Teaching economics using proverbs from around the world
Gherardo Girardi
London Metropolitan University1
May 2012
(work in progress, 1st draft)
Abstract: Proverbs can shed light on the behaviour of economic agents in the ways that
mainstream economics does not. In this paper, I focus on proverbs from all over the
world which are about wealth. Whilst economics textbooks ascribe only a positive role to
money (money expands the set of goods that can be purchased), proverbs recognize
that money, or, to be more accurate, the way in which we relate to money, can also entail
negative aspects, such as inhibiting genuine social relationships. I argue that, as
responsible economics educators, we have a duty towards our students to pass to them
this time-honoured knowledge. The paper offers evidence of the effectiveness of this
approach in class using both quantitative and interview data. It uses a variety of
pedagogical approaches as a way to theoretically underpin and evaluate the use of
proverbs in the classroom. It also makes available to economics tutors a database with
more than 200 proverbs that are related to economic issues.
JEL classification: A11, A13, A20
Keywords: proverbs, wealth, teaching and learning, values
Acknowledgments: I am grateful to Digby Warren for comments on an earlier draft of
this paper, and to Giancarlo Go for valuable research assistance in putting together the
database of proverbs. I thank participants at the UN Conference on Happiness in Global
Perspectives & Local Interpretations: Implications for Alternative Development
Paradigms and Public Policy, 2007, Bangkok, for comments on an earlier version of this
paper. I am also thankful to the Economics Network of the UK’s Higher Education
Academy for financially supporting this project. The inspiration to carry out this work
came while reading some remarks by Pope Benedict XVI on the importance of
rediscovering folk wisdom2.
1
London Metropolitan Business School, Economics, SH205 Stapleton House, 278-281 Holloway Road,
London N7 8HN, UK
2
Speaking on the necessity to protect the nations from ecological degradation, the Pope said that we
could take our cue from “folklore and culture as a solid base for concern for the Earth in all its aspects”.
(Zenit (2009), translated from the Italian).
1
1 Introduction
Where does our knowledge of economic behaviour come from? A variety of possible
sources come to mind: one’s personal experience, one’s parents and cultural
background, the media, economics books and courses, specialized consultancies, one’s
religious tradition, innate knowledge (knowledge we are born with), etc. A source of
knowledge that countless people around the world draw from, either consciously or
subconsciously as part of their cultural heritage, is folk wisdom, reflected in proverbs and
popular sayings that have withstood the test of time. These people appreciate and rely
upon such knowledge to make decisions of all kinds, from simple, daily decisions to
important “life” decisions.
Proverbs are a part of everyone’s cultural inheritance. Whilst the specific class of
proverbs one can draw from normally depends on the culture of the society where one
comes from - indeed proverbs contribute to make up the cultural identity of that society -,
proverbs at the same time have a universal appeal: they are appreciated and generally
held to be to true across cultures. Readers can probably think of examples of proverbs
from their particular cultures. For example, in Italy – my country of origin –, one finds the
proverb il mattino ha l’oro in bocca (literally, the morning has gold in its mouth), which
may be understood to mean, in economic terms, that productivity is highest in the
morning. Another example is from the Veneto region where my family comes from: no
importa tanti schei, ma farse ne bea fameja, avere tanti amissi e 'a cosiensa tranqui'a3
(literally, money doesn’t matter so much, what matters is making for oneself a nice
family, having lots of friends and having a clear conscience), which is consistent with
findings of the economics of happiness literature.
Suggesting that proverbs may be a source of knowledge about human behaviour,
including economic behaviour, is probably not very surprising to most of the world’s
population, but will no doubt raise eyebrows among economists, who are used to rely
either on assumptions that are fairly well established in the economics profession, such
as that utility from consumption motivates behaviour, or, more scientifically, on
observations consisting of either secondary or experimental data. In fact, there is no
inconsistency with using proverbs as a source of knowledge and relying on the scientific
method: quite simply, the validity of proverbs can be tested scientifically. For example,
the validity of the first proverb I mentioned above, namely that productivity is highest in
the morning for most individuals, can be empirically tested4. I have already mentioned
that the second proverb I presented above, namely that what makes one happy is family,
friends and a clear conscience, is consistent with evidence in the economics of
happiness literature. In fact, I strongly suspect that proverbs are so varied and numerous
that they can provide economists with testable hypotheses for a very long time to come.
Proverbs can bring light to bear on the behaviour of economic agents in the ways that
mainstream economics education does not. The example that I focus on in this paper is
that of money; I use this term in the very broad sense of “financial resources”, including
3
4
I thank Benedetto Gui for suggesting this proverb.
I am not aware of studies which have done so - a brief Google search did not indicated any.
