Fifteen Theses on Classroom Teaching.

• Author: Elzinga, Kenneth G.

Kenneth G. Elzinga [*]

The Southern Economic Association initiated a lecture series on teaching to be presented at its annual meeting. This paper, given on November 24, 2000, was the first such lecture. The editor invited the author to publish the lecture in Southern Economic Journal. Portions of the paper are the fruits of the author's more than 30 years of experience teaching economics. Parts of the paper are based on writings regarding pedagogy outside the discipline of economics. The paper puts forward 15 theses about teaching economics in the classroom. The theses range from propositions about why economics is a particularly difficult subject to teach to suggestions about how the classroom teaching of economics can be improved.

1. Introduction

I am flattered by the invitation from the Southern Economic Association to present this invited lecture on classroom teaching. It helped solve a personal identity crisis I was having last year.

A student I did not know called me out of the blue one day. I was on research leave at the time. She wanted to speak to me about a paper she was writing for a history class at the University of Virginia. The paper was to be about some historical event and each student in the class was to interview someone who had lived through the event. She wanted to interview me and hoped to find a topic that would fit my experience. So she asked me a question I found sobering: Was I alive during the depression? I told her I missed that event.

She then asked: Was I alive during the Vietnam War? I was, but she was disappointed to learn I did not fight in the war. I had a student deferment and then a faculty deferment. She then asked me, since I was in economics, if I had ever been involved in any major economic breakthrough; like starting a new industry. I told her I hadn't.

By this time, I was getting defensive, because it seemed as though I really wasn't very important. So I mentioned I had been through the student protests of the Vietnam War. I used to cross a picket line to teach my classes at Virginia. This seemed to interest her; maybe there was a topic lurking here, she thought. But it seemed pretty tame.

Her next question really put me in my place. She asked, "Well, did anything important happen while you were in high school?" The only thing I could think of was making the tennis team, majoring in mechanical drafting, and getting a date with Lynn Stevens.

I did tell her the Korean War took place while I was alive, and the Civil Rights movement began. She asked me if I fought in the Korean War but I had to confess I was only a boy then.

Disappointed with my lackluster life, she said she might get back in touch with me after she thought more about the project. She never did.

That event made me reflect on who I am. This is not something economists do very often, or do very well. We leave it to poets and people who teach French literature.

A new school year began and I was no longer on research leave. I was to teach. And I continued to reflect on the question of who I am, or who I am called to be. And I suspect the answer to that question for me is similar to the answer for many practicing economists. A major part of my identity comes from my teaching: teaching what Adam Smith called "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty," which many of my students find neither obvious nor simple. It turns out that teaching the subject of economics also is neither obvious nor simple.

Teaching students can take place in an office, a hallway, a dorm lounge, during a meal, even in a teacher's home. No doubt the most important teaching economists do takes place on the pages of books and journal articles. But the pedagogical focus of this paper shall be teaching economics in the classroom.

To get the Protestant Reformation underway, Martin Luther posted theses on the door of the cathedral at Wittenberg. There were 95 of them. I do not intend to start a reformation in the teaching of economics, but I shall put forth 15 theses about teaching economics.

Thesis #1. Economics Does Not Produce Many Great Teachers

Many economics students, upon learning that Carlyle called economics the "dismal science," wonder if Carlyle had studied the subject under their teacher. Most of us, over and again, have been introduced socially and identified as an economist, only to hear, "Oh, I took an economics course once. I didn't understand any of it." A casual survey informs me that other social scientists do not experience this reaction over and again the way economists do.

I won't take much time to support my first thesis, other than to say that if you read books, not on teaching, but about great teachers, economists are not prominently represented. The best such book is Masters: Portraits of Great Teachers, edited by Joseph Epstein (1981). From Hannah Arendt to Yvor Winters, and 16 other great teachers in between, not an economist appears. Across the Atlantic, Noel Annan's wonderful book, The Dons, is not exactly laden with economists (1999). Economics has never produced a George Rylands.

I asked a Research Assistant to gather all the books she could find about great teachers in economics. The result was a dry hole. An article by William E. Cashin reports that economics consistently is one of the lowest-ranked disciplines on student ratings of instructors and courses (1990, pp. 113-121).

Now lest I be misinterpreted, let me be clear: There have been superb teachers of economics, relative to other teachers of economics. My mentor Walter Adams delivered great lectures and was a gut-wrenching teacher in the Socratic format. Graduate students at the University of Chicago raved about Milton Friedman's classroom brilliance in his price theory course. But I shall stick with my first thesis: On the whole, the dismal science is rather dismal at producing great teachers.

Thesis #2. Thesis # 1 Is Not Surprising

Thesis #2 follows from the rationality postulate on which our discipline solidly rests. Put briefly, my second thesis is that it is not rational to be a great teacher of economics. From a cost-benefit basis, in most academic settings, it doesn't pay off. The law of diminishing returns kicks in before excellence is attained.

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