METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 31 



iam in Calcutta may be again referred to, as there, I believe, the 

 immunity from cholera now enjoyed was due not merely to the intro- 

 duction of a better supply of water, but largely also to the improve- 

 ment in the other matters of hygiene. 



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METHODS OF TEACHING POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



Br J. LAUEENCE LAUGHLIN, Ph. D., 



ASSISTANT PEOFESSOE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN IIAEVAED UNIVEESITT. 



A NATION is sometimes so bitterly taught by sad experience in 

 financial errors as was the case with France in John Law's 

 time, and again in the issue of paper assignats during the Revolution 

 that, on the principle of the "burned child," it ever afterward finds 

 that it unconsciously keeps to the right and avoids the wrong path. 

 So that to-day France is a country where correct conceptions of money 

 are almost universal, and her public monetary experiments are, as a 

 rule, most admirably conducted. In somewhat the same way does the 

 individual gain his proper knowledge of political economy. Principles 

 must be seen working in a concrete form. The key to efficient teach- 

 ing of the subject is to connect principles with actual facts ; and this 

 process must go on in the beginner's mind only through experience. 

 By experience, I mean the personal (subjective) effort of each one to 

 realize the working of the principle for himself in the facts of his own 

 knowledge. The pupil must be put in the way of assimilating for 

 himself the principles of his subject, in such a manner that he feels 

 their truth because they are apparent in explanation of concrete things 

 all around him. And for this purpose nothing is so useful as a sharp 

 struggle, an effort, a keen discussion, or possibly a failure of compre- 

 hension at the time ; for nothing will so awaken one to intellectual 

 effort and finally result in the safe lodgment of the principle within 

 one's thinking as an obstruction and its removal. That this is the aim 

 to be always kept in view by the teacher and student is made clear, it 

 is to be hoped, by the previous analysis of the " Character and Dis- 

 cipline of Political Economy." It is now my purpose to make some 

 suggestions as to the practical methods of teaching by which this can 

 be carried into effect : 



1. The relative advantages of lectures and recitations in political 

 economy have never, to my knowledge, been openly discussed. An 

 experience with both methods of teaching leads me to think that the 

 lecture system, pure and simple, is so ineffective that it ought to be set 

 aside at once as entirely undesirable. No matter how clear the exposi- 

 tion of the principles maybe, no matter how fresh and striking the illus- 

 trations, it still remains that the student is relieved by the instructor 



