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Post-Autistic Economics Network
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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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