"Let's Make a Deal": A Guide to Teaching about Taxes

Abstract

Arising out of the need to help students in adult education understand and take action about the and service cuts afflicting Massachusetts, Let's Make a Deal provides a valuable resource for adult basic education (ABE), ESL, SLIAG, and Citizenship teachers. The guide helps students understand taxes, their role in society, and the concept of participatory citizenship, while simultaneously helping them to strengthen their basic math, language, and problem-solving abilities. Despite the fact that the materials are specific to Massachusetts, both the basic skills and the understandings of taxes developed in the guide are useful and can be adapted to any state. The organization of the guide facilitates its use in the classroom. Materials are divided into three sections (Good Government, Taxes and State Budget, and How You Can Be Heard) and are color coded for objectives, background, lessons, and curriculum materials. Using a problem-solving/empowerment approach, the authors have developed in clear, straightforward language and pictures lessons that can help students understand the day-to-day consequences of, and often abstract discussions about, taxes. For example, one exercise asks students to look at 11 pictures and discuss what things they would not have if they didn't pay taxes. Another lesson helps students to understand different kinds of taxes and loopholes and to compare relative burdens. A third set of materials provides instruction in reading tax-related materials (paycheck records, forms and tables) and in calculating and completing returns. A lesson in the final section asks students to evaluate different options for resolving the tax crisis in Massachusetts. These materials are not meant to constitute a comprehensive curriculum. Rather, they are a set of materials which can be adapted and drawn upon. Consequently, each section has suggestions for adapting the materials to ABE and ESL learners at different levels of abilities. In addition, a supplement outlines math skills that could tie in with the curriculum, including a short, but highly relevant, bibliography. As with any materials, there are minor sections that need improvement (e.g., the definition of progressive [p. 19] taxes is unclear); nonetheless, these materials would make an excellent addition to any curriculum teaching citizenship. By directly and powerfully relating abstract concepts to everyday experience, by providing practice in analyzing confusing information, and by presenting nonthreatening ways to get involved politically, Let's Make a Deal makes teaching citizenship easier and more productive. It links the material to the changeable reality of students' lives.