how economics can strengthen the teaching of u.s. history

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How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

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Page 1: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Page 2: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Overview

Problems teaching history

How economic thinking might help

Features of Focus: Understanding Economics in U.S. History

Page 3: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Problems Teaching U.S. History

Schools rely on U.S. history to teachOur national identifyAn academic understanding of our past.

But, history teaching is criticized as beingBoring in content and pedagogySuperficialTrivialRemote

Page 4: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Problems Teaching U.S. History

Students usually take 6 semesters of U.S. history:Grade 5: 2 semestersGrade 8: 2 semestersGrade 11: 2 semesters

Yet, national tests show that achievement in history is low.

Page 5: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

U.S. History Achievement Levels: 1994, 2001, NAEP

Level GRADE 4

1994 2001

GRADE 8

1994 2001

GRADE 12

1994 2001

Advanced 2% 2% 1% 2% 1% 1%

Proficient 15% 16% 13% 15% 10% 10%

Basic 47% 49% 48% 48% 32% 32%

Below Basic 36% 33%* 39% 36%* 57% 57%

Page 6: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

What Can Economics Contribute?

Economics stresses the idea that all people make choices.

But, they don’t know at the time what the consequences of their choices will be.

Page 7: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Individual Choices

All social phenomena emerge from the choices that individuals make in response to expected costs and benefits to themselves. Paul Heyne

Page 8: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

John Maynard Keynes

The inevitable never happens. It is always the unexpected.

Page 9: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Who Would Have Predicted in 1980?

The collapse of the Soviet Union.

The reunification of Germany.

Nelson Mandela becoming president of South Africa.

Economic stagnation in Japan in the 1990s.

Page 10: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Who Would Have Predicted in 1980?

Record U.S. economic expansion in the 1990s.

An attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

All-out war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Page 11: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

They Didn’t Know How It Would All Turn Out

In writing history or biography, you must remember that nothing was on track. Things could have gone any way at any point. As soon as you say “was” it seems to fix an event in the past. But nobody ever lived in the past, only the present.

Page 12: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

They Didn’t Know How It Would Turn Out

The difference is that it was their present. They were just as alive and full of ambition, fear, hope and all the emotions of life. And, just like us, they didn’t know how it would all turn out.

The challenge is to get the reader [student] beyond the thinking that things had to be the way they turned out and to see the range of possibilities of how it could have been otherwise.David McCullough

Page 13: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

The Economic Way of Thinking

Focus: Understanding Economics in U.S. History introduces students to the economic way of thinking. It stresses how people at the time were

making choices in response to anticipated benefits and costs.

This approach allows students to be “present-minded” about the past.

Page 14: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

History Matters: Douglass North

History matters not only because we can learn from the past but because the present and the past are connected by the continuity of a society’s institutions.

Page 15: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Fostering Cooperation

Human cooperation allows for gains from trade.

Economic growth depends upon the institutions that create a hospitable environment for cooperative solutions to problems associated with trade. What institutions induce economic

stagnation and decline?What institutions induce prosperity and

growth?

Page 16: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

What Explains Different Outcomes?

Sustained economic growth in the United States and western Europe?

The spectacular rise and fall of the Soviet Union?

The growth of Taiwan and South Korea?The dismal record of sub-Saharan

Africa?The contrasts between North America

and Latin America?

Page 17: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Institutions Matter

Choices made by our ancestors have fundamentally shaped the institutions with which we live today.Young people can learn to see events as

outcomes produced by the choices people make every day.

They can also understand how people’s choices are shaped by institutions.

Page 18: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Teaching Matters, Too

“With its explicit emphasis on choices, costs, incentives, rules of the game and voluntary trade, the curriculum presented here will provide educators with a valuable source of focus and direction.”

Page 19: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Citation

Authors Jean CaldwellTawni Hunt FerrariniMark Schug

Published by the NCEE

Generous support from the Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation

Page 20: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Features

Linked to NCEE Standards

Essay by Professor Douglass North

Introductory essay on the economic way of thinking: Why Did the Colonists

Fight When They Were Safe, Prosperous and Free?

Page 21: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

The Guide to Economic Reasoning

People choose. People’s choices involve costs. People respond to incentives in

predictable ways. People create economic systems that

influence individual choices and incentives.

People gain when they trade voluntarily. People’s choices have consequences

that lie in the future.

Page 22: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Page 23: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit 1 Three World Meet

1. The New World Was an Old World

2. Property Rights Among North American Indians

Page 24: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Two: Colonization and Settlement

3. Why Do Economies Grow?

4. Understanding the Colonial Economy in a Global Context

5. Indentured Servitude: Why Sell Yourself into Bondage?

6. Specialization and Trade in the Thirteen Colonies

Page 25: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit 3: Revolution and the New Nation

7. The Costs and Benefits of American Independence

8. Problems under the Articles of Confederation

9. The U.S. Constitution: Rules of the Game

Page 26: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Four: Expansion and Reform

10. Rising Living Standards in the New Nation

11. How Did Cotton Become King?

12. Francis Cabot Lowell and the New England Textile Industry

Page 27: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

13. Improving Transportation

14. Investing in American Growth

15. Why Did the Indians of the Great Plains Invite White Americans into Their Land?

16. Andrew Jackson and the Second Bank of the United States

17. Free the Enslaved and Avoid the War

Page 28: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Five: Civil War and Reconstruction

18. Why Did the South Secede?

19. Economic Analysis of the Civil War

Page 29: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Six: The Development of the Industrial United States

20. Was Free Land a Good Deal?

21. The Changing U.S. Economy

22. The Demand for Immigrants

23. Bigger Is Better: The Economics of Mass Production

Page 30: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

24. Industrial Entrepreneurs or Robber Barons?

25. The Economic Effects of the 19th Century Monopoly

26. Could the U.S. Economy Have Grown Without the Railroads?

27. Free Silver or a Cross of Gold

Page 31: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Seven: The Emergence of Modern America

28. Money Panics and the Establishment of the Federal Reserve System

29. Who Should Make the Food Safe?

Page 32: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Eight: The Great Depression and World War II

30. Whatdunit? The Great Depression Mystery

31. Did the New Deal Help or Harm Recovery?

Page 33: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

32. We Shall Not Be Moved

33. When the Boys Came Marching Home

34. Women in the US Workforce

Page 34: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Nine: Postwar United States

35. The Economics of Racial Discrimination

36. The No-Good Seventies

Page 35: How Economics Can Strengthen the Teaching of U.S. History

Table of Contents

Unit Ten: Contemporary United States

37. The Hispanic Americans

38. The Knowledge- and Technology-Based Economy of Today

39. World Trade after World War II: The EU, NAFTA and the WTO