DRS. ALSTON' EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY:
Teaching is a craft which can be practiced by individuals who have certain intellectual prerequisites and abilities to use a set of tools. A good teacher makes the extremely difficult task of being an excellent craftsman look easy. The intellectual prerequisites include a thorough knowledge of one's own field and a working knowledge of related disciplines. A good teacher must be aware of current events and their relevance to his or her discipline as well as the discipline's relevance to current issues. He or she must bring this awareness and relevance to the classroom. A good teacher must accept responsibility for being sensitive to the normative assumptions of his or her own view (i.e., that he is teaching the "facts" as he learned them, not necessarily as they are) and allow for dissenting views accordingly. Additionally, the good teacher has the responsibility to develop analytical minds, to teach students to question the "facts." Therefore, he or she should not expect students to blindly accept whatever he says or what is in some book because "that's the way it is." Rather, the good teacher should teach them to ask "Is that so?" and then ask "So what?" The good teacher must allow them (and teach them) to think independently. Finally, he must allow the intellectual prerequisites to keep changing as he continues to grow.
A good teacher requires a command over the tools of interpersonal relations and teaching skills. He must be able to communicate - to listen as well as to talk. He must be flexible enough to explain the same concept in several different ways. He must be innovative enough to integrate information from outside the classroom and from student's comments into the framework of the lectures and use this information to help explain the concepts of the course. A good teacher must enjoy teaching. He or she must accept teaching as a challenge and challenge the students to learn. He must be aware of and be able to adapt to the students' changing environment. The teacher keeps getting older while the clientele remains the same age. However, the good teacher is adaptable and constantly learning and therefore need not slowly become a representative of a different generation with different world views.
A teacher who possesses all these qualities, a good teacher, is an excellent craftsman. A craft, however, can be elevated to an art in the hands of an artist. An excellent teacher is an artist. In addition to a thorough command of the knowledge and tools of the good teacher, the excellent teacher has an awareness of his or her own humanity and respects those he teaches as people, not just as "students" in the abstract. An excellent teacher not only believes in herself and her discipline, but she believes in people as well. She genuinely cares about the growth and development of the people she teaches. She does more than teach facts to those who must learn. She shares her knowledge and abilities with them to facilitate both their intellectual and personal growth. An excellent teacher has empathy. He never forgets what it is like to begin. A good teacher, a craftsman, teaches the discipline. An excellent teacher, an artist, teaches people.
A Brief Word on Alston's Lectures, Textbook Material, and Exams
As the teacher, my role is to provide you with the opportunity to learn the principles of economics so that you will be in a position, either as a potential manager/decision maker or as an interested consumer and citizen, to better understand how the world works. I view the textbook, the study guide, and the computer tutorials as tremendous tools to help me accomplish that task. It is not my role to replace the textbook. But many of the lectures are designed to elaborate upon and explain the most technical details contained in the textbook. Usually this will be done by using different examples and different applications. Other lectures, or parts thereof, are designed to supplement the textbook by bringing into focus issues or problems that provide an opportunity to apply the principles. But, in the end, there is absolutely no substitute for hard work on your part. At a minimum, you should practice drawing all of the diagrams in the book as well as those used during lectures. Make certain that you can explain why the axis are marked the way they are, why each curve or graph looks the way it does, and how it applies to the subject under investigation.
Credits/Reference: The statement of educational philosophy above is an adaptation of a letter of recommendation written by a former student, Barbara McKinnon, for Dr. Alston's Presidential Distinguished Professor Award Nomination (1981-1982). Ms. McKinnon was the Outstanding Graduate in the Department of Economics, 1978. The picture of Drs. Alston depicts the stern curmudgeon and strict taskmaster known by students in the foreground, with the person known to his colleagues, family, and friends in the background. As more and more time passed and Alston approached retirement, the two personas seemed to begin merging into one.
