Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde

I never let my schooling interfere with my education — Mark Twain

My approach to teaching  is based on my belief that the role of liberal arts education is not to indoctrinate students in a particular theory or mode of thinking, but to help them develop their intellectual and moral capacities by exposing them to a variety of viewpoints. Such philosophy requires that even the most controversial ideas play an important role in the educational process. They challenge students to critically evaluate what they learn (or already know) and reflect upon their own responsibilities in a world which is increasingly interconnected and constantly changing. This approach to teaching helps students overcome their natural tendency to automatically respond to what happens around them, and, instead of silently trusting authority, to constantly test the meaning of prevailing ideologies and social norms, the purpose of existing institutions, and the value of their lifestyles. It allows them to build their own belief system and achieve intellectual freedom, which leads them to a more fulfilling life and lets them participate more constructively in the advancement of society — not in a forceful way, but with their independent thinking and free choices. It further teaches students to be more open-minded and tolerant for the ideas of others, to appreciate education for its own sake, and to pursue life not with fear, but with a sense of purpose,  discovery, and adventure.

My role as a professor, then, is not to tell my students what to believe, but to help them learn how to think rationally by asking them to examine more substantially the meaning of modern progress, the philosophy of science,  and, in my capacity as an economics professor, the logic of economic institutions such as free-markets and bureaucracies. Nobody knows what the future holds, but if we need to change the way we live for a better future, we first need to change the way we think about the world. This requires learning how to see ourselves from a different perspective. It involves overcoming intellectual timidity, reflecting on questions that have no easy answers, and, sometimes, even challenging the values and beliefs that we hold the closest to our hearts.

In what follows, I share my thoughts on the role of education. Some of my reflections are philosophical and relate to education in general while others are drawn from my teaching and personal experience and relate more closely to economics—the subject that I teach. Throughout the essay I refer to the following pedagogical strategies that I believe are important in achieving success in the classroom: (1) good class organization [read more], (2) student feedback [read more], (3) critical thinking [read more], (4) relating abstract theories to the real world [read more], (5) interaction & humor [read more], and (6) providing incentives & beyond [read more].

It’s not about economics; it’s about learning … how to think.

Economics today is taught in a very technical and dogmatic way, with very little emphasis on the history of ideas, if any at all, and with a lack of diversity of opinion. At the same time, great attention is given to mathematics and mechanical analysis—the demand curve is just an equation, and opportunity cost – merely a definition. While, undoubtedly, there is value in mathematics and technical analysis, here, like elsewhere in economics and in life, there are also trade-offs. Studying more mathematics means studying less economics, and studying one model means neglecting many others. When you add the naive nature of students who tend to accept everything that is written in a book by its face value and you end up not with education that promotes freedom of thought, but with what Bertrand Russell calls one of the chief obstacles to development of intellect. It is not surprising, for example, that 99% of my senior economics students have never heard the names of Smith, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Hayek, or even Keynes and Friedman.

Yet, diversity of opinion is essential to sound education, because, as John Stuart Mill once argued, only through challenging our beliefs by confronting others can we preserve the peace and clarity of our minds. Indeed, those virtues are what inspired the founding fathers and gave rise to liberal democracy and the American constitution—we must solve our problems by untamed debate rather than through oppression of thought. Those are the virtues that I believe are disappearing from the educational system today, and in particular from the field of economics. And those are the virtues that I try to preserve in the classes I teach.

Students can gain much greater appreciation and understanding of a subject if they are confronted with diversity of opinions and given the chance to learn about the limitations of the prevailing doctrine along with some of its alternatives. An interdisciplinary approach that considers the historical, philosophical, and social aspects of economics is to be preferred to the purely quantitative one. Such an approach challenges students to critically re-evaluate what they learn, and not merely accept this knowledge blindly. In the end, one of the most important roles of education is to teach students not what to think, but how to think for themselves; not what kind of arguments to support, but how to weigh those arguments and make informed decisions. For this reason I always start my economics classes with a discussion on the methodological problems of the discipline, and try to include as many additional readings that will challenge the neoclassical theory—readings by Marx, Veblen, Hayek, Friedman, or even Einstein.

Learning to think for yourself and making informed decisions is one of the best things anyone can do. After all, educated population is hard to be manipulated and taken advantage of. For various teaching strategies I use to challenge students to critically evaluate what they are learning [click here]. For a discussion of how students can relate the abstract concepts in the book to everyday life visit [ this page ].

Think for yourself. But also think for others.

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one! — Marcus Aurelius

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. —  Plato

From a societal point of view education should also provide students with an opportunity to develop their moral capacities. In the long-run we may all be dead, as John Maynard Keynes cleverly remarks, but in the short-run we are all members of a community that suffers because of our actions. In a world that is so fragile and interdependent we all bear responsibility for the injustices around us. If what makes us human is our rationality and moral sense, we then must educate ourselves about the impact of our choices. Only through education can people gain such consciousness and decide to change the system rather than be its end products.

In that respect, studying economics as a purely descriptive science, as it is often taught at the college level, is not only fallacious, but also wrong and should be avoided. Much of economic theory is, in fact, normative, and economics broadly defined as the study of human action is closely related to the fields of moral philosophy, psychology, and the rest of the social sciences. Ultimately, the role of economics is to come up with principles that will guide human behavior and benefit those that study it—on both personal and societal level. Teaching economics in such a way makes it more interesting and significant to students. At the end, this is not only the right approach to teaching, but also the most effective one.

