EH.T: Notes on EHA Teaching Breakfast

[mitch at umbc.edu]

Notes on the Economic History Association meeting Teaching Breakfast,
Sept.12, 2009. Prepared by David Mitch.

At 7:20 a.m. Simone Wegge of the EHA Teaching committee called the
breakfast to order. She introduced the key note speaker, Roger Ransom of
University of California Riverside. She noted that he has the distinctive
experience of teaching economic history for extended periods of time in
both the Economics Department and History Department at UC Riverside.
Ransom stated in opening that he regards himself as a teacher rather than
either economist or historian. He also stated that he thinks he is
something of a ham. He is currently celebrating his 50th anniversary of
teaching having started in 1959.  He said there was no secret to
successful teaching. His own secrets wouldn’t work for others. Developing
a successful teaching style depends on developing a style that works for
you and your distinctive characteristics. However, he did think there were
some useful clues and suggestions for effective teaching. First, he said
it was important to know and be sensitive to your audience. He has not
taught an Economics course since 1994. He found that switching from the
Economics to the History Department at UC Riverside was a switch in worlds
and he found that the most important switch was in teaching. The first
crisis he faced in switching departments was the encountering the question
of what would he teach. He settled on teaching a course on the Civil War. 
He noted that it pays to have ones research and ones teaching in line. Two
of his books, Conflict and Compromise and Coping with Capitalism started
out as course lecture notes.  A second clue was to teach what you like. He
mentioned an analogy with a successful diet. He had recently been
successful in losing weight since he limited his food intake by focusing
on eating what he liked. He discussed paradigm shifts in Economics and
Economic History. He said the current economic crisis has been a godsend
for teaching economic history. He noted that Douglass North in his History
160 course stated that economic history is the horse collar, rudder, and
the compass. A third clue is that no single method of teaching is going to
work. Ransom drew on Isiah Berlin’s hedgehog versus fox distinction. He
said that the historian was a fox knowing lots of little things while the
social scientist was the hedgehog knowing one big thing.  Even if a social
scientist, it was still important as a teacher to have stories to keep
students’ attention. A fourth and final clue is that a picture is worth a
thousand words. And Ransom spent the remainder of the breakfast discussing
the use of maps and graphs in his lectures. He found these useful to hold
students’ attention and that of his teaching assistants in large lecture
courses. His Civil War course has 100 students and his History 20 survey
course has 500 students. He tells his students in these lectures on the
first day that I don’t care if you come to class since I get paid the same
whether you come or not.  He discussed his use of Atlas Graphics and
mapping data from the Census. Mike Haines of Colgate mentioned more recent
mapping and graphics packages. Ransom noted that using maps in a lecture
requires planning. One should start with the most complex map one will use
and work back from that. Mention was made of the IPUMS website and the NA
GIS site as sources for maps. He then discussed using graphs to analyze
stock market collapses. He presented a graph of stock price indexes
between 1922 and 1940 and called attention to the number of failed rallies
that occurred between the initial 1929 crash the market trough in 1933. He
also noted how the plots appeared quite different on absolute vs. log
scale and noted the value of using semilog graph paper. He though the
crash of 2008 was great for economic historians for motivating turning to
history for illustrations of what crashes were all about. He said that he
loves to pontificate and one of the privileges of lecturing is that no one
can interrupt. He said that in putting up pictures it was important to
recognize what the picture is and why it is important. The breakfast
concluded with remarks from Roger’s wife Connie. She noted how hard he
works at teaching and how excited he is about it/. She said that in 1994
when he switched to teaching history that he had already been teaching for
35 years. She noted how much time and effort and he put into adjusting to
his new teaching situation and the enthusiasm he displayed in this.