Further, with that in mind, it seems unwieldly to suggest that more pluralism could be incorporated into a semester long curriculum. In an intermediate micro course, you cover the standards on consumers, suppliers, markets, etc. In macro, you have to do IS/LM, medium run, etc. How are you going to add more complex topics, especially when the students are only beginning to grasp some of the nicely established models?

Certainly, dogmaticism in presentation could be reduced in some intro courses. But, that doesn’t change much. Again, it’s just hard for me to envision really jamming more into the typical first offerings in economics (intro micro/macro, intermediates). Perhaps you could add a special topics, heterdox course for students just after they’ve taken the intermediate level economics.

Lastly, in my experience, math is the most common complaint I hear regarding introductory experiences in economics. Economics differs from its social science bretheren in its attempt to be a mathematical science. I think this throws people who are more familiar with the international relations, philosophy or political science presentation. Here, they might find economics dull – they are interested in social science questions, yet they find themselves learning technical mathematics.

I was lucky that I had a teacher embodying a non-mainstream approach who spent a lot of time with me; if not, it would have been very easy to just eat up what was presented.

Where textbooks and introductory lectures mention that they are “workhorses”, it’s like they are only paying lip-service. It might say something to that effect in the opening paragraph, but it tends to be followed by 30 pages of “fact” (the understanding of which, at the end of the day, is what you end up being measured against).

That being said, I think it was a very valuable learning experience, mostly because it gave me a new way of thinking about how the world works. Before the course, economics was almost just as a bag of keywords that are thrown around in business news reports.

PhD economists know intelligent economic political viewpoints span the spectrum. Non-economists (and in particular those who drank the Kool-aid of a cold-war era ideology) seem to think economists, just like God, support the Republicans.

Mankiw’s text is good — I’m using it for the first time — but that was first published in 1994, I believe. There are a lot of adults with a limited and dated understanding of economics.

Many people simply decry a caricature of economists. I for one, have never known, read, or heard an economists who thinks perfect competition exists, or that even the most complex models explain everything. But understanding what would prevail under conditions of PC helps to conceptualize deviations from it.

Finally, I don’t know what people are talking about when they say economists don’t accept a plurality of approaches. Behavioral economics, Neuroeconomics, and experimental economics have all challenged the assumptions of neoclassical theory, and much of it has been incorporated into newer models.

I think you are way overstating your case here.