Introduction and Overview

Key Points

1. FTE's The Environment and the Economy has a triple focus: economics content, economic reasoning, and developing a critical thinking/teaching model:
   • Content: the economic content perspective on environmental issues;
   • Reasoning: employing economic reasoning to better understand environmental issues and behavior;
   • Pedagogy: modeling an intellectual approach to controversial issues.
2. The role of instructors in the workshop will be to introduce you to the economic perspective by teaching selected economic concepts and principles, by demonstrating the tools of economic reasoning, and by demonstrating their use in the environmental context.
   • Economists approach issues and problems - including environmental issues - by trying to figure out why people behave the way they do, and then using this knowledge to change behavior when appropriate.
   • The economics concepts taught here conform to selected National Voluntary Content Standards in Economics.
     • http://fte.org/teachers/standards/
3. The role of participants in the workshop is to emulate the intellectual perspective identified by Richard Hofstadter and the listening approach of S.I Hayakawa:
   • Hofstadter:
     An intellectual is a person who enjoys playing with ideas.
   • S. I. Hayakawa:
     . . . [L]istening does not mean simply maintaining a polite silence while you are rehearsing in your mind the speech you are going to make the next time you can grab a conversation opening. Nor does listening mean waiting alertly for the flaws in the other person's argument so that later you can mow him or her down. Listening means trying to see the problem the way the speaker sees it . . . Listening requires entering actively and imaginatively into the other person's situation and trying to understand a frame of reference different than your own."
   • You may or may not find the ideas palatable or valuable, but try them while you're here, and reflect on the logic and the process.
   • The purpose of the workshop is not to convert you to belief in any particular philosophy or support for any particular set of environmental policies. It is to expose you to and ask you to consider a different perspective.
   • The theme of how to teach about and learn about issues will run throughout the sessions.
     • Continual learning requires good students to look for and think about new perspectives.
     • "That's my opinion" should be the beginning, rather than the end, of discussion.
     • Opinions are only as good as the evidence that supports them.
4. Assumptions of the workshop process tie-in to the triple emphasis on content, reasoning, and intellectual process.
   • People respond to incentives, and pleasurable events will be repeated.
   • Every person is a resource - and resources are scarce and valuable.
   • You can learn things of substance and still have fun.
   • Learning continues after the program ends.