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Student Essays on Post-Autistic Economics
posted April 2003
Post-Autistic Praxis:
The Student’s Role in Applying Theories to
Classrooms
Becky Clausen (Graduate
student, University of Oregon, USA)
An intellectual movement’s success can be measured by its
access to a large audience, the degree to which offers substance and how much
it inspires others to action. The
Post-Autistic Economics movement has both broad international reach and
content as witnessed by the robust Post Autistic Economics website. This
report describes how the PAE movement has inspired me to examine my academic
institution’s economics department and begin a process of much needed
reform.
Evidence of the Post-Autistic Economics movement achieving
this benchmark of success lies in two criterion that serve to guide students
in their attempt for reform: (1) an
inaugural student body that has initiated the challenge to conventional
academic economics, and (2) principal writers and thinkers who have offered
concrete direction for how to transform economics’ narrowly confined
discipline into a heterodox analysis.
The PAE movement has inspired and empowered students like
myself to begin individual inquiry into their respective university’s
economics departments, and in turn to day-light the pedagogy, methodology,
and safe-guarded channels of conformity that allow conventional economics to
persist and reproduce in the academic setting. Exposure to the PAE movement
has encouraged me to understand the forces shaping the ideology of my
economics department at the University of Oregon, and to apply the broad PAE
theories to a tangible classroom reality.
It is through this praxis that substantial reform in
academic economics will occur.
It is difficult for students to overcome the stifling
persuasion of conventional economics professors. Well versed in rationalizing
why one must accept certain
economic assumptions as ‘inevitable’, the in-place professoriate presents a
formidable challenge. Examples of
resistance are necessary. The open
letters of discontent from international students and faculty, which serve as
a foundation for the PAE movement, provide those examples. The powerful messages offered by
international students who challenged economics assumptions, such as the
French Petition for a Debate on the Teaching of Economics, the Cambridge 27
letter, and the Kansas City Proposal, inspire students in other universities
to question the “scientific facts” that their textbooks espouse. Once I learned of the discontent at leading
institutions of the international student body, I became enthused and engaged
to query the institution to which I was relying on for my economics
education.
Unbridled enthusiasm without a clear understanding of the
economic problems and potential solutions, however, will not elicit support
or achieve results. To sustain the
momentum of intellectual challenge, access to a critical body of knowledge is
essential and serves as a foundation for reform. Critical thinkers within the PAE movement have offered
suggestions through debates, essays, and published literature. The time has come for students to embrace
these theories and apply them to their own academic classrooms.
By familiarizing myself with the leading critiques of
conventional academic economics and the alternatives for heterodoxy and
pluralism, I was able to assess the status of the University of Oregon’s
economics department. Reform will
occur when students can speak to the specific shortcomings of their
institution's economics department, rather than relying on generalized characterizations. What follows is the process I undertook to
connect the theories I was learning from the PAE movement with my experience
as a student. This report serves as
one specific example of the process a student can begin to engage reform, and
thus perhaps inspire other economics students to follow a similar course.
In Issue 15 of the PAE newsletter, James K. Galbraith
wrote, “We need a replacement for neoclassical economics. A new curriculum.
Let’s build it.” Galbraith supported his definitive statements
with ten suggestions for how to reform economics. I read this article as a
direct call to action, and began to reflect on the strategy required to
achieve his suggestions. I chose
three of his characterizations to analyze where my school ranked on their
need for reform: (1) the need to
teach economic history, (2) the need for empirical methodology, and (3) the
rejection of disciplinary conformity.
By starting with these topic areas, I used literature searches and my
independent research to evaluate the extent of reform required at the
University of Oregon.
To start, Galbraith suggested, “Our economics should teach
the great thinkers, notably Smith, Marx, Keynes, Veblen and Schumpeter…the
great ideas in these areas, and the history in which they were embedded, are
fundamental. They should be taught, and not as dogma but rather as a sequence
of explorations.” This statement caused me to ask, “What are
the trends for teaching the history of economics in US institutions and at
the UO?” To answer this question, I
explored how economic pedagogy addresses the history of economic
thought.
Diedre McCloskey, a history of economics professor at the
University of Illinois, at Chicago, reports that in the 1970s and 1980s,
graduate programs began to cut the requirement of learning economic
history. She states, “Ph.D.s in
economics from the University of Chicago have joined those at Minnesota,
Princeton, Columbia, Harvard, and most American graduate programs in ignorance
of the economic past.” Steve Keen, an economics professor at the
University of Western Sydney, concurs that
“many economists are simply unaware that the foundations of economics
have even been disputed, let alone that these critiques have motivated
prominent economists to profoundly change their views.” Lacking an analysis of how economic
thought has evolved leaves an economist with little ability to assess the
assumptions underlying current theories.
Henry Phelps argued this point when he blamed the economists’ “habit
of building make-believe worlds on the failure to train economists in the
study of history.” These strong accusations generalize on the
state of academic economics, but do they accurately represent the University
of Oregon?
An investigation into UO course requirements and class
listings reveal a definite affirmative.
Although one elective is listed at the 400 level titled the History of
Economic Thought, there is no requirement for undergraduate or graduate
students to take this course, nor are there any requirements for incoming
graduate students to have any familiarity with economic history. This
typifies the decreasing institutional means for ensuring that students grasp
the critical and tumultuous evolution of their supposed discipline of
expertise. The result is that current
academia is populated with a professoriate that embraces key economic
assumptions as unassailable reality while in fact the merit of fundamental
assumptions is at best dubious and at worst defeated in the course of a
highly controversial birth.
