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Post-Autistic Economics Network |
from post-autistic economics newsletter :
issue no. 12, March 15, 2002 Toward a Post-Autistic Economics
Education
Susan Feiner (Uni. of Southern Maine, USA and The Hawke Institute,
Uni. of South Australia)
Taken
together, the articles by Marc Lavoie and Peter Earl (PAE
Review, no. 1; 30 January 2002) can be seen as posing a set of
interesting, important, and inter-related questions. Lavoie asks, “what are the connections
between Post-Keynesian and feminist economics?” While Earl asks, “how can we
understand, and so transcend, the resistance on the part of students to a
more “pluralistic” approach to economics education?” Lavoie’s investigation of the connections
between Post-Keynesian and feminist economics notes the importance of
pedagogy, but his essay does not discuss teaching. Earl’s discussion of pedagogy refers to
critical thinking, and the development of student’s capacity to handle
intellectual ambiguity, but his discussion does not mention feminist
pedagogy. But pedagogy reform in
economics, at least in the United States, emerged as an organic concern of
feminists seeking to develop a new approach to the discipline. Beginning in 1985 and running through at least 1997, there
were panels at various economics meetings (including the ASSA),
conferences, faculty development programs, workshops, seminars, peer reviewed
published papers, as well as a number of edited volumes produced by feminist
economists and aimed at deep transformation of the teaching of
economics. In the early years,
feminist interest in pedagogy was manifest in the papers researching the
presentation of topics relating to gender and race in economics
textbooks. This work demonstrated the
extent to which introductory economics textbooks perpetuated sexist and
racist assumptions, reinforced existing biases regarding the perversity of
policy aimed at redressing sexual and racial inequality, and basically
ridiculed any but the “approved” points of view on these controversial
topics. Quite a number of highly esteemed, mainstream economists
were appalled by these findings. With
the help of Barbara Bergmann, I recruited such luminaries as Robert Solow, William Baumol, Lester Thurow, Alice Rivlin, and
Kenneth Arrow to work with me on The Committee for Race and Gender Balance in
the Economics Curriculum. My point
here is that “autism” and bigotry need not go hand in hand. With a lot of hard work, a great deal of
encouragement and helpful support from many quarters, Robin Bartlett (Denison
University) and I secured a series of grants from The National Science
Foundation to host faculty development programs to help economics professors
integrate the new scholarship on women and people of color
into the introductory economics curriculum. Economics
Pedagogy and the Feminist Classroom
From the outset, Bartlett and I knew that the standard
“sage on the stage” model of college teaching was not appropriate for
bringing these controversial topics into introductory economics
classrooms. How did we know this? We were both conversant with what was then
the cutting edge “active learning,” “student centered”
approach to teaching which has its roots in the feminist revisioning
of education. As Peter Earl quite rightly points out, students come to college knowing all sorts of things, and one of the things they “know” is that the way to demonstrate “learning” is to parrot back what the teacher said. But when students are likely to disagree with the teacher (as many of them often do on the topics related to sex, race and the economy as seen from the eyes of a feminist) they are going to feel manipulated, brainwashed, and angry. When this is coupled with their almost total ignorance, if not complete misunderstanding, of the struggles for women’s liberation and racial justice, what was intended as a class discussion can turn into an awful round of name calling, intolerance, and all around bad feelings. (This is why economics professors often choose to avoid these topics). In Feminism and
Methodology philosopher Sandra Harding argues that one of the key
distinctive features of feminist research is that the researcher places
her/himself and the subject of research “on the same plane.” This epistemological position has direct
application in pedagogy. As we were trying to get economics faculty to rethink the
teacher role, we organized the faculty development conferences1 so that faculty could
re-experience the uncertainty, risk-taking, and mutual support that
characterizes classes which are open, non or minimally hierarchical, and
which actually welcome free discussion.