2
income and wealth, because this is the sense which the public uses5, and which I think
proverbs assume. Economists may find this definition unpalatable, and indeed I am not
disputing that it is useful and important to distinguish between money, income and
wealth. However, I believe that it is also useful and important to use the term as the
public does, since doing so opens up new opportunities for learning about economic
behaviour, one of which is the study folk sayings, or proverbs.
Whilst the majority of economics research and economics textbooks in general ascribe
only a positive role to money (money expands the set of goods that can be purchased),
proverbs recognize that money, or, to be more accurate, the way in which we relate to
money, can also entail negative aspects. Examples include the Russian proverb “Where
wealth is established it is difficult for friendship to find a place”, which suggests that
wealth may have a negative bearing on the genuineness of our relationships; or the
Swahili proverb “The wealth which enslaves the owner is not wealth”, which raises the
possibility that in some way wealth may dominate the one who owns it. Since in the vast
majority of economics classes we follow the mainstream approach and focus exclusively
on the positive aspects of holding money, it follows that we do not provide our students
with a holistic and balanced discussion of how money affects us. Can we consider
ourselves responsible economics educators when we neglect to teach our students the
negative aspects of having money, and so present to them only a half-truth? In fact, I
strongly suspect that, by ignoring the more subtle effects of money, we encourage in our
students a bias in the direction of wanting to have more money, and so offer them a
disservice.
In this paper, I develop an exercise which I put to my economic development students
and which tests whether, upon being exposed to proverbs from around the world that are
about money, their attitude towards money changes, in particular the extent to which
they believe money can buy happiness. I designed a questionnaire (n=30), run a focus
group with 7 students and conducted 5 individual interviews.
The project asks the following specific questions:
I.
II.
III.
To what extent do students regard proverbs as reliable sources of knowledge and
wisdom?
To what extent do proverbs shed light on aspects of economic behaviour not
normally covered in the economics classroom?
To what extent does the use of proverbs in the economics classroom promote a
new understanding of economic behaviour by the students, and a reappraisal of
their values?
These questions are linked. First of all, whilst it is common knowledge that proverbs are
regarded as depositories of wisdom, it is important to establish that the students are of
the same opinion, so that the tutor may present proverbs as reliable sources of
knowledge. If the students consider proverbs reliable, then the second question can be
5
Indeed dictionaries report ‘wealth’ as one of the meanings of ‘money’ (see for example the Merriam-Webster
online dictionary)
3
asked, namely, do proverbs help to identify aspects of economics behaviour which
mainstream economics does not. If the answer to this question is affirmative, then the
third question follows, that is, do some students undergo a transformation of their
understanding of economic behaviour as a result of being exposed to proverbs, and a
reappraisal of their attitudes and values in relation to economics “matters” such as
money.
Finally, the project aims to ask the following question:
IV.
To what extent does the use of proverbs from around the world help to bring about
cultural inclusivity?
Answering this question can make a contribution to the internationalisation literature in
teaching and learning as I am not aware of academic work which looks at proverbs from
around the world as a way of attaining cultural inclusivity.
The results of the experiment are as follows. First, students found the proverbs used in
the exercise on the whole truthful and embodying wisdom. Second, students found
proverbs to be on the whole negative about the effect of wealth on one’s well-being, in
contrast with what they are taught in economics classes. In general students recognize
that money has positive as well as negative effects; proverbs make these effects clear
and explicit. Proverbs covers economic behaviour not normally covered in mainstream
economics education, such as one’s affections, the virtues, illusion and contentment, i.e.
they offer a more holistic perspective that is respectful of the human being as a whole
and in so doing increases the relevance of the subject to the students’ lives (see Roger
and Freiberg (1993)). Third, there is some evidence of transformative learning a’ la
Mezirow (say Taylor (2008)), with 7 students moving away from the belief that money
can buy happiness (though 3 moved towards it). In other words, proverbs can engender
a change in values, or at least in one’s ranking of values. Fourth, there is no evidence
that students agree more with proverbs of their ethnicity than with proverbs of other
ethnicities. Finally, proverbs from around the world can be an effective tool with a view to
attaining cultural inclusivity (see Jones and Brown (2007)): this is particularly true if
students are invited to offer proverbs from their own culture.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In section 2, I briefly review the limited
literature on using proverbs in the classroom. In section 3, I describe the pedagogical
experiment I carried out in Comparative Economic Development, I third year subject
taken by economics, development and international relations students at my university.
In section 4 I report the findings of the experiment, both quantitative – from a
questionnaire – and qualitative – a focus group and five individual interviews. In section
6, I explain how using proverbs in the economics classroom can be understood as an
application of different conceptual frameworks in educational studies, namely
transformative learning theory, Roger´s holistic approach and the internationalisation
literature. Section 7 concludes.
