Robert Wedge Massachusetts Council on Economic Education Waltham, Massachusetts Robert Wedge is the director of education for the Massachusetts Council on Economic Education. He is also a visiting lecturer on economics at Bridgewater State College and the Suffolk University School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Prior to joining MCEE, he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and taught at Winchester High School in Massachusetts.

The millennium and Y2K celebrations spawned at least one unlikely new cottage industry as historians, economists, and philosophers used the occasion to formulate their versions of 20th-century history. Their accounts were widely disseminated, and many media pundits followed up with interpretations and commentary.

Among the varied sources — from champions of the new economy to its critics, from opponents and proponents of globalization — one broad area of agreement emerged: The history of the 20th century was for the most part economic history. The pursuit of economic growth has dominated thought and action throughout the 20th century, and economists have expanded the scope of their studies to include a broad range of human behavior. As a result, people of varying political views now see virtually everything — from obesity among school children to changes in crime rates — from an economic perspective.

Will the K-12 schools be able to keep pace with events, helping students understand modern history in light of the economic forces that have shaped it? In most states today, the standards and accountability movement drives education reform. In practice, many districts respond by emphasizing reading, writing, and mathematical skills. In this context, when people think about teaching history, they may turn to an emphasis on solid, testable lists of names, dates, and facts. While background information of this sort can play a part in thoughtful, imaginative lessons, information alone does not suffice to explain historical developments. Where understanding is the goal, the means must include tools for inquiry, including principles of economics.

Another problem has to do with opportunity to learn. Social studies teachers often try to integrate the study of economics within history units and courses. But history competes for time in many school districts with several other "strands" in social studies programs. Even in districts where world history is taught at two or three grade levels, moreover, the emphasis on 20th-century world history is often slight. Nor can we assume that time constraints in history will be offset by the direct study of economics. Only 13 states require high school students to take an economics course, and only about 44 percent of students nationwide do take an economics course. Many K-12 students therefore have insufficient time to study modern world history and its economic underpinnings in-depth.

In the time that is allocated for history, programs of study have traditionally focused on the great epochs and the lives and deeds of great leaders and thinkers. This emphasis survives today in many sets of curricular standards. Its defenders argue that, particularly in introductory-level instruction, it provides narratives that enable students to envision large developments and to locate particular bits of information within those narrative schemes. We can grant this point and still argue for increased attention to questions and issues raised by accounts of everyday reality at important points in history. We should be teaching our students to ask, for example, how ordinary people caught up in war or immigration found food to eat, how they were able to move around from one place to another, how they managed to find spouses and establish homes, how their children learned to read, and a host of similar questions. Engagement with questions of this sort can enhance the study of history, adding concreteness and particularity to bland textbook summaries. In this issue of Econ-Exchange, for example, Kathy Ratté's middle school lesson highlights a serious food-shortage problem afflicting settlers at Plymouth Colony; it then uses William Bradford's approach to this problem to illustrate a general point about private property as a source of incentives for human behavior.

Telling the story of economic history through episodes and analyses of this sort does not imply uncritical celebration of the accomplishments of great leaders, nor does it merely dwell on the forgotten and downtrodden. It engages students through inclusive attention to economic activity implied in the stories of many individuals, groups, and perspectives.

What concepts and principles might inform teachers as they seek to develop lessons and units in which particular episodes illustrate more general insights? In most introductory economics textbooks, authors provide some insight into policies that contribute to and shape economic growth. The analyses vary in matters of detail from text to text, but some main themes remain constant. In order for any economy to reach its potential output, governments (and, by extension, the governed) should be guided by certain goals: the rule of law, property rights and political stability, and policies to foster saving and investment, education and training, free trade, and research and development through sound incentives. Over time, governments have varied considerably in their pursuit of these goals, with consequences that can be traced today in patterns of poverty and prosperity throughout the world.

The intersection of economics and history is especially evident in the history of the 20th century — a time when mercantilism and colonialism gave way increasingly to open markets, competition, and innovation driven by research and technology. J. Bradford Delong has written extensively about possible focal points for 20th-century study. One of his graphs provides striking evidence of the upsurge in economic growth that is distinctive of the 20th century.

Allowing for variations attributable to differences among the various sources of evidence, it is obviously the case that production in the 20th century increased markedly. The consequences were enormous, and not merely for the so-called captains of industry. The upsurge included increased capacity for production of an array of items — readymade clothing, washing machines, telephones, automobiles, and antibiotics, for example — that touched the lives of ordinary people. And competition and advances in technology held prices down for many of these items. Many ordinary people were thus spared from the need — well known in earlier generations — to spend a lifetime of effort focused exclusively on obtaining basic necessities.

People under the age of 50 today may have trouble recognizing that early in the 20th century: most private homes had no electricity, moving pictures and audio recordings were novelties, radio was regarded as a modern-day miracle, and television was a remote laboratory curiosity.

Applied technology has spawned new media and art forms, bringing millions of people around the world (at virtually the flick of a switch) a more varied mix of entertainment than had ever before seemed feasible. These new media also disseminate news, information, ideas, and revolutionary impulses to parts of the world where the contents in question would previously have seemed inconceivable.

Teachers today can help students look back on a history of innovation (as summarized, for example, in the table below), shedding new light on innovation as part of a larger trend in economic history. Many key events marking the trend have parallels or analogues in events of an earlier century, and teachers can use comparisons across time to foster discussion. Vannevar Bush's memo on the Internet, for example, might be compared with Guttenberg's invention of the printing press. NASA and Intelesat might be compared to explorers like Columbus and Cortez. The ideas and achievements in each case involved tremendous risk and changed the world.

These events which have helped to shape the modern experience are a part of our economic history. They reflect the expansion of the American economy from minimal production to diversification and abundance. Modern telecommunications technology can provide our young people with one source of insight into this development. Together with other, similar developments, it can also provide a source of insight into basic principles of economics. None of the items listed in the following table would have emerged were it not for the market-economy incentives that stimulate research and development, or the legal framework of political stability and protection for private property rights surrounding those incentives, or the development of human capital, fostered by education and training, that enabled people to respond resourcefully to their environment.

American history and economic history have always been intertwined. By itself, however, the chronological study of history is unlikely to clarify events as they have been shaped by economic forces. Seeing history in light of economic forces requires deliberate attention to economic principles and the mode of reasoning associated with their use.

Events and Innovations 1922  First commercial radio broadcast 1939  First commercial TV broadcast 1945  Vannevar Bush writes “As we may think,” a memo planting the seed of the Internet 1947  Transistor invented 1958  NASA created 1965  Intelesat I goes into service 1971  Intel invents the microchip 1975  HBO launched and used in broadcasting the Ali-Frazier “Thrilla in Manilla” 1989  Berlin Wall falls — people around the world are able to watch 1999  Netscape goes public Source: http://www.thestreet.com/basics/countdown/747904.html, Countdown: A Century of U.S. Business — The 100 Biggest Events