We knew that faculty needed to reacquaint themselves with what were
hopefully their own best experiences as students. We hoped that the insights gained from this
would lead faculty to realize the need for deep change in the structure of
classroom dynamics. The programs of these conferences2 had faculty
engage in competitive timed exercises, and then in cooperative, collaborative
exercises. We asked participants to
reflect on the different feelings these exercises provoked. Here too the recognition that feelings and
not just “right answers” are important in learning reflects feminist
epistemological commitments. The gulf
between this position and the view of personhood (if you can call it that)
embodied in Rational Economic Man should be obvious. Participants also spent a good deal of time reflecting on,
and working through, activities designed to highlight the way their own
attitudes and histories of sex, gender, race, and ethnicity had shaped them
as learners. These sessions were
invariably highly charged. Emotions
ran high as economists recounted
personal stories of being shunned, or humiliated for who they were; we heard
stories about the shame people felt when they realized that their parents
were racist, homophobic, or anti-semitic; others told of how they had participated in
harassing behaviors; still others revealed that
they hadn’t known that whiteness was itself a racial identity. I cannot count
the number of people who told me that these sessions provided some of their
sharpest insights into the problems with the mainstream approach. Providing a venue for self-reflection is also a hallmark
of feminist pedagogy. Feminists have
long insisted that social position affects knowledge, and that every view is
a point of view. Feminist epistemology
is clear on this point: recognizing that power and privilege shape knowledge
leads to more—not less—rigor and “objectivity” in scientific inquiry. Faculty had to recognize that they too, were marked by the
social processes of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. This self-awareness is an essential
pre-requisite for creating a classroom where students feel safe enough to
self-reveal. All of our students carry
a personal history relative to race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and
ethnicity. Ignoring the emotional
underpinnings of their understandings of diversity and the social conflict
attendant on diversity virtually guarantees that a classroom discussion will
explode with misunderstanding, disrespect, or worse. Another reason why it was important to self-disclose
around our experiences is that this placed the participants outside their
“comfort zones.” Faculty (in general) and economists (in particular) are
probably not used to talking about feelings, especially not in relationship
to economic concepts. Once they had
taken this risk and discovered that the group would support them, they could
see for themselves that “the economic is as personal” as the “personal is
political.” Only after we had created an atmosphere of trust and
community did we turn to the formidable tasks of reinventing introductory
micro and macro-economics. Over the
next two days, faculty work groups developed creative exercises, all based on
active, collaborative learning, which brought questions of gender and race to
the center of classroom economic discussions. I recall a simulation exercise in which students
were to research and the represent the various people who would be affected
if a factory in the Southern U.S.A., shut down in order to reopen in El
Salvador. Another group came up with
the idea of holding public hearings on Federal Reserve policy, with students
representing a wide range of social organizations. Yet another traced the effects of inflation
on different occupational groups. One
of my favorites was a skit of a romantic couple
using Becker’s logic to sort out the decision to marry. A blind eagle in a blizzard could recognize the
connections between this approach to teaching economics and feminist
pedagogy. But what is the connection
to critical thinking? The topics of gender and race are especially helpful for
introducing competing points of view because everyone “knows” that people
disagree. As Peter Earl points out,
students often believe that disagreement on such issues exist because the
“experts” still haven’t discovered the Truth.
I will go out on a limb here and just flat out insist that you cannot
disabuse students of this point of view if your reading assignments are
confined to a textbook, regardless of its orientation to economics. That means you need to find articles that
students can read—they often need help with this because they are not
especially skilled readers—that express different points of view. Working in small groups during class will help students
learn how to read critically. In
groups of 3 to 5 have them identify the 4 most important points of each of
the articles you’ve assigned. Make
sure they reference each important point to a specific paragraph in the
essay. After you’ve gotten these
points on the board (and there should be a goodly number of “most important
points” since you have 4 points per group) the class discussion can focus on
which of these points are most important and why. By the conclusion of this exercise every
student should understand the articles. Now you have prepared them for selecting the argument with
which they agree. A great homework
assignment: “why I rejected argument
X.” Critical thinking requires the ability to recognize and understand what are often complex arguments. In economics, the points of view associated with the heterodox approaches are quite likely to be diametrically opposed to the views of society with which students are familiar. Getting students to actually “think” about these ideas, rather than see this as an attempt to brainwash them, is tricky. So is getting students to do more than parrot back your politics. As I’ve argued here, feminism informs a pedagogy which is up to the challenge. Notes[1] Robin
Bartlett and I were co-principal investigators on two NSF sponsored grants
that funded three summer faculty development conferences, open to all
professors of introductory economics.
We also held follow up sessions at the Allied Social Science
Association meetings. I subsequently
received another NSF grant that funded an additional three conferences for
professors of economics at community colleges, at women’s colleges, and at
historically black colleges and universities.
This later conference became the jumping off point for a Ford
Foundation grant aimed at improving economics education at Historically Black
Colleges and Universities. 2 I apologize
in advance for any errors here as I am reconstructing these programs from
memory. I am on leave in Adelaide,
Australia and all my notes, grant applications, and conference schedules are
on computers in Portland, Maine. References
The inaugural article framing this critique of
mainstream education appeared in The
Journal of Economic Education, See S. Feiner
and B. Morgan, Fall, 1987, “Women and Minorities in Introductory Economics
Textbooks: 1974 to 1984." Two relevant essays appearing in The American Economic Review are: S. Feiner and B. Roberts, May 1995, "Using an
Alternative Paradigm to Teach Race, Gender and Critical Thinking," and
S. Feiner and R. Bartlett, May 1992,
"Balancing the Economics Curriculum: Method, Content and Pedagogy." For an explicit discussion of the connections between
mainstream method, economic education, and racial/sexual bias see, S. Feiner and B. Roberts, "Hidden by the
Invisible Hand: Neoclassical Economic Theory and the Textbook Treatment of
Minorities and Women," in Gender
& Society, June, 1990.
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