, 1994, p. 66).
The women of the Beardstown Ladies' Investment Club, long one of the most successful groups in the country, have stressed the educational aspects of such clubs. They note that prior to joining in and trying to learn how to profit from the market, few of them understood it. In addition, investors' guides such as those by Rankin and Gard, assume that the most basic aspects of the market are a mystery to the average educated American. In order to remedy this situation it is, therefore, necessary to begin in the schools. Words like "capitalism" and events like the 1929 market crash really mean very little to most people. In teaching history, for example, the rise of big business in the nineteenth century is treated much like the invention of the electric light. It just happened, and then things were never the same. Thus, history texts in high schools and colleges, rather than economics and business texts in colleges, need to be designed to develop students' grasp of what capitalism really is.
Teachers who wish to convey a real sense of how the economic system works can establish various exercises that involve students in learning about the market. Students can, for example, track stocks in the newspapers or work out the costs of opening a business while factoring in equity and profitability from, and for, stockholders. Emphasis should also be placed on
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