4
2. Literature on proverbs
The field of inquiry which studies proverbs is called paremiology (from the Greek
παροιμία - paroimía, ‘proverb’). According to Wolfgang Mieder, who is probably the
leading figure in this field6, a proverb (from the Latin proverbium, meaning ‘words but
forward’, or ‘common saying’) is “a short, generally known sentence of the folk which
contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed and
memorisable form which is handed down from generation to generation” (Mieder (2004)).
Proverbs appeal to most people in that they use “wit, colourful language, imagery”
(Mieder(1986)) and are compact. Particularly in a society like ours in which people
demand quick access to easily accessible, concise information, the short length of
proverbs (usually limited to one line) is also an attractive feature.
The earliest collections of proverbs appeared in ancient Egypt in about 2500BC
(Karagiorgos (1999)),and King Solomon, who is attributed with about nine hundred
proverbs in the Old Testament, is famous for his “proverbial wisdom”. The first
philosopher to systematically study proverbs was Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who,
according to the historian Laertius, wrote a volume called ‘Proverbs’, but this
unfortunately has been lost. Proverbs were also commonly used by Fathers of the Church
such as St. John Chrysostom, and continued to be popular with preachers during the
Middle Ages. In literature, proverbs have been widely used by Dante, Chaucer,
Cervantes and Shakespeare; for example, the latter wrote the comedy “All’s Well That
Ends Well”, the tile being itself a proverb. More recent examples of literati who dipped
their quills in the vast pool of proverbs include Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie and
George Bernard Shaw. Proverbs are so engrained in languages that some researchers
have tried to identify a “paremiological minimum”, defined as a core set of proverbs which
full members of a society speaking a particular language need to know; for example, an
American adult is expected to understand the meaning of “to kill two birds with one stone”,
which is part of the US paremiological minimum. Both Haas (2008) and Hirsch, Kett and
Trefil (1988) have tried to establish paremiological minimums for the US.
Not only are proverbs resistant to the passage of time, i.e. found at different points in
time, often the same proverb is found in different cultures; for example, the proverb “No
flies enters a mouth that is shut” is found in countries as diverse as Spain and Ethiopia,
and can be traced back to the ancient Babylonian civilization (Pritchard 1958:146). Some
parts of the world, such as West Africa, are particularly rich in proverbs (Mieder (2004)).
The literature on the use of proverbs for pedagogical purposes is, to my knowledge,
non-existent in economics, and very limited in other disciplines. Tisdell and Tolliver
(Adult Learning, 2003) describe the use of proverbs in African-centred psychology
education. Similarly, Grant and Asimeng-Boahene (Multicultural Perspectives, 2006)
discuss the use of African proverbs in urban schools with a view to promoting a sense of
citizenship. Ibanez (Journal of Chemistry Education, 2002) shows how proverbs can be
6
Mieder is editor of the journal Proverbium.
5
used to teach chemistry. Charteris-Black (Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural
Development, 1995) uses proverbs to develop the cross-linguistic understanding of
professionals involved in intercultural situations. Manzo (Reading Teacher, 1981)
describes the use of proverbs to improve reading comprehension skills and critical
thinking abilities.
What kind of pedagogical theory can serve as a conceptual basis for the use of proverbs
from around the world in the economics classroom? Three frameworks, it seems to me,
propose themselves quite naturally: transformative learning theory, Roger’s holistic
approach, and the internationalization of higher education (in particular with a view to
promoting cultural inclusivity).Transformative learning theory is relevant in that proverbs
about economic issues may bring about a transformation in students’ understanding of
economic behaviour and of their own values. Roger’s holistic approach, too, is relevant,
in that proverbs consider attitudinal and emotional aspects which mainstream economics
education does not, thus failing to present a whole, integrated picture of economic
behaviour. Finally, the literature on the internationalization of higher education is relevant
for the obvious reason that the experiment I am proposing involves the use of proverbs
from around the world, at a time of unprecedented globalization. What all three
approaches have in common, and what I consider to be of fundamental importance if
education is going to be effective, is that they emphasize that education must be relevant
to the personal needs of students, that what we teach them “speak” to them, i.e. that they
be able to make a deep, personalized connection with what they are taught7, in contrast
with a lot of the material which we teach them at present, such as indifference curve
theory, a very abstract idea which, in my experience both as a student and a teacher of
economics, they (we) find difficult to relate to8. These three approaches, and how they
apply to the use of proverbs in the economics classroom, are described in section 5;
readers who want to “focus on the economics”, and are not interested in the pedagogical
aspect of using proverbs in the classroom, can skip section 5.
The experiment using proverbs in class opens the door to a whole range of fascinating
philosophical issues regarding how proverbs relate to the values which individuals hold
dear. Whilst the focus of this paper is pedagogical, i.e. it proposes that we teach students
the negative ways in which individuals relate to money in addition to the positive ones
which we already teach, it is worth spending a few moments looking at these
philosophical questions, since they are of interest not just to philosophers, but also to
economists.