To challenge students to develop their moral capacities, I present them with different social issues, often moral dilemmas. The strategies to raise consciousness about real world issues are described on this page.

Honesty is the best work ethic.

In education, nothing works if the students don’t. — Donald Simanek

I always tell my students at the beginning of the course that my role is not to replace their effort. If they don’t do their readings, complete their assignments, and work hard outside of class, they won’t be successful in my course. My role as a professor is to help them fill the gaps between theory and practice with relevant examples; to help them understand the merits and shortcomings of economic analysis; to challenge them to question what they are learning.

Of course students, as economic agents, try to maximize their gain at a minimum cost. As a teacher, I need to recognize this and give them the necessary freedom so they can be creative and pursue what they find valuable and interesting, but also provide them with incentives to do their work. Too much control over students should be avoided because as psychologists tell us it provokes them to be submissive or rebellious—neither is desirable. But too much freedom can also be counterproductive if it doesn’t give the necessary guidance. Thus, a good learning environment should allow students to be free, but also motivate them to do their work. Finding the right balance is one of the greatest challenges in being a teacher.

This is where honesty plays an important role in the educational process. I always urge my students to be sincere with themselves, and before start criticizing everything around them for their failures—the educational system, the teachers, or the culture—to first ask if they have done their work, prepared for lectures by doing the required readings and assignments, asked questions and sough help when given an opportunity, and most of all used their imagination to move beyond the abstract pages of the textbook. If the answer to these questions is no, then, they have no right to be critical of anyone, but themselves. Moving away from an attitude of “I didn’t succeed because…” to an attitude of “I will be successful, and here is how…” is an achievement in itself.

There is an old saying that success is where hard work meets opportunity. Another important role of education is to provide students with the opportunity to realize that if they are not cynical and work hard, good things will happen in their lives. Indeed, to develop the right attitude that will help them have an enjoyable and successful life.

On this page I  discuss ways in which I provide students with incentives to learn. They are also reflected indirectly in the syllabi for my course [for example, see here the objectives and requirements for my history of economic thought class]. Class organization is discussed [right here] and student feedback on [this page].

Education shouldn’t be boring. It is what you make it to be.

Unfortunately most of my students come to my classes not only with preconceived ideas about many economic issues, but also biased against the value of education. While the first is easy to fix, the second requires more energy and thought.

One of my goals is to show students that education is not a secondary experience to “the real world.” That college is not supposed to prepare them for the “real world,” because college is as real as any other experience they can have; that science is not only about abstract models, and they can have as much fun in the classroom as elsewhere. In fact, much of science is acknowledging our own limitations, and this can be quite entertaining.

On [this page] I talk about the importance of humor, and describe different interactive activities (class demonstrations, games, etc…) that I use to engage students in the educational process, and break the stereotype that classroom learning is boring.

Motivation is the key.

Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. — Raymond Chandler

When students are interested in the subject they learn twice as fast and with half the strain. This is why every effort should be made to demonstrate that what is being taught is worthwhile their time. My simple rule in this respect is that if the material I teach is distant, abstract, and detached from me, it probably won’t be close to the hearts of my students either. On the other hand, I have noticed that the more interested I am in the subject matter, the more interested my students are too. Perhaps, emotions convey messages that are as important as the direct verbal ones.

Students are not numbers

I was fortunate to study in a small liberal arts college where all of my professors knew who I am. This personal environment made me more connected to the educational process and motivated me to excel. This is why I have a more personal approach to teaching and try to quickly get to know my students and track their progress. There is a big difference when you treat students as individuals with their respective hopes and aspirations than if you look at them as institutional numbers. Unfortunately, the drive to make education affordable has pushed colleges to offer mass lecture classes. This goes against one of the main values of liberal arts education—it leads to mechanization and alienation– what Adam Smith considered to be a negative externality from the division of labor that education is supposed to correct.

For some strategies I use to get to know my students, receive feedback, and give them an incentive to be more connected to the process of building and improving the course visit [ Feedback ].

Education is valuable in itself.

Learn for life, not for school. — Seneca

Socrates once said that the unexplored life is not worth living. Aristotle later added that the successful life, the flourishing life, is the virtuous life—life dedicated to reason and the pursuit of knowledge. What these ancient philosophers had in mind is that only through learning and sharing our knowledge with others we are fully actualizing our potential, excelling as human beings, and leading a more successful life.

One of the first things I try to convey to my students is that learning is valuable in itself, because being a human means to, at least occasionally, learn. That college is not about memorizing a few formulas, dates, or fact, but about them, the students—developing their potential as humans so they can get the most out of life.

So, where do we go from here?

I would like to end  the way I started, with the words of Oscar Wilde: “Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” As much as this quote sounds cynical, it contains the essence of education. Education is not only about theories, economics, biology, or mathematics; it is not about facts and formulas; it’s not about models and eccentric scientists. Well, it is all about that, but it is also about something more—it is about the individual. It is about the natural love of people to learn, challenge, discover, and create. It is about the natural love of people to be around other people with whom to share their knowledge. It is about learning how to live your life wisely. But such skill cannot be taught — it can only be learned through experience. George Bernard Shaw once said:

Life is not about finding oneself, but about creating oneself.

The same is true for education—it is what challenges us to think through some of the most fundamental questions of all times and helps us decide what is valuable in life so we can pursue it to our fullest potential.