Armchair economist on teaching

   I've recently read an article about economics teaching. It is indeed a chapter in a book called The Heart of Teaching Economics, written by Simon W. Bowmaker. The article is an interview with an economist famously for his popular-economics writing - Steven Landsburg who wrote a famous book called The Armchair Economist. He is also a well known good teacher in economics at The University of Rochester. Let me share with you three Q&As from the article first. My short comments follow after each Q&A. The Q is the question asked by the article writer, and A is the answer given by Landsburg. 

"Q: How do you check your progress and evaluate your own efforts in the classroom?
"A: By watching faces. Of course, we get the teaching evaluations back at the end of the term, and I read those avidly. But I think I know long before the end of the term how I’m doing by being aware of what I see on the students’ faces, and you get a tremendous amount of feedback from that."

I couldn't agree more. Online teaching is currently conducted due to pandemic. My difficulties are anticipated by Landsburg when he made the point well before the current pandemic broke out. I lose their faces. Help me!

"Q: Which intellectual abilities or qualities will your course help students develop?

"A: Number one: an understanding that there is such a thing as intellectual rigor. You can’t just say anything. You have to test your ideas by translating them into some kind of formal apparatus and seeing whether they hold up. Number two: a certain amount of facility with that technical apparatus and with particular ideas, like consumer theory and producer theory. Number three: an understanding that you have to be playful if you’re going to understand anything. You can’t just learn material and parrot it back. You need to think about each problem in a creative and original way. There has to be a willingness to say, 'Alright, what if we change "this" assumption, what if we change "that" assumption?' I’d like them to get a sense that that’s an important way of thinking about not just economics, but probably any subject they’re going to study."

My students will find that this is also my philosophy of teaching, especially when I teach macroeconomics. I try to let them know that the assumptions adopted in each macro model can be relaxed, and they should try assessing what happens if the assumptions are relaxed. Landsburg's saying implies that I am not alone, and the method is actually endorsed by this greater teacher.

"Q: Which are the key ideas at the heart of your course and how do you teach them?
"A: Having worked with supply and demand, and shown that it’s useful, we want to step back and think about where those curves come from. So we do consumer theory for the basis of the demand curve. I spend a lot of time on income and substitution effects, because I think that’s going to be important for them in many other areas. I spend a lot of time on Giffen goods and all of the reasons why Giffen goods are rare. I stress to them that I know no examples of Giffen goods, and I always make a point of saying, 'You might wonder why we spend so much time studying something that we don’t know any examples of. The answer is that we want to figure out why we don’t see any examples.' Not seeing something calls out for an explanation as much as seeing something does."

The regular readers of "hi, economics" know that I also share with this point when I wrote "The law of demand, but why?". I don't emphasize Giffen goods in that post but I completely agree with Landsburg's point about Giffen goods -- economists mention Giffen goods not because we think the good must exist but because we want to know why they do not exist. Of course, recently Giffen goods are found to exist in some very especially occasions. But I also do not think we need to emphasize that the goods exist.