Antony: "If I lose mine honor, I lose myself"
By Herb Drill
"If you prick us do we not bleed?
If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
Shylock, in Merchant of Venice
WEST LAFAYETTE, IN – Economics has been termed the "dismal science," but it’s not to this life-long business news writer and business school graduate. How do you apply dismal" to Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board? He’s obtuse, perhaps; enigmatic, certainly. Did he not keep us from economic apocalypse when all he uttered was "irrational exuberances" and managed the economy with interest-rate maneuvers?
How do you contend economics is "dismal" when a Purdue University professor speaks of "macro" and "micro" on the lips of William Shakespeare? In Antony & Cleopatra, Antony exclaims: "If I lose mine honor, I lose myself."
Corporate chiefs, business owners and managers, and – certainly – politicians should be induced to read some of Shakespeare’s piercing comments. Michael Watts thinks so, and states: "While analytical, mathematically-driven economists don't seem to have much in common with their abstract literary colleagues," the Purdue University professor's new book contends economics teachers can use examples from classic literature to bring economic principles to life.
In The Literary Book of Economics, Watts (www.mgmt.purdue.edu/faculty/watts), a Krannert School of Management economics professor, uses passages from Shakespeare to Kurt Vonnegut to color economic concepts. For example, he illustrates the concepts of income inequality, poverty, and income redistribution policies with passages from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Ralph Waldo Emerson's Journals, Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, and others. Watts writes that while economics and literary study often haven't found much common ground, "... for better or worse - or both - economics, literature, and literary criticism and history are being pushed together constantly because of their strong mutual interests in fundamental ideas and topics."
Watts' book presents an economic concept followed by a literary passage, with a short explanation to guide the reader. He uses 78 passages to illustrate 21 essential economic concepts, beginning with scarcity, wants, and resources (and a passage from John Milton's Comus), and ending with cost-benefit analysis (and passages from Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal and Par Lagerkvist's Hero's Death). In between, Watts covers the basic economic undergraduate curriculum, but the approach could be adapted to high school use, Watts claims.
Students reading Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken can bring
examples from their own experience to understand the economic concepts
illustrated in the poem. Watts' description of the concepts to do one thing entails giving up the opportunity to do something else: "Faced with the same option, different people often make different choices because they place different values on each alternative's cost and expected outcome."
In the poem, the speaker famously takes the road "less traveled by." And,
to him or her, that choice "has made all the difference."
Watts, director of the Purdue Center for Economic Education, isn’t
advocating replacing the economist's empiricism and numerical analysis
with literature. He writes: "Literary works often describe human behavior and motivations more eloquently, powerfully, or humorously than economists do, even when dealing with economic subjects." Watts maintains this allows economics teachers to use literature "to help teach economics more effectively at the secondary and college level."
While not telling English teachers how to teach their classes, Watts
suggests that infusing some economic thought into the study of literature
could be healthy: "Just a bit more breadth and variety, in exactly the same way these passages [in The Literary Book of Economics] can be used to add variety to typical economics courses."
Watts doesn’t claim to be the inventor of the concept of using literature
to illustrate and explain economic principles. Good economists and good
teachers have always known stories help drive home complex ideas. Rather, Watts' ultimate goal is the education of a more "articulate citizenry" whose greater understanding will lead both to better personal economics and public economic policy.
As Shylock said in reference to everyone: "If you prick us do we not bleed? If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"