The president of The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) Alan Luxenberg, has highlighted Dr. Lucien Ellington’s essay, “Economics in History: What Every High School Student and Teacher Needs to Know,” as one of the best of 2011.
In his essay, published a newsletter for Wachman Center last January, Ellington, UC Foundation Professor of Education and Co-director of the UTC Asia Program, urges the addition of economics into high school world and U.S. history courses.
“The role of private markets and entrepreneurs in fostering general economic prosperity has been ignored in history classes,” Ellington said.
In his essay, Ellington, a former high school history teacher, provides a framework to incorporate an economic perspective into five common topics that are taught in nearly every world or U.S. history survey class: Ancient Greece and Rome, Imperial China, Colonial English America, the British Industrial Revolution, and the U.S. depression of the 1930s.
“It’s very gratifying for any scholar to have their work read by a large number of people,” he said.
Founded in 1955, FPRI’s website states it “is a non-profit organization devoted to bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests. We add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics.”
Ellington’s essay is available here.
