More from the Economic Meltdown front

Steve Lohr's piece in the NYTimes raises the red flag on the human element in financial models. It seems like he is getting to the heart of the collapse, which becomes muddled with human reactions like fear, pride, greed, or even ignorance. This flies in the face of the statistical models, which are rooted, we hope, in logic and objectivity.

As with Alan Greenspan's revelation that he had made a grave error in judgment in analyzing the markets' stability, this disregard (whether we're oblivious or knowingly ignorant) of the human factor has sown seeds of uncertainty and possible chaos. But why the disregard? Certainly it's clear now that people haven't reacted rationally to this crisis, and we're caught in what seems like a downward spiral.

Are we afraid of acknowledging the truth about the situation because it will, in turn, reveal an ugly truth about ourselves? I wouldn't put it past us. We seem to be quite comfortable with self-delusion and irresponsibility. I think about this woman in the bowling alley the other night: she had purchased a lottery ticket out of the machine in the lobby, and she won fifty dollars. She had paid five and the return was fifty. You may be able to guess what happened next... by the end of the next hour she had lost nearly all she'd originally won. She was able to disregard the terrible odds of winning big TWICE in a night and squandered her first win in hopes of a theoretical second win. For her, the second payoff would be the big one and the one worth pursuing. And I see this in our own thinking elsewhere, especially in what I hear of the markets. We trick ourselves with half-truths and faulty logic.

So how does this relate to the classroom and my students? I am confident in making the correlation from, as they say these days, Wall St to Main St. How can one teach the hidden curriculum when the human factor will always throw a wrench in the works? Is it possible to teach that we should always be ready to confront those whose actions are based on illogical risks? Can we even predict these behaviors (if we can predict them, doesn't the risk decrease?)

I'm struck by how muddy the waters are when we talk about human interactions and the hidden curriculum, and I am more aware than ever about the enormity of the subject.