By Anthony Gill, Oct 26, 2009 in Pedagogy and Teaching
Whenever anybody asks what I do for a living, I tell them that I’m a professor of political economy. Invariably, the person who asked responds, “Wow! You certainly have a lot to talk about today!” Even my academic colleagues will say this to me if some event such as a large bank failure dominates the headlines. The underlying implication of this statement is that professors in my discipline deal primarily with “current events.” In other words, we explain what is reported in the newspapers or on cable news. This image is likely reinforced by the memories most people have of “social studies” classes in high school; those courses, at least the way I remembered them, typically involved students reading the newspaper and trying to understand what was going on the world by discussing the top stories.
Admittedly, teaching “current events” has a tempting appeal; I certainly want my students to understand the logic and problems behind topics such as the collapse of the housing market, the Congressional stimulus package, and efforts to reform health care. All of these topics are of great importance to me and I do want my students making informed decisions when they enter the voting booth or follow a policy-making career.
However, in my two decades of teaching at the collegiate level, I have come to realize that simply talking about current events often gets you nowhere with students in terms of understanding what is really happening. Students come to the classroom with preconceived notions about these events and when questioned directly they will reflexively dig their heels into their positions. These preconceived notions generally have their origins in those high school social studies classes. Being at a major state university that only recruits the top students from around the state and world doesn’t help the situation much. Teaching the proverbial “straight A” students is quite the challenge because, well, they know it all! On more than one occasion I have been informed by one of my pupils that he received a 4.0 in his high school social studies class and is certain that I have no idea what I am talking about. Little learning occurs in such environments.
So what is one to do? The answer is to teach students about bailouts, tax policy and health care without ever mentioning bailouts, tax policy and health care. This requires a strategy of teaching the fundamentals of political economy. For instance, underlying the issue of financial bailouts is the principle of moral hazard, the concept wherein insuring against deleterious consequences of a certain behavior actually encourages more of that harmful behavior. We discuss how hockey players tend to play more aggressively when they are given helmets and pads, which ironically results in more injuries. We then talk about how flood victims continue living in flood-prone areas when they are given federal insurance to help them rebuild their homes. And then I ask them about bank bailouts telling them that they already examined the issue in two different situations. I do the same with tax policy, having students first discuss how they would change their studying behavior when presented with three different syllabi that had different grading schemes.
All of this involves teaching a variety of basic economic concepts in situations that are more familiar and less ideologically charged than the topics appearing in today’s headlines. It also requires students to develop the skill of reasoning by analogy. As recent neuroscience research has demonstrated, analogous reasoning does not come easy for most students. It requires practice. Starting with the familiar and leading to the unfamiliar has been one of the best ways I have found to deal with supposedly complex events. Eventually, when students are led to the trough of contemporary events, they are familiar enough with some basic conceptual frameworks that they can step away from their preconceived notions and think through the issue at hand. Students can understand contemporary events only when they have a solid grasp of the fundamental concepts of human behavior.
So, am I fortunate to be in a profession that always has something to talk about given the state of contemporary events? Yes, but I’m even more fortunate to realize that all the phenomenon that we see today can be explained with reference to some fundamental principles that have been known throughout time. Teaching the core concept of liberty and free markets is best done when students don’t even know that is what you are teaching!
Anthony Gill is professor of political science at the University of Washington. His most recent book is The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press).
6 Responses to "Teaching Contemporary Events? Teach the Fundamentals First."
Lee Trepanier on Oct 26, 2009
Great entry: I couldn't agree more that one of the great joys of teaching is being able to converse about current events with students and lead them to think about the fundamentals that lie underneath them.
Anthony Gill on Oct 27, 2009
Whoo hoo! My first entry earns me my first comment!! Thanks Lee for agreeing with me.
As confirming evidence of the above, I just had a student from nearly 12 years ago contact me and tell me how they remembered all the stuff in my political economy class and how it has helped them understand the recent events associated with the recession. Of course, that is only one data point, but you can't start a trend without the first dot!
Lee Trepanier on Oct 27, 2009
It's strange the impact we have on students, often times where both parties don't even know it. I suspect it's only after reflection, which takes time and maturity, for students to realize what they had learned in the classroom can help them make sense of their present situation.
I am curious about the knowledge-level of your students when you present contemporary examples in the classroom. Do most of them have a good grasp of the topic or is their knowledge of it superficial? If it is the latter, how do you close the gap without taking too much class time? I often have this problem in the classroom because my students know very little of contemporary events.
Anthony Gill on Oct 28, 2009
I think my students have a basic "TV (or Interweb) news" knowledge of current events. I don't fret over that too much; as I will blog later, I think political scientists put too much emphasis on knowing everything that is going on in the world (leaving little time to enjoy playing Killer Bunnies). Some of our students (approx. 900-1,000 majors) are coerced into buying the NYT, which I do fret over since it is a disgusting practice. Maybe I'll blog about that too. My bigger concern is that students don't have the underlying tools to understand current events. So even if they know the news version of current events, that knowledge doesn't serve them well. For example, my students know that the current health care bill (if you can keep track of them) has a "public option," which according to news accounts means that the "government will help people who can't afford it buy insurance." Okay, but what does that really mean? Don't they know that we already have three public options -- Medicare, Medicaid and V.A. health insurance and hospitals? What does having a "public option" mean for their health care other than making them feel good that everybody else has health insurance/care? What are the larger economic effects of a "public option"? Will it introduce competition as promised by some? Would you want the people who set the rules be the main competitors in a game? etc. Bottom line: Students have a decent media knowledge of current events, but considering the media version usually does not discuss the "and then what?" questions that Thomas Sowell urges us to ask, that media knowledge is basically useless. That said, it sounds like I have a somewhat cynical view on things. In some upcoming posts tentatively called "Confessions of a Redneck Scholar," I will explain paradoxically why I'm not too bothered by this. That's a teaser and now forces Patrick to take my blog submissions. Stay tuned.
Lee Trepanier on Oct 28, 2009
Thanks for the response. I look forward to your future blogs.
Anthony Gill on Oct 30, 2009
FOLLOW UP: To really bring home the point of my initial post, my students seem to know a lot of basic "newsworthy" facts about the health care debate and the recent financial crisis.
However, we just had an interesting online discussion where more than a handful of students (in a class of 150) were in agreement that pharmaceutical manufacturers should not be allowed to profit from the sale of vaccines and medicinces because those things are very important to society. When I asked whether rock stars, famous actors and sports heroes should be allowed to make huge profits off of their activities, nobody raised an objection. Indeed, many people reaffirmed their belief that the "more important" something is to society as a whole, the less people should get compensated for providing it. I had to repeat this claim several times online to make sure everybody would understand what the implications of that statement were. And people still cling tightly to that view.
Also, another interesting thread revealed that companies only can increase their profit by "cutting corners" -- squeezing worker pay, lowering the quality of goods and services, etc. It never occured to anybody that if that statement were true then our living standards should be worse off than a century ago. It never occured to many of these students that innovation leading to increases in productivity might be a prime consequence of the quest for profit.
One can see that with these views firmly ingrained in many (not all) students, a discussion of the contemporary health care debate is nearly futile. To be fair, a number of students are understanding the basics. And I think that the students who do pick the basics up quicker are ones that have been out of school for a time.