Economics for Canadians

The past few years have been difficult ones for educational publishing in Canada as schools increasingly replaced books with Chromebooks.

However, the tide may be turning back towards printed materials. The American author and prominent critic of technology in children’s lives and in schools, Jonathan Haidt, in his popular book, “The Anxious Generation,” presented research that points to the following conclusions regarding the impact of screens on students:

1. Laptops and Chromebooks in schools are not learning tools, but are instead entertainment and distraction engines.
2. Screens train the brain to engage in skim reading, while printed books offer readers a stable, distraction-free environment that supports sustained attention, comprehension, and long-term retention.
3. Printed materials provide tangible spatial and physical cues (the feeling of the book, the position of information on the page, etc.) that help build mental maps and aid memory in ways that screens cannot.
4. Printed textbooks follow a linear structure where information is presented in such a way as to create understanding of subject matter as a whole, as opposed to digital resources which are often ‘bite-sized’ and fragmented. Such fragmentation makes it harder to understand complex subjects that require connections to be made between disparate facts and ideas.

If you are an educator, an administrator, a school board trustee, or a ministry of education official, please get ahead of the curve and use your influence and authority to make printed books once again a key part of our students’ education.

As a book publisher it alarms me that educational leaders are often so keen to appear ‘hip’ and ‘with it’ that they uncritically pursue every current technological advance.

Currently, A.I. is the technology that everyone feels they need to incorporate into education, but we know that this is only the last in a long line of “magic bullets” that technology firms have proffered that, in time, have proved to be underwhelming in comparison to the hype with which they were introduced.

Books, on the other hand, are a proven technology with many advantages that are helpfully and beautifully enumerated by Ted Gioia, the eminent jazz critic, in this piece from his Substack, “The Honest Broker:”

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-glorious-future-of-the-book

Enjoy the read and please accept my best wishes for a great academic year to come.

I realized recently that I hadn’t posted in some time (over two years!) and thought I ought to let people know that there are still around 1000 copies of the revised 2021 edition of “Economics for Canadians” available for $25 per copy, when ordered as a class set of ten or more, inclusive of shipping anywhere in Canada.

In an educational landscape awash with A.I.-generated “content,” please consider using educational materials which are authored by people and which feature a distinctive human voice. For ordering information, please go to the relevant tab above.

Going forward, while I hope Croecko Publishing will continue to operate well into the future, the croecko.com website will be phased out towards the end of 2025. The ‘homepage’ for Croecko Publishing will, from January 2026 onwards, be www.brycemcbride.com. While the brycemcbride.com website was set up as the homepage for the book “Workbook for the New I.B. Economics” (also from Croecko Publishing), as that book has sold out and as I have no plans to publish any further editions, I have decided to make it the home of “Economics for Canadians” and of Croecko Publishing in general going forward.

You are invited also to go there to read my most recently published articles, on subjects such as the ongoing military operation in Gaza, the role of technology in schools, the growing desire of the rich to privatize middle class housing and publicly-owned assets, the thinking behind the current American president’s economic and foreign policy choices, and the importance of keeping our own political decision-making in Canada free of foreign interference from that same American president. The direct link to the page containing the articles is here. The most recent articles are at the bottom of the page.

Thank you for considering the book and I hope to hear from you over the next few months.

First of all, I hope you are all well into your vacation vibe. As there is still over a month left, please keep thoughts of the classroom out of your mind. However, I am writing this post for those of you who will visit the website in a couple of weeks as the beginning of the semester approaches.

Regarding that, I am happy to tell you that I can mail books with a very quick turnaround. Orders placed in Central Canada can be delivered in a few days, while books to the Atlantic Provinces and British Columbia can be delivered in about a week. So, just pop me an email (to bryceATcroecko.com) stating the number of books you require, the address you would like them delivered to, and your preferred method of payment (Interac, PayPal/Credit Card, Cheque) and I will see that the books are there before you know it. Additional pricing and ordering information can be found on the “Ordering Information” page above.

I also wanted to take a moment to formally introduce the updated company logo:

I started working on a new company logo in early 2022, and was delighted with the final result courtesy of my graphic designer, Marisa Scaramella. The logo reflects the fact that Croecko sells economics books, and that at its most essential, an economy must ensure that food (represented by the stalks of wheat) and energy (represented by the sun’s rays) are produced and distributed to people.

