Dear Colleagues,



I invite you to check out an unusually open-handed and pluralistic conversation about the principles of economics at  www.theeconomicconversation.com .



The web site exists as a means to nurture and grow an already worldwide community of teachers and students observant of the facts that there is more than one way to think about the economy and that a fair and public hearing of those alternative ways is crucial to the health of the economic conversation. 



This is not a fly-by-night blog.  Your contributions to the site will be considered for use in a forthcoming micro/macro textbook, The Economic Conversation, by Arjo Klamer, Deirdre McCloskey, and Stephen Ziliak (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2008).  



A full-year introduction to micro and macro, The Economic Conversation presents the tools and principles as does any good textbook. But a fourth to a third of every chapter is in dialogue form, Socratic dialogue, just like a real economic conversation. The idea is to simulate a real classroom, a real seminar room, a real conversation.  



Inspired by educators such as Paolo Freire, bell hooks, John Dewey, and Jane Tompkins, the authors of The Economic Conversation reflect the pluralistic and dialogic spirit of the community. McCloskey is a Chicago School free-marketeer, though recently also a progressive Christian and a postmodern literary type, too. Klamer is an evolving European social democrat.  Ziliak is actively committed to racial and social justice, leaning towards the market for some solutions and towards the state for others.  Each of the authors is an internationally recognized expert in "the rhetoric of economics," too. 



Participants in the textbook dialogues are the authors themselves, joined by four students and the occasional "guest lecturer." 



And that is where you come in.  The Economic Conversation wants to practice what it preaches.  The authors have grown increasingly frustrated with the hundreds of Samuelsonian knock-offs.   They want their book to reflect the actual richness of the economic conversation. 



So they need to hear from you. 



How are the conversations working? What is going right and what is not? What should they add or delete? Please tell.  Frustrated neoclassicals, feminists and libertarians, empirical Marxists and post-modern Keynesians, and everyone in between: your contribution is crucial. 



The authors think their book provides a solution to the problem of teaching economics in liberal arts programs and anywhere that critical thinking is said to be valued. 



The economic conversation is too important to be left where it is in most economic textbooks: in a state of neglect, we agree. 



Sincerely, 



Susan B. MacDonald