‘Knights of the Monetary Table’: Bishop’s School students win SoCal title in National Economics Challenge

Despite having never taken a formal economics class, a group of students from The Bishop’s School in La Jolla competed in the national semifinals of the National Economics Challenge as Southern California champions.

The team — dubbed the “Knights of the Monetary Table” in a nod to their school’s Knight mascot — includes juniors Jeremy Feng and Ryan Qin and sophomores Jack Jin and Charlie Ahn.

Bishop’s economics teacher Damon Halback serves as their adviser and has mentored the team the past two years.

“The idea is to test high-schoolers on their general economics knowledge, whether that is what you would learn in an AP [Advanced Placement] econ course with micro and macro economics or just world news, like trade relations and what is going on with the Federal Reserve … and economic theory, with specific economists and what they have done,” Ryan said.

Students must take an online qualifying test to reach the state-level competition. Having done so, the Bishop’s students competed against other Southern California teams on April 9 (every other state has one winning team, but California is divided into Northern and Southern). In total, more than 1,000 students in Southern California participated in the state competition.

The Knights had not taken even a basic economics class and learned everything through self-study, meeting over spring break, watching videos on YouTube and working with Halback on specific questions.

“This is a uniquely self-motivated, erudite and sophisticated group of students,” Halback said. “Last year, three of these four students competed in a division made for people that have taken an econ class but not an advanced econ class. They qualified for the state competition last year just through self-study. Everyone else had taken an econ class.”

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This year, the team competed in the Adam Smith Division against students who had taken Advanced Placement economics courses.

Students took a multiple-choice test and proceeded to the Quiz Bowl-type event, in which questions were read aloud and students had to write their answers on whiteboards and hold them up as quickly as possible.

The Knights of the Monetary Table won the Southern California title and moved on to the national semifinals April 17.

They didn’t win there, but given that none of them are seniors, the four are looking forward to going again next year.

Bishop’s School students Charlie Ahn, Ryan Qin, Jack Jin and Jeremy Feng celebrate winning the Southern California title in the Adam Smith Division of the National Economics Challenge.

(Abby Xu)

“This is a really unique achievement,” Halback said. “I’ve never had a team that has self-studied that has performed this well completely through their own dedication and initiative.”

Jeremy said the National Economics Challenge is unique compared with events that focus on subjects taught regularly in school, such as writing or science, because economics typically isn’t taught until late in high school.

“The Bishop’s curriculum is great, but economics isn’t taught until 11th or 12th grade,” Jeremy said. “When I came to the school, I already liked the subject of economics but there wasn’t really an avenue to study it. So I created The Bishop’s School economics club as a place for people to talk about economics. … Since then we have talked about international events, the stock market and cryptocurrency and were able to host speakers.”

The competition “is a way for kids to directly interact with economics,” he said.

Jack said economics “is applicable to a lot of things in life. It’s a branch of study that you can see in real life. It’s very tangible in that way. It helps with how you see the world … because so many other areas and decisions have underlying aspects connected to economics.”

Charlie said he likes economics “because it connects everything together, and I like to understand our world better. Economics is one of the ways you can do that.”

“There is this wide assumption that economics is just about money, but it’s actually very little about money,” Ryan said. “Econ is actually about the way people make choices, which connected economics to psychology for me. A lot of it is also connected to math and logic. … That was not a connection I expected to find. … It really opened my eyes to a new side of politics. If you understand basic economic concepts, you can understand everyday things more easily.” ◆