How Economics Has Changed

Abstract

I thought I had already paid my dues, and received my ample rewards, as far as the teaching of economics is concerned. But I did not reckon with so good a friend as Robert Solow. I can never get paid up on what I owe to him; and when he asked me to do him the favor of starting off your conference, it was inevitable that you should see me standing here before you. I shall not pretend to preach on high school economics. In my day at Hyde Park High School in Chicago, the subject was not even taught. My first teacher at the University of Chicago, Aaron Director, was just as pleased. Jesuits like to work with virginal material, and in those pre-Galbraith days I was putty in Director's no-nonsense hands. From what I hear in the senior common rooms, things have not changed all that much. College instructors go whole hours not brooding over what is taught by way of high school economics, and most would like to keep that terrain a curricular vacuum. However, economic education is too serious a business to be left to university professors. There are still millions of people who will never get to college. And it could be the case-although I would not bet on it-that in the tender years of adolescence, the human brain is in an especially flexible and receptive state for learning to speak Hungarian or learning about present discounted values and foreign-trade multipliers. About three decades ago, economics made a comeback in the high schools. And, for better or worse, I don't think you're going to be able to put the genie back into the bottle. Around 1960, Lee Bach dragged me, kicking and screaming, into curricular committees trying to decide what should be taught in the new renaissance. Each morning, the rock has to be rolled up the hill again, and here you all are struggling with the perpetual problem of curricular coverage. It took money to keep the ball rolling. Was it my Boston neighbor Teddy Green who explained why he robbed banks-because that is where the money is. We get grants from business corporations and conservative foundations for economic education because that's where the money is. And what is the money offered for? Generally, to teach economic principles-sound economic principles. Back in the 1950s, there was a move for on-the-job economics classes. Employees had to-er-volunteer to be inculcated with sound principles,