The lesson was prepared by Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich is a former college professor. He often stresses the importance of not going broke (his technical phrase for this is “fiscal responsibility“). The lesson is contained, implicitly, in an April 8, 2007 report in the Burlington [Vermont] Free Press:
There was a certain irony in the recent demise of the College Republicans at the University of Vermont…. When the club invited Gingrich to speak at Ira Allen Chapel on Oct. 6, 2005, he settled for an undisclosed honorarium that was apparently higher than the College Republicans could afford….
One point everyone agrees on is that there was nothing ideological about shutting down the Republican club. It was strictly a money thing.
The fee for Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, was never revealed — the College Republicans said from the beginning that his contract was confidential, and Gingrich, through his press spokesman, will not say how much it was — but an educated guess is possible.
In 2005-06, the College Republicans budgeted $25,000 for speakers, according to Maggie Doran, who works in the Student Government Association’s front office. Gingrich, who rose to national prominence in Congress during the 1990s, was the only speaker the club brought in during that academic year. The UVM President’s Office contributed $2,000 toward Gingrich’s fee, as did the Student Life Office. The sum of all those funds, plus the $7,000 from the loan, comes to $38,000.
Teachers can use this as the basis for a lesson about basic concepts: income, expenses, profit and loss.
(Of course, there are many other ways to teach this lesson.)