Integrating a Social Justice Perspective in Economics Education: Creating a Distinctly Catholic Education
Catholic Education: A Journal of Inquiry and Practice
Integrating a Social Justice Perspective in Economics Education: Creating a Distinctly Catholic Education
David F. Carrithers 0
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ARTICLES
Integrating a Social Justice Perspective in
Economics Education: Creating a Distinctly
Catholic Education
David F. Carrithers Dean Peterson Seattle University, Washington
This paper suggests a way of creating a distinctly Catholic economics education
by integrating a social justice perspective into the curriculum through writings
from Catholic Social Thought (CST). In so doing, we argue that students of
economics will gain a more thorough understanding of the economics discipline.
Moreover, a grounding in CST will help business and economics students better
negotiate the conflicting view of markets they encounter in the “disconnect”
between business courses and humanities/social science core courses.
The thesis of the paper is that CST can be a useful mechanism by which
to instill a social justice perspective in economics education and to motivate
educators to be clear and complete in discussing assumptions that underlie
economic theory. We explore reasons economics educators have been reluctant to
use tools such as CST to inform their discussion of economic theory. We use
the subdiscipline of welfare theory and in particular assumptions regarding the
common good, preference satisfaction, and individual and social utility to
distinguish between perspectives from CST and what is taught as modern economic
theory. Finally, we offer some simple curricular changes that can be
accomplished with little cost, which can lead to three bold accomplishments: creating
a distinctly Catholic economics education, improving students’ understanding
of their discipline, and diminishing the frustration and confusion students feel
when they encounter disconnected messages about the effects of markets and the
promotion of social justice.
Bdriven, face many challenges not faced by secular business schools.
usiness schools from Catholic universities, striving to be mission
Overarching the myriad complexities of teaching individual
disciplinary bodies of knowledge is the question: Is there any meaning to the
phrase “Catholic business education” or is “Catholic” superfluous? In other
words, does “Catholic” make any difference to students or faculty and to the
educational outcomes of a business school within a Catholic university? In
recent years there have been many calls from Catholic scholars and Catholic
university administrators for an examination of the meaning of Catholic
business education.1
The call for examination of our Catholicity is not new. Questions of
whether and how programs are distinct and distinctly Catholic have been
asked repeatedly. The authors suggest there are two implications of our
continual revisiting of these questions, one more favorable than the other. The
favorable perspective: Our continual revisiting of the “Catholicity”
question, as we label it, is borne out of a natural desire for continuous quality
improvement. The less favorable alternative is that our revisiting comes
from a suspicion that we are failing—that “Catholic” is in fact merely a
superfluous adjective.
Regardless of which view one takes, we argue that any examination into
the Catholicity question must be highly focused, pragmatic, and engaging to
faculty if there is going to be any chance of achieving meaningful insights.
We further argue that these engagements should be pursued at the disciplinary
level. For example, this paper explores the question of Catholicity in the
context of economics education. Another issue, which we will explore in more
detail later in the paper, is a disconnect in the view of markets between faculty
from business and economics programs who tend to support market-based
social policy solutions and faculty from the humanities and social sciences who
often believe that markets promote social injustice.
The major contribution of the paper is its proposition that this disconnect
in the view of markets is, in fact, closely related to the Catholicity question
and that any serious attempt to achieve a Catholic character in a business
school must consider both. We believe that addressing the Catholicity
question will simultaneously help students negotiate conflicting views of markets
that we have identified in the teaching of economics. A significant payoff
is that by so addressing these issues we will also improve stud (...truncated)