For example, do proverbs shape the values of students, and if so, do they do so only
outside the classroom by virtue of the students’ background, or do they do so also during
the course of the experiment? Do proverbs help students to (re-?)discover their
underlying values, or “preferences”, as in Plott (1996)? Digging a bit deeper, is the
7
See Girardi (forthcoming) for a discussion of using film as a way to teach material that is personally
relevant to students’ lives.
8
After all, it seems counter-intuitive that indifference curves can explain what we choose, i.e. what we are
not indifferent to. This criticism is accurate in situations where we make choices for which we have a sharp
preference, which might account for most situations in life, particularly for important choices with long term
consequences, i.e. not choosing a consumption bundle consisting of apples and oranges.
6
exercise with proverbs really about values - or preferences - at all, since all of us
recognize that money has the potential to lead to problems (so that more of it is not
necessarily better), and hence what really the proverbs are doing is to highlight a reality,
a fact? Are proverbs tools, or concise representations of the tools, which people use to
make decisions, be they rational or not, along the lines suggested by Simon, who
believed that the economic agent relies on “very simple perceptual and choice
mechanisms to satisfy its needs” (Simon (1956), quoted in Davis (2011))? Digging even
more deeply, what constitutes the identity of individuals, and do proverb help individuals
to generate their own “dynamic self-narrative” which Davis (2011) suggests is at the
heart of one’s (perceived) identity, including one’s economic identity? 9 One thing is for
sure: the fact that one third of the participants in the experiment with proverbs exhibited a
change in (the ranking of) values during the course of the experiment strongly suggests
that people´s behaviour is far from being characterized by the static preferences
framework of Homo economics.
3. Methodology
During a lecture in Comparative Economic Development, a third year undergraduate
subject, I distributed to the students an exercise in the shape of a questionnaire. The
questionnaire began by asking students if they agreed with the statement that “the more
wealth a person has, the happier that person is”. I the presented students with 10
proverbs, 5 of which conveyed a positive message about wealth (or money), e.g. “Time
is money”, and five of which conveyed a negative message, e.g. “Great wealth and
contentment seldom live together”. This was followed by a class discussion. The ethnic
origin of the proverbs was hidden throughout the exercise to avoid the possibility that
stereotypes might affect students’ ratings. I then asked the students to rate again the
question I had initially given them on the relationships between money and happiness, to
see if their ratings had changed. Subsequently, I provided students with the full list of
proverbs containing the word “wealth” from the Prentice-Hall Encyclopaedia of World
Proverbs (51 proverbs in all)10. For the purpose of this exercise, these 51 proverbs
represent a rough approximation of world wisdom about wealth. I asked students to rate
how positively each proverb was about wealth (i.e. if it “spoke well” about wealth or not)
and how truthful they believed each proverb to be. Finally, I once again asked them to
answer the question on the relationship between wealth and happiness. Demographic
data was collected. There were 30 responses. Students came from a wide of range of
different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, the median age was 24 and the
male/female split was exactly 50/50.
In addition to the questionnaire, I conducted a focus group with 7 participants, as well as
9
As one student remarked, “Money shows you who you are”.
There are 177 proverbs in the Encyclopaedia with the word ‘money’, which are too many to give to
students in a single class. Instead, proverbs containing the word ‘wealth’ are 51, which, given the limited
available in class, was a more sensible number. Readers will remember from the introduction that I am
treating words such as income, wealth and money as broadly interchangeable to mean ‘financial
resources’, as the general public does.
10
7
5 individual interviews, details of which I give below.
4. Results
This section considers the results from (a) the questionnaire, (b) the focus group and (c)
the 1-to-1 interviews.
4.1 Results from the questionnaire
The majority of proverbs (38 out of 51) were regarded by students as truthful, though the
average level of perceived truthfulness was somewhat low (at 0.54, with the range of
possible answers going from 2 to -2, 2 being very true, -2 very untrue, and 0 neither true
nor untrue).
Proverbs regarded as most truthful by students were:
1. ”Wealth is of no use to the dead” (1.60) (or “Wealth will not keep death away”
(1.57))
2. “The greatest wealth is contentment with a little” (1.50)
3. “The best wealth is health” (1.48)/”Little avails wealth where there is no health”
(1.32)
4. “When there is wealth, there is power” (1.40)
5. “The wealth which enslaves the owner is not wealth” (1.34)
Proverbs regarded as least truthful by student were:
1. “Wealth may be bequeathed to the children but it never reaches the
grandchildren” (-0.66)
2. “Wealth is an enemy to health” (-0.61)
3. “Inherited wealth has no blessing” (-0.40)
4. “Who seeks wealth without previous wealth is like him who carries water in a
sieve”(-0.31)
5. “Wealth is the poison of pleasure and root of sorrows” (-0.30)
39 (out of 51) proverbs on average portrayed wealth in a negative light, the average
being -0.46 (again the range is from -2 to 2, with 0 being “neither positive nor negative”).
