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[NOTE: Most other responses to the "team teaching" suggestion have been
filed while I wait to see what level of interest there is. However, Mary's
post touches upon issues regarding the teaching of HET that others may
wish to discuss. -- RBE]
Ross -- that's a very interesting idea. I am not well enough to teach,
of course -- in fact, I've not been well enough lately to participate
in the marvelous discussions that are going on here at HES and over
on EH.Disc -- but when I DID teach, I was IMMENSELY frustrated as a
historian by the impossibility/impracticality of teaching history of
economic thought to history students.
It is one of the main reasons, I believe, that historians are woefully
naive about issues relating to economics -- and that naivete shows up
in their research all the time.
Conversely, the standard way to teach HET in an econ department is to
sort of tunnel-vision your way from one Major Economist to the next.
I don't think that's necessarily a bad first-pass approach, and the
professor I knew who used that approach to teach principles of economics
was rather on the right track. However, that again becomes embarassing
when the "ideas" are taken out of context (to me, that means that
they are poorly translated -- placing ideas in historical context is
only putting them in the proper language in which they were written/
conceptualized -- HET without history of ideas/thought/philosophy is
rife with false cognates.) Also, HET without the broader context leaves
the student unaware of the ideas that were DISCARDED, the ideas that
were common currency everywhere at that time period -- both of which
are as important to understanding the development of economic theory
as the ideas which were finally ACCEPTED, and why new theories arose
to displace them.
The last time I taught, I had a graduate class in the political economy
of late 18th century British America. Instead of moving chronologically
from one idea to the next, we focused on a single period of time and a
single basic issue (the selection of a body of laws/set of rules that
would frame economic activities in the United States for the next 200
years). THEN we read different interpretations of that period (such as
Charles Beard) in the context of the texts that HE would have been familiar
with -- political theory as well as economic. It's quite an eye-opener.
The irony is that so much that is termed the "economic interpretation"
of the Constitution is really a political science-based interpretation of
the Constitution.
[How many of you on this list think that individual property issues were
paramount in the writing and ratification of the constitution? Why do
you think that? Do you know? Is it accurate? Do you know how to
even begin to answer that last question?]
You have to put E.P.Thompson's work on pre-industrial societies in the
context not ONLY of Polanyi, but ALSO of the period in which Polanyi
wrote and then the political/economic theories current at THAT time;
you have to put the New Social History in the context of the new
English translation of Marx's early writings that was circulating
in U.S. universities in the '60s and '70s (I personally received that
volume as required reading in BOTH a philosophy AND a sociology course
as an undergraduate at Oberlin) (before Duke).
And then you have to put E.P. Thompson in the context of Hobson and
the British underconsumptionists (of whom American scholars have absolutely
NO knowledge). When historians of the early modern period talk about
"consumption" and "shopkeepers" -- do they have ANY idea what they are
talking about? (no, they don't.) [Conversely, the economic historian
from an economics department who impatiently brushes aside Thompson, and
in the process a whole generation of admiring historians -- who
focuses only on the "errors" in Thompson's work (from the standpoint
of current economic theory, of course, there are many) loses the
opportunity to see what there was in Thompson's writings that were
USEFUL both to historians at the time, and to economists.]
Well, I had a BALL with that class. Unfortunately, it was WAY over the
heads of my Master's students at Villanova! Wish I could have taught it
someplace with a Ph.D. program. (Though rather to my surprise they rose
to meet the challenge; the course had a big influence on their thinking;
but I didn't get the fun part of a course like that -- which is where the
graduate students figure out things that you hadn't figured out for them.)
So were I in a history department with a real graduate program (were I
well enough to BE in one in the first place, even if I got the job!),
I would insist that there be a course like this -- that as students are
required in history departments to be familiar with the historiography
of a period and the way historical interpretation shifts over time, they
also need to be familiar with the shifts in the other types of theories
they are implicitly using in their interpretations.
On the other side, economists who use history in their work (and I
wish more would) need to be familiar with the shifts of historiography --
the other side. Otherwise, you subconsciously make assumptions about
the meanings of words derived from the modern use of those words (or
from the combination of other scholars' interpretations of those words
in other times). You need to simultaneously be aware of the current
literature in a time period (so you're as up to date as possible on
the language/idea environment in which a particular economist wrote),
and ALSO BE AWARE of the historiography (so you understand the hidden
meanings in the historical works you're using to interpret the
language/idea environment) (!), AND you need a kind of historiography
of history of ideas, so you understand how much baggage has been
unconsciously dragged into the study of economics texts in the past
by the assumptions of a different present.
As an example of the latter, an economist who was trained in the 1960s
would have read texts interpreting economic theory in a framework of
"market" vs. "socialistic" or "traditional" thinking; they would
"know" what the "outcome" was supposed to be, and read each text in the
context of that predetermined "outcome" (the positivist approach --
Adam Smith is God with flaws, later economists are interesting because
they iron out those flaws; Malthus contributes A, Ricardo contributes
BCDE, Senior contributes F, Mills contributes GHI, Marshall adds JKLM,
etc. etc. etc. What is "right" is applauded as visionary, what is
"wrong" is sadly dismissed as not-there-yet.
The context of a HET text of the 1960s would also have been highly
influenced by the perceived need to figure out what to tell emerging
countries so they would become Market/Democratic Nations Like Us,
rather than Communistic/Totalitarian Nations Like Them.
History of Economic Thought as a discipline may be past those views
NOW, but you have to understand that the economists who received that
training are still out there today. That is still what THEY think
history of economic thought is. and it affects how they perceive
economic theory itself. So the student of mid-late 20th century
British-American economics, writing in the year 2050, would need to
understand that context to understand many of the assumptions buried
in their writings.
While I could not personally USE the "team teaching" idea (although I
perhaps COULD contribute something from my home base), I think it is an
excellent way to learn HOW to create a course that would cross
disciplinary boundaries in the teaching of HET -- and in the process,
perhaps teach historians/economists/whoever else is involved how to
communicate what they know to scholars practicing in the field, as well.
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History
Villanova University (on leave 1995-98)
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