Day 132-last lecture

   May 15-Today was the last class in development economics. It has been wonderful to get to dive into a topic I don't know much about. It also has been a considerable amount of work to build the necessary base knowledge to teach this without just reading from the text. Since I was given free rein over the topics to cover in this 'creative' development course (the Provost's description), I was able to focus on more microeconomic topics. In addition, I structured the course such that pairs of students had to present a short talk on a developing country of their choice. All of the students did fantastic jobs and it was great to see the amazing differences across countries.
   One of the wonderful consequences of teaching this course in Iceland is that I got to compare European and American responses to development issues. Interestingly, my Icelandic students did not identify themselves with either the European or the American policies. Yet they all seemed very informed on politics and economic developments on each continent. The students seemed more informed and willing to discuss the presidential elections in France and in the US than the Icelandic presidential elections (that are taking place in early July).
   During the last 30 minutes of class, my students didn't understand why the US gives a disproportionally small amount in formal aid (less that 0.18% of our total GDP) compared to most other developed nations (averages 0.45%). I pointed out that the US does give a significantly higher amount to non-governmental organizations, particularly some religious organizations. This lead to a discussion of the US separation of Church and State. (One student asked, how can you have an ethical country if you don't teach ethics, as part of religion, in school? This comment was quickly dismissed because none of them are particularly religious). This eventually lead to another student wanting to know which political party I support and more importantly who I was going to vote for in the November election. I didn't answer them directly but instead asked if they could guess how I will probably vote. There was no clear majority. They felt I kept presenting information from multiple sides on some political issues. Interestingly, I felt I had crossed over the line a time or two about separating the professor podium and the campaign stump but I guess I was wrong. In the end, I reminded them that I am an environmental economic professor and they all agreed on how I should vote. Overall I have greatly enjoyed this course. I'm very glad I accepted the challenge of teaching well outside of my comfort zone.

   We were once again happy we did not send our winter gear home with relatives that had been visiting recently, since it has been snowing off and on for the past couple of days. We woke to a white landscape again this morning and the kids all wore their snow boots to school. The long summer days provided enough sunshine to melt the snow by midday, even though the temperature hovered around freezing most of the day. Shan went hiking with the gönguklúbbur this afternoon. They hiked to Paradísarlaut and Glanni and showed Shan the route to get to the salmon ladder and the rocks at the top of the waterfall. It might not be the best place to take Spencer!