Using a Conceptual Matrix to Organize a Course in the History of Economic Thought

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Articles in this journal often focus on developing students' higher-level cognitive skills. Implicitly, they question whether the traditional economics curriculum leads students past the lowest levels of thinking-whether, in fact, it teaches them to like economists. The authors of these articles regularly point to courses in the history of economic thought as particularly good vehicles for developing critical thinking. Thoma (1993, 130) points out that teaching economics from a history of thought perspective highlights economic theory and policy as an ongoing, evolving process of development. It makes it explicitly clear that economic 'laws' and theories are not immutable and that the experts of different schools of thought often held opposing views. Barone (1991) and Moseley, Gunn, and Georges (1991) argue that the contending perspectives encountered in history of thought courses can provoke critical thinking by inviting students to evaluate the logic, evidence, and underlying assumptions supporting different economic ideas. Finally, Cohen and Spencer (1993) show how to use a writing-across-the-curriculum approach in courses in the history of economic thought to get students to think analytically and to form integrated, consistent arguments. These writers also show that students in history of thought courses are often uncomfortable with the demand for more complicated thinking. Principles-level and even intermediate-level courses focus on solving problem sets and getting the right answer rather than on analyzing and evaluating alternative points of view. Another source of cognitive difficulty is the strangeness and complexity of course readings-particularly primary sources and early textbook chapters dealing with economic thought before economics emerged as a separate discipline. Because students lack the philosophic grounding and cultural literacy assumed by earlier economic thinkers, they are often unable either to understand an author's meaning or to appreciate the conversation that the author is joining. You can see their minds spinning: Is this a history course or an economics course? Am I supposed to remember all these names and dates? Household management? Exactly what is important? We present an approach, called the matrix method, that the first author has