This has important implications for economics education, which almost invariably treats
wealth as a (positive) way of expanding one’s set of affordable goods, ignoring other,
more subtle, negative effects of wealth on well-being. An example of a “negative”
proverb is “Where wealth is established it is difficult for friendship to find a place”,
suggesting that relationships may turn instrumental and affections may not be genuine
when wealth is at stake.
A considerable number of students appear to have undergone a change of perspective
in line with transformative learning theory. Specifically, 10 out of 30 students underwent
a change in perspective as a result of undergoing the exercise, with 7 being less in
8
agreement with the statement that money buys happiness and 3 being more so. There is
no significant correlation between undergoing a change of perspective and finding
proverbs more truthful11.
Two trends emerged from students´ comments in the questionnaires. The first is that,
even before engaging with proverbs, students already see a number of pros and cons of
money, in contrast with what they are taught in class, where only pros as considered.
Pros include the relief of stress in that money makes it possible to pay bills and to
purchase valuable services such as holidays. Cons include the notion that with more
money come more problems and that having a lot of money makes it difficult to tell real
value of one´s friendships. Finally money cannot buy some things like health, beauty,
love, true respect, knowledge. The second widely held belief is that money helps to
increase one´s happiness up to a certain level of income, consistently with the
economics of happiness literature12. After engaging with the proverbs, some student
remarked that they appreciated seeing both the positive and negative aspects of money
reflected in the proverbs, and being made to reflect in some depth on their attitude
towards wealth. There was also general agreement that, as one student said, “proverbs
describe the wisdom of history in a few words”.
The questionnaire also made it possible to test the hypothesis as to whether a student of
a particular ethnic group was more likely to find proverbs from his or her ethnic group
true than proverbs from other ethnic groups. Upon grouping students by continent, no
evidence was found in support of this hypothesis. However, this result needs to be
considered in the context of a very limited number of observations (n=30); in addition,
testing for this hypothesis is more difficult by the fact that proverbs tend to be
“transnational”, i.e. the same proverb is found in different countries and across different
cultures (see discussion in the Introduction).
4.2 Qualitative analysis
The results from the focus group and the individual interviews lend themselves to
interdisciplinary analysis so as to obtain a range of different but complementary
perspectives with a view to arriving at an integrated, holistic understanding of economic
agents; I hope that researchers in disciplines other than economics, such as
anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, theologians and philosophers will be
inspired to engage with and comment on this material. To facilitate this input from
colleagues of various disciplines, I have presented the interview material in its raw form,
keeping the focus group and the individual interviews separate. At the same time, in
order to facilitate the analysis and discussion of the results, I have split the material in the
focus group and in the individual interviews into two parts: the first part is about what
students think of using proverbs as an educational tool, and the second part is about
what proverbs say concerning economic behaviour: note that this order respects the
11
There is also no significant correlation between undergoing a change of perspective and perceiving
proverbs to portray wealth in a positive fashion.
12
Interestingly, females are significantly less likely to think that money buys happiness.
9
chronological order in which these two sets of issues were put forward to the students.
Finally, I present a summary analysis of the qualitative data which is structured into the
same two parts.
4.2.1 Results from the focus group
7 students took part in the focus group: a Romanian, a British of Pakistani background, a
Colombian, a British of Kyrgyzstani background, a British/Bermudian, a Hungarian and a
British. The median age was 24; there were 3 females and 4 males.
In general, student felt that the exercise promoted reflection on how people related to
wealth and enjoyed taking part in it. As in the questionnaires, students thought that were
was wisdom in proverbs, stressed the need to be content with what one has and
expressed a balanced approach to money which recognized its limitations in attaining
happiness. Students generally felt that human nature has not changed over history,
making proverbs, which normally have ancient roots, still relevant today. Indeed, one
student felt that through proverbs one could learn “from others’ mistakes and
experiences”. There was less agreement as to whether proverbs are equally relevant
across cultures. Students indicated that when proverbs clash, they do not accept one
and reject the other, but instead tend to reconcile them or to believe that one applies in
some circumstances and its opposite applies in other circumstances; for example,
although the proverbs “Where wealth is established, it is difficult for friendship to find a
place” and “Where wealth, there friends” clash (at least prima facie), students interpret
the word “friends” in the second proverb in a sarcastic sense, thus reconciling the two
proverbs. In addition, one student remarked that a proverb may be useful to someone in
one situation, and another is useful in another situation. A student felt that the exercise
had made her reflect in depth about her views and that she had changed her mind about
the culture-specificity of proverbs, feeling that they were more universal and applicable
across cultures than she had initially thought. Another student felt that the exercise had
confirmed her view as to how she should relate to money, which is, in a certain sense, an
example of transformative learning. 4 out of 7 students felt that they would have
benefited from being given more time to reflect on the proverbs (an hour rather than the
forty minutes they were given). Finally, a student remarked that the tutor should try to
relate proverbs to the definition of economics (one way of doing this might be distinguish
between the aims and means of economics inquiry, and assessing the extent to which
proverbs help to identify these aims and the means to achieve them).
