Issue 29, Fall 2005

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

Frank Conroy, the acclaimed writer and jazz pianist who headed the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop for 18 years, died last April. He said in an interview with Narrative Magazine in March 2004 that there are certain personality traits that helped him as a teacher: "For instance, you have to be a little bit of a performer. My improvising with my jazz quartet is close to my teaching. You have to be fast, able to think on your feet, and able to trust yourself to improvise well within certain strictures. Once students realize that you're not going to bullshit them, they trust you. They don't necessarily agree with you, but they trust you" (http://www.narrativemagazine.com/105/conroy.htm).

For a project I was working on, I spent a day in high school attending classes in economics and in history. Here are some observations. High school students are much more interactive with each other before, during, and after class than college students are. Book bags are heavy. Teachers don't use the blackboards much—not much writing. One teacher used the Socratic Method and wrote hardly anything. It was a long day, a day that had a dynamic all its own. Toward the end of the day, I didn't feel much like taking notes.

In the days when I still wore a sports jacket to class, I would usually take it off once the class got rolling (as many basketball coaches do once the game gets underway). Anyway, in one particular class I was going through a logical argument on the board and asked the class "What's next?" As I posed the question, I absentmindedly removed my jacket. At that, a young woman in the front row pointed at me and said "Your shirt?".

Tim Harford, the witty author of the "Dear Economist" column for the Financial Times answers questions about dating, sex, marriage, parenting, divorce, tastes, suicide, addiction, real estate, parking, and many other matters of the day. For answers, he quotes Nobel economists left and right, draws on contemporary economic tools, but injects maybe a little too much economics mumbo jumbo (sort of the opposite of Freakonomics in this regard). Find snippets of his columns at http://www.timharford.com /deareconomist/. His first book, The Undercover Economist, is being published by Oxford University Press in October.

Few of the on-camera personnel of CNBC who try to explain economics and finance have college degrees in either (not that there's anything wrong with that). For example, Steve Liesman, the Senior Economics Reporter, also known as "The Old Professor," earned a B.A. in English from SUNY Buffalo and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia. David Faber, AKA "The Brain," has a B.A. in English from Tufts. Joe Kernan has an M.S. in molecular biology from MIT. Becky Quick has a B.A. in political science from Rutgers. Maria Bartiromo majored in journalism and minored in economics at NYU. Dylan Ratigan earned an undergraduate degree in political economy from Union College. And Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a Wellesley graduate, majored in economics.

In April 2005 the American Economic Association's Executive Committee voted to develop web sites for prospective undergraduate majors in economics and for prospective Ph.D. students in economics. Stay tuned.

"The low level which commercial morality has reached in America is deplorable. We have humble, God-fearing Christian men among us who will stoop to do things for a million dollars that they ought not to be willing to do for less than two million." "—Mark Twain"

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