What I find surreal is the idea that one can teach economics, or any other subject for
that matter, without teaching history of thought.  Whatever one teaches is part of
intellectual history.
  
When I teach intermediate micro, for example, I explain to students that I'm teaching
neoclassical choice, exchange, price and market theory.  I provide a context within which
they can "place" what they are learning.
  
I suspect that any good medical school has to do the same thing.  After all, there is more
than one current "theory" of medicine.  For example, medical doctors study within one
context, doctors of osteopathy within another.  That's why they have different teaching
hospitals.
  
This way of approaching a subject is so fundamental that any good principles of economics
textbook begins with some discussion of the way in which economists think about the world
and how that differs from thinkers in other subjects.
  
Anyone arrogant enough to assert that the history of their subject is of no importance is,
to put it bluntly, a fool who possesses neither an education nor the spirit of
intellectual inquiry.  They should be kept away from students.
  
Sam Bostaph