Students made comments about certain aspects of the behaviour of people which are
not normally captured in mainstream economics. For example, some remarked that
money “can bring about a change in personality”, with people who become richer
displaying an increase in greed and looking down on other, less wealthy people. There
was general agreement that to enjoy wealth one has to work hard for it, otherwise he or
she will not be able to appreciate it; this is in contrast with the assumption made in
economic models that effort is associated primarily with disutility. A student felt that
people were happy in poor countries as relations such as family ties were strong and
10
“there was not a lot of economic development”. A student lamented the absence of any
discussion about virtue in the economics curriculum, and felt that we were wrong in
teaching that people are fundamentally Hobbesian, i.e. “brutish and nasty”. There was
also a discussion of whether being far from nature in our society (i.e. living in urban
areas) had a detrimental effect on our ability to appreciate the simple things in life and
the complex production processes required for food to reach our table. The effect of
those around us in determining our relationship with money was also discussed, an
interaction which some proverbs brought to the fore, such as the Japanese proverb
“When you have wealth and fame, even strangers gather round; in times of poverty and
lowliness, even relatives depart from you”. There was also a discussion about whether
we should explicitly teach to take into account other agents’ well-being, with a student
approving of this in the case one of the agents is poor.
4.2.2 Results from the individual interviews
5 one-to-one interviews were conducted with two English students, a Kenyan, a Somali
(with a European passport), and a Slovak. The median age was 23; there were 3
females and 2 males.
Student A
This student from the north of England felt that the exercise had “opened” his “mind a
bit”, that “with proverbs you´re forced to think outside the box” in that he was not given
any input by the tutor before engaging with the proverbs. He said that he was not given
“a received wisdom which you are supposed to take in” and felt a sense of exploration
and freedom in taking part in the exercise: “With proverbs, you´re on your own and it’s all
in front of you”. He would have appreciated more time to reflect on the proverbs to “orient
yourself”, especially since he found 20% of the proverbs not very straightforward. Finally,
he felt that the “proverb background” (which he later identified as one’s culture) “kicks in
when you have to make decisions”.
For this student, happiness did not lie in wealth, but in being a respected member of a
community, an attitude which he felt came from his Yorkshire working class background.
He felt that wealth acquisition would break the link with the community he had grown up
in.
Student B
This Somali student considers “proverbs more truthful than figures”, in fact she finds
them a “useful reminder that there is more in economics than figures”. Proverbs “have
been around for a long time, so there is wisdom in them”, unlike figures, which can
“change across time and cultures, like the Phillips curve” (referring to the fact that the
original, simple Phillips curve was lost from the 70’s onwards). She cites a Somali
11
proverb which says that “People lie, but proverbs don’t lie”. She found some of the
language of proverbs old-fashioned, “so you have to read and interpret”. 10-15% of
proverbs were hard to understand. She felt she had enough time during the exercise.
In Somalia, she says, people think that money buys happiness, and at the same time
people who spend money mostly on themselves would be regarded as selfish. People
who emigrate to rural areas tend to help those in the rural areas (“charity begins at
home”, she says), sometimes helping poor relatives to study in the city, so that these
poor relatives are grateful. However, quite a few newly rich emigrants break this helpline,
in that “as soon as someone gets rich, their personality completely changes, and
associate [only] with rich urban people” (note that such a “personality change” was also
mentioned by a couple of students in the focus group). Somali culture is strongly
influenced by Islam. For example, one should beware of hidden agendas when giving
money for charity, such as “expecting the poor man’s gratitude”; instead, one “should do
it for the Lord” and so display purity of intention. She cited the saying “Remember God
when you are wealthy, he’ll remember you when you are poor”, and the prophet
Mohammed’s words “Ask for wealth that will not delude [or corrupt] you”. She felt that the
three monotheistic religions had a similar approach to wealth.
Student C
This Kenyan student felt that, although “the usefulness of proverbs is that everyone can
relate to them, because they have been collected from different cultures and hence
portray a ‘general view’ of how people relate to happiness and wealth, and hence contain
a kind of world wisdom”, people are different and have different definitions of happiness,
“hence proverbs are too general for them to relate to”, in particular they “don’t give you
enough advice in specific situations” and “the applicability of proverbs varies from one
situation to the next”. She had problem understanding the proverbs only in two cases,
and, like most students, looked for ways to accommodate clashing proverbs. She said
that she would like to see the ethnicity of the proverbs only after the experiment, as she
feels that, had they been shown to her in advance, her ratings would have been affected
by stereotypes. She also said she had enjoyed the whole exercise.
