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

OverviewProblems teaching historyHow economic thinking might helpFeatures of Focus: Understanding Economics in 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 being

Boring in content and pedagogySuperficialTrivialRemote

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.

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

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

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

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

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

GRADE 121994 2001

GRADE 81994 2001

GRADE 41994 2001

Level

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.

Individual Choices

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

Paul Heyne

John Maynard Keynes

The inevitable never happens. It is always the unexpected.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.”

Citation

Authors Jean CaldwellTawni Hunt FerrariniMark Schug

Published by the NCEEGenerous support from the Calvin K. Kazanjian Economics Foundation

Features

Linked to NCEE StandardsEssay by Professor Douglass NorthIntroductory essay on the economic way of thinking:

Why Did the Colonists Fight When They Were Safe, Prosperous and Free?

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 .

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Unit 1 Three World Meet1. The New World Was an Old World2. Property Rights Among North American Indians

Table of Contents

Unit Two: Colonization and Settlement3. 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

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Unit 3: Revolution and the New Nation7. The Costs and Benefits of American Independence8. Problems under the Articles of Confederation9. The U.S. Constitution: Rules of the Game

Table of Contents

Unit Four: Expansion and Reform10. Rising Living Standards in the New Nation11. How Did Cotton Become King? 12. Francis Cabot Lowell and the New England Textile Industry

Table of Contents

13. Improving Transportation 14. Investing in American Growth15. Why Did the Indians of the Great Plains Invite White Americans into Their Land?16. Andrew Jackson and the Second Bank of the United States17. Free the Enslaved and Avoid the War

Table of Contents

Unit Five: Civil War and Reconstruction18. Why Did the South Secede? 19. Economic Analysis of the Civil War

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Unit Six: The Development of the Industrial United States20. Was Free Land a Good Deal?21. The Changing U.S. Economy 22. The Demand for Immigrants23. Bigger Is Better: The Economics of Mass Production

Table of Contents

24. Industrial Entrepreneurs or Robber Barons? 25. The Economic Effects of the 19th Century Monopoly26. Could the U.S. Economy Have Grown Without the Railroads?27. Free Silver or a Cross of Gold

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Unit Seven: The Emergence of Modern America 28. Money Panics and the Establishment of the Federal Reserve System29. Who Should Make the Food Safe?

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Unit Eight: The Great Depression and World War II30. Whatdunit? The Great Depression Mystery31. Did the New Deal Help or Harm Recovery?

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32. We Shall Not Be Moved33. When the Boys Came Marching Home34. Women in the US Workforce

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Unit Nine: Postwar United States35. The Economics of Racial Discrimination36. The No-Good Seventies

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Unit Ten: Contemporary United States37. The Hispanic Americans38. The Knowledge- and Technology-Based Economy of Today39. World Trade after World War II: The EU, NAFTA and the WTO