while hopping on one leg, rubbing his tummy and patting his head.

We agreed that skill probably isn't going to land him a teaching job...  at least, not that skill alone.  It was a nice transition into talking about human capital, however.  Here's the definition he gave:

We may or may not have watched a 22 second clip from Napoleon Dynamite at this point...:



Then, the students worked at various stations around the room where they wrote examples of the human capital different jobs would require.  After 2 minutes, the groups rotated to the next occupation.  At the end of class, the papers were full of examples of human capital:




Essentially, human capital is your value to an employer.  All the skills, knowledge, creativity, life experiences, etc... that will make you good at your job.  And it's at your job that you convert that human capital into financial capital.  And we could all use a little more of that.

Students may get extra credit by reading and discussing this blog post with an adult.  Once they've done that, they should write a couple sentences about how their discussion went.  Have the adult sign the paper.  Turn it in tomorrow in the extra credit tray.


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