As far as her relationship with wealth was concerned, she said that she was taught by
her parents that “it is not so much money but the love of it [that is the problem], then it
becomes your idol”, reflecting a Christian upbringing. She agreed with the proverb that
“the best things in life are free”, such as nature, creation and love. At the same time,
money “unifies the world, brings people together, it seems this is the only way we have
been able to put people together”. For her, knowledge and learning, from which comes
wisdom, are more important than wealth, (pleasant speech, too, is more important than
wealth). “Wisdom can´t be acquired at university, which can be very intellectual, but the
people [teaching at university can be] not very wise…The events in your life teach you
wisdom”. She remarked: “I have learnt a lot from the proverbs exercise, but what do I do
with it?”; she felt that students would benefit from looking at different situations to which
they can apply proverbs, ”then proverbs would teach you wisdom”. In other words, a
12
tutor needs to apply the proverbs to real life situations, or make up real life situations for
the students to apply the proverbs to.
Student D
For this Slovak student proverbs are “common wisdom”. Only two or three proverbs were
hard to understand, and the student felt that some prior explanation (or interpretation) of
these difficult proverbs by the tutor would have been useful. She thought that had she
been shown the ethnicity of proverbs before taking the exercise, her rankings might have
been affected as stereotypes exist (a future avenue of research could be to explore
whether stereotypes affect students’ evaluations of proverbs). She thought that there is
wisdom in proverbs, as they are observed over hundreds of years and have stood the
test of time. Proverbs “have general but not universal applicability both across time and
space”. She found the whole discussion using proverb useful to (a) “help students not
follow money blindly before you go for very long hours of work in your new job”; (b)
reflect on what brings happiness; and (c) although at university one learns plenty of
theory, “you’re not encouraged to look for your place in the theory, if you fit into it or not,
but with proverbs you do”13. Although she finds some proverbs not be necessarily true,
she can still find meaning in them; for example, “Whoever wants everything loses
everything” need not be true, but she thinks it’s a call to caution.
The student appreciated seeing the negative side of money, e.g. although money
enables one to buy whatever one wants, “the bigger your bank balance, the more it takes
over your life”; also, as a result of having money, “you can stop thinking about the people
around you”, in that money distracts you from what is important, i.e. the people around
you. “Money gives you access to things, but you can become confused as to what really
makes you happy”, so that “money gives you the illusion of happiness.” “People are
[biologically] programmed to make other people happy” and “sharing makes people
enjoy what they have, [it] gives meaning to wealth”. She gave some proverbs herself:
“Money can consume you” and “Money shows you who you are”. Slovakia was poor
under the Austrian Empire and the Soviets, but with the EU wealth has been increasing
and people are starting to wonder about the value of money (like people in the UK who
take part in activities such as yoga).
Student E
This British student of Pakistani ethnicity felt that if there had been a more boxes to
choose from in the questionnaire, near the end of the exercise he would have selected a
different box, showing a change in attitude with regards to money’s ability to buy
happiness. He found only 2 or 3 proverbs difficult; also some could be interpreted in
different ways, e.g. in the case of “Money is like smoke”, smoke could be comparable to
cigarette smoke, which is hazardous to health. As with most other students, when two
proverbs clashed, the student thought there was truth in both. The exercise helped him
13
For a discussion of the importance of making economics relevant to students’ lives, see Girardi (forthcoming).
13
to be much more aware of the need to be considerate towards others, as quite a few
proverbs describe how money affects our relationship with others adversely. He felt it
was “good to teach proverbs, it has opened my eyes”.
According to this student, “When the foundation (of one’s life) is money, and when the
money is gone, [your] foundation falls”, so that money can be a misplaced source of
security. Instead, the student felt that family and religion (Islam) were reliable
foundations. The student mentioned the proverb “If you don’t respect money, it won’t
respect you”, for example if one gambles; also a key question for him is “Do you control
money or does money control you?”; if it controls you, then, citing a proverb he had seen
in the exercise in class, “Money makes worship”. Like other students, he felt that it was
good to struggle when earning one’s wealth (in agreement with the proverb “By labour
comes wealth”) because then “you appreciate what you have”; also the student’s father
had studied hard, and now his children were benefiting from this. Again like other
students, the student thought that more money need not result in more happiness as
money brought problems, friends could be false, the threat of robberies, kidnappings and
murder increased and jealousy could be instigated. He was impressed that I (the
interviewer) was able to successfully question his beliefs (which? I did not shift his
attitude from its original position) during the interview, about which he claimed to be
normally very confident. Because “Wealth and happiness, like smoke, vanish”, he felt it’s
better to have spiritual wealth than physical wealth, which cannot be stolen. He strongly
agreed that “Wealth counts not so much as goodwill nor as knowledge and pleasant
speech”, as “you can’t buy class”. He claimed that religion acts as a protective tool in that
it ensures (and reassures) that if someone is rich, he would not misuse his wealth, e.g.
on gambling or smoking. The student agrees that “Whoever wants everything loses
everything”, because “you alienate the people around you”, who are “fundamental for
your happiness and well-being”.
