Thinking like an economist while reading the land: using reading quizzes to show environmental studies and sciences intersecting with economics in Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac

Abstract

AbstractReading quizzes for Aldo Leopold’s classic, A Sand County Almanac, that I give students in my upper-level environmental economics class provide an excellent opportunity to explore the intersection of what some consider signature pedagogies of environmental studies and sciences and economics. This paper gives a pedagogical rationale for this strategy while providing details on one of these reading quizzes. Because Leopold links his push for a land ethic and his passion for the outdoors with beautiful writing while incorporating lots of economics at the same time, reading the land and thinking like an economist—two signature pedagogies—can uniquely blend together. Reading quizzes can be useful for faculty teaching any class in the environmental studies and sciences arena and provide students with an incentive to read and think critically while also sparking excellent classroom discussion. In getting students to think about economic concepts as they are brought up by Leopold, they learn the process of thinking like an economist while reading the land. Seeing topics such as valuation, externalities, and more in Leopold’s writing gives students a perspective on economics that is likely to generate deeper interdisciplinary thinking on environmental matters. And with deeper thinking comes better understanding as our students prepare to design policies to solve our toughest future environmental problems. Faculty with an eye toward introducing economic concepts into an environmental class and a willingness to use Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac to accomplish this will find the net profit to be significant.