Finally, I have published a few of articles in the past few months with the Postmedia newspaper chain, about topics such as Ukraine’s request to join NATO, the Freedom Convoy, understanding the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war between the United States and Russia, and the prospect of higher interest rates. To read them, please go to:  https://leaderpost.com/author/bryce-mcbride/ 

Welcome to Croecko Publishing. I hope you have time to look around, but if time is limited you might be most interested in looking at one or more of the following:

1. The table of contents for Economics for Canadians                                                                  Table of Contents
2. The correspondence chart outlining how the lessons in the book line up with the updated 2015 Ontario CIA4U curriculum objectives (which have a lot in common with the curricular objectives of other Canadian economics courses)                                              2015 CIA4U Curriculum Objectives and Corresponding Lessons in Economics for Canadians 2020
3. The 4 lesson section on the ongoing Global Financial Crisis (which might be useful for other courses in business and social studies) to get a feel for how the book is written      https://bryce.gumroad.com/l/VhSa (the download is free)
4. A couple of lessons from earlier in the book, The Magic of Markets Lesson 9 and The Policy Balance Lesson 57

I believe passionately in the importance of students learning economics in high school. Before sending out the mailer I was delighted to learn that Manitoba, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador had updated their economics course curricula relatively recently. While I sell books regularly to PEI, British Columbia and Ontario, I am excited by the prospect of supporting students in Manitoba and the remaining Atlantic provinces as well.

Thanks again for dropping by. If you have any questions, please write me an email at bryceATcroecko.com. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Cartoon Credit: Jude Potvin

The 2012 First Edition (left) beside the newly arrived 2021 Revised First Edition (right)

I am pleased to announce that today I took delivery of over 2000 copies of the Revised First Edition of Economics for Canadians.

I have some orders to ship right away but this quantity should do me for the next few years, so I am looking forward to satisfying orders for second semester.

Thank you for your continued support.

First of all, thank you for your support. I sold the last copies of ‘Economics for Canadians’ in August and am very grateful to the schools and districts which have used the book over the years.

Looking forward, a second printing of 2000 copies is underway that should have copies available for sale by November, in time for winter term.

I had planned to write a new edition of the book but in the end I opted to go with a reprint with some small improvements, namely:

1. A partial solutions guide
2. A list of useful references
3. Amendments to lessons to reflect current events and priorities

As well as, of course, correcting typos that got through in 2012, and improving layout and style where possible.

As printing costs have more than doubled, and as postal rates have climbed significantly over the past 9 years, the price of the newly-printed books will be going up. Books ordered as part of a class set of ten or more books will now be $25 per copy, inclusive of postage anywhere in Canada, while books ordered in smaller quantities will be $25 per copy plus postage.

All in all, this is a decision I didn’t want to make but the old pricing scheme didn’t make any sense. Collecting $25 for a book that cost me $20 to send meant that I was not even covering my costs.

Thank you for your understanding and I look forward to hearing from you in the next few months. All the best for a great school year that is hopefully free from lockdowns and disruption.

First of all, congratulations on making it through the school year just past. The school shutdowns mandated in order to curb the spread of COVID-19 and the move to online learning posed a great many challenges to students, teachers and parents. However, in true Canadian fashion, people adapted and learned and remained connected.

Looking ahead towards the next school year is an act of clairvoyance at this point in time. That being the case, I fully expect that schools will only order books as the situation becomes more clear as we move into late August. The good thing is that I have a very fast turnaround time, so orders placed in Ontario will be delivered within a week while orders placed in B.C. can be delivered within 12 or 13 days.

Finally, I invite people to read my most recent triad of articles, “Understanding the Affordability Crisis,” “Destroying the Debt Bomb, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Deflation” and “Essential Work and B.S. Jobs.”

As the old economics saying goes, “the solution to high prices is high prices.” This current crisis could be just what the global economy needs to liquidate debt and reset our economies to favour production and discourage speculation.

All the best for a restful and recuperative summer vacation.

In light of the school closures put into effect across Canada to contain the COVID-19 virus, I made PDF copies of ‘Economics for Canadians’ freely available for students and teachers in late March.

I did so as the book is well-suited to independent, guided study as it has short lessons with exercises which can be done daily.

However, now that the school year is at an end I have removed the download links for the student book and teachers’ guide. However, I invite you to look at the chart outlining which lessons from the book correspond to which curricular objectives from the 2015 update of the Ontario CIA4U economics course here:

2015 CIA4U Curriculum Objectives and Corresponding Lessons in Economics for Canadians 2020

If you did download the PDFs during the emergency, I would ask that you not make them available online. The books are my intellectual property. While I was happy to share them during the acute phase of the crisis, going forward I would prefer that people use the printed book which is, after all, less expensive to purchase than to download and print.

I plan to write a second edition of the book over the next year, as I only have around 300 copies of the first edition (published in the spring of 2012) remaining in stock. One improvement I plan to make is to include a partial solutions key at the back of the student book. Another change would be to make regular reference to the key concepts of the course, as suggested by the 2015 curriculum update. However, if you have any other ideas which would help to make the book better, please pass them along in the comments thread to this post, or by email to me at bryceATcroecko.com.