During the last ten-fifteen years the economics profession has engaged in a discussion on how to make the teaching of economics into more than a mnemonic experience. Whereas, some departments (including ours) have incorporated more experimental and game exercises to investigate and make economic points, we feel that this is not enough. Our students do not have the background or life experience to understand, let alone use, economic tools and information as something other than abstraction. By introducing economics through its historical evolution, we expect to add a contextual perspective that helps them better understand this discipline and the world around them.

The traditional approach to teaching economics is to begin with a two course  sequence of the principles of microeconomics and macroeconomics, using an encyclopedic “market” based economics textbook that doesn’t consider any history or culture. Students are then challenged to digest an abstract and new way of thinking.  Given the life experience of our students, they rarely ask the kind of questions that indicate a real understanding of the subject, like questioning the assumptions or the limitations of the analysis? Instead they are forced into a memorization of mainly market based economic analysis.

The faculty of the Department of Economics has developed a consensus to modify the Economics major and minor. This decision is primarily based on our teaching experience and many years of input from our students using SACS assessment instruments, but is also the result of the critique within the economics profession of how economics is taught. Survey data from graduating seniors have repeatedly indicated that economic history, thought, and alternative perspectives needed to be brought forward in our curriculum.

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