My second investigation was spurred by Galbraith’s
suggestion that, “Mathematics should mainly clarify the complex implications
of simple constructs, not obscure simple ideas behind complex formulae...
Mathematics should lie, in other words, at the essential core of a new
curriculum; it should not be deployed defensively, as the protective belt.” This statement caused me to question the
methodologies currently being promoted by economics departments. The Methodology
of Economics by Blaug expounds on the ways in which economists currently
justify their theories. Blaug claims
that economists are not inclined to appraise economic theories in terms of
their novel empirical content, but rather to rely solely on mathematical
models. By lacking the ability to
explain current economic conditions with empirical data, it appears that
modern day methodologies depend on whether you can ‘do the math.’ This reflects a species of formalism: the
reveling in technique for techniques’ sake. Leontief emphasized this claim by stating
economists’ “continued preoccupation with imaginary, hypothetic, rather than
with observable reality had gradually led to a distortion of the informal
valuation scale used in our academic community to assess and to rank the
scientific performance of its members.” The informal scale used to rank academic
economists is often reflected in the number of mainstream, conventional
journal publications they secure each year.
If the top journals espouse the same criteria for admittance, than a
self-selected, methodological conformity is the unavoidable outcome. What methodological trends do the top
economic journals espouse?
In a letter to Science,
Leontief surveyed articles published in the American Economic Review in the last decade and found that more
than 50 percent consisted of mathematical models without any empirical data. Morgan followed up with the survey and
found that over half the articles in Economic
Journal do not contain data of any kind, a ration that vastly exceeds
that found in articles in physics and chemistry journals. The high esteem placed on publishing in
prestigious journals, and therefore relying heavily on mathematics rather
than empirical data, is indoctrinated into students as well. Colander and Klamer have shown that
American graduate students perceive that analytical ability is the chief
requirement for professionalism, and only 3½ percent of students chose
“knowledge of the economy” as important. Keen summarizes academic methodological
unreality and conformity by stating “when it comes to safeguarding the
channels of academic advancement, little else matters apart from preserving
the set of assumptions that defines economic orthodoxy.”
The means for safeguarding orthodoxy led to my final
investigation based on Galbraith’s recommendation:
Nor should we accept the reconstruction of economics as an
amalgam of interest-group politics. This approach …has become a way of
isolating certain dissenters who cannot conveniently be suppressed. But the
fact that race, gender, and the environment are important social constructs
does not mean that economics requires a separate branch for the economics of
race, another for the economics of gender, and another for “sustainable
development.” It should instead mean that the core of what we teach should
handle these questions in a way that is central to the discipline we espouse.
The question concerning how the sub-disciplines are
treated within the UO economics department led me discover the narrowly
defined reward/advancement system in which economics professors are
evaluated. In an interview with a tenured economics professor at the UO, I
learned that each year, the professors are evaluated by a weighted point
system. Publication in a prestigious,
orthodox journal (such as the American
Economic Review) will result in acquiring the highest weighted point
score as compared to getting published in a more heterodox journal, such as
the Journal of Ecological Economics or Feminist Economics, which is given a
lower weight. This evaluation
system pressures academic economists to maintain the status quo of a
methodology that does not recognize the current economic conditions, and
conveniently suppresses those who may be dissenters of conventional
economics.
What I have presented in this report will undoubtedly come
as no surprise to many of the professionals, professors, and students who
embrace the PAE movement. The emphasis, however, lies in demonstrating the
power of discovery that is enabled through praxis. Capturing the inspiration from the student-initiated
international movement and the wisdom of critical thinkers, such as
Galbraith, has motivated me to ask critical questions. Through this method of inquiry, I am now
able to relay specific concerns that may rally fellow graduate students, or
spark alliances with other disciplines.
I now have initial understanding for reaching out to fellow students,
defining key institutional problems and perhaps presenting detailed requests
that may be forwarded to the appropriate departmental committee. At a
minimum, we must work to reinstate the History of Economics requirement, and
then move address the departmental channels which limit heterodox
methodology. When individual students
accept responsibility and challenge the veiled institutional forces that
dictate the methods and content of their educational environment, meaningful
economic reform becomes a realistic goal.
Bibliography
Blaug, Mark. 1992.
The Methodology of Economics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Colander, D., and A. Klamer, 1987. The making of an economist. Journal
of Economic Perspectives, 1(2), 95-111.
Galbraith, James K., “Can we please move on? A not on the Guerrien debate”, post-autistic
economics review, issue no. 15, September 4 2002, article 2. http://www.btinternet.com/~pae_news/review/issue15.html.
Keen, Steve. 2001. Debunking Economics. Australia: Pluto Press.
Leontief, W. 1971. Theoretical assumptions and nonobserved
facts. American Economic Review, 61, 1-7.
1982. Academic economics. Science, 217, 1983, 331-6.
McCloskey, Deidre. 2002.
The Secret Sins of Economics.
Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
Morgan, T. 1988.
Theory versus empiricism in academic economics: update and comparison. Journal
of Economic Perspectives, 2(1), 159-64.
Phelps, Harry. 1972. The underdevelopment of
economics. Economic Journal, 82, 1-10.
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