4.2.3 Summary of results from the focus group and individual interviews
The results from the focus group and from the one-to-one interviews both indicated that
students trust proverbs to be truthful, perhaps even more so than in the questionnaires.
There was general agreement that proverbs contain wisdom, and that this survives over
time and across generations. This can also be seen when, in rare instances when two
proverbs clash, students look for ways by which both proverbs can be true – an exercise
which probably involves more their intuition than their rational faculties; or when a
proverb is not considered to be generally true, a student looks for a sense in which it is
true. Students appreciated being made to engage in self-reflection, particularly in the
way they related to money.
In terms of what proverbs have to say about economics, students were happy to see in
the proverbs both positive and negative aspects of how money affects them. Positive
aspects noted by the students included increased purchasing power, relief from stress
and a sense by which people can be united (via trade and interdependence); negative
14
aspects included the notions that more money implies more problems14, that money
makes it difficult to accurately assess the true value of relationships (i.e. genuinely
seeking companionship and not money), that money can distract one from what
genuinely makes that person happy such as friends and family, that money “can control
you”, i.e. dominate one’s life, that acquiring lots of money can change one’s personality ,
that having money may increase the likelihood of being robbed, kidnapped or murdered,
and that (inequality in the distribution) of money can result in envy. Finally students
generally agreed with the saying that the best things in life are free, that money cannot
buy certain things, such as friendship, that contentment with what one has is important if
one is to be happy, and that money did not increase happiness significantly beyond a
certain level. Proverbs suggest a wide range of issues not normally discussed in
economics, such as affections and the virtues. Finally, proverbs brought to the fore the
interdependence of people and the importance of being considerate towards others.
5. The use proverbs in the economics classroom as an application of different
conceptual frameworks
5.1 Proverbs as an application of transformative learning theory
Transformative learning theory is a recent branch of educational studies which is
gradually gaining recognition, with a journal dedicated to it called the Journal of
Transformative Education, edited by John M. Dirkx. The most well-known figure in this
area is probably Jack Mezirow (see Taylor (1998) for an introduction to transformative
learning theory). For Mezirow, the purpose of education is “to help the individual become
a more autonomous thinker by learning to negotiate his or her own values, meanings,
and purpose rather than uncritically acting on those of others” (Mezirow (1997), quoted in
Taylor(1998)).
In transformative learning theory, the departure point is that we tend to form meaning
perspectives largely uncritically during the course of childhood, for example through
socializing with friends and through the culture in which we grow up. These meaning
perspectives provide a rationalization for a world that is sometimes difficult to make
sense of. They operate as perceptual filters, acting like a “double-edged sword”: they
give meaning (validation) to our experiences, but at the same time skew our reality
whenever our understanding of the world does not correspond to reality. When a
radically different and incongruent experience cannot be assimilated into the meaning
perspective, the meaning perspective is either rejected or is transformed, in a
developmental process of meaning which continues throughout one’s someone’s life.
Developments are usually the result of a disorienting dilemma, a crisis for example, a
death of a dear family member. These experiences can be very painful and can threaten
the very core of one’s existence. They are highly beneficial in that they compel an
14
This is a new, potentially very fruitful area of future research. Students also agreed that one needs to work hard
in the process of acquiring one’s wealth, otherwise he would not be able to enjoy his wealth; again, this
constitutes a novel area of research which contrasts with the way effort is normally considered in economics.
15
individual to re-examine the assumptions behind his or her meaning perspectives. They
can also take less traumatic forms, whenever we experience a contradiction between our
thoughts, feelings and actions.
In the classroom, the teacher can in a sense replicate these events (on a much lesser
scale of course) by disrupting the learner’s world view and stimulate doubt in learners
about previously taken-for-granted interpretations of events. Through critical reflection,
students can then become aware of the “uncritically assimilated half-truths of
conventional wisdom and power relationships . . . [and] come to recognize being caught
in his/her own history and reliving it”; at the same time students become aware of, using
Mezirow’s terminology, “areas of ignorance” about which they want to be enlightened
To promote this kind of critical reflection is, for Mezirow, the educator’s primary role. In
so far as mainstream economics education focuses only on the positive aspects of
money, it most definitely presents a half-truth, which the educator can successfully
challenge using proverbs. Proverbs helps students become conscious of the fact that
many of us display a contradictory attitude towards wealth, recognizing that money won’t
buy happiness, yet seeking it intensely.
I suspect that what is happening with some students who are (re-)exposed to proverbs is
that I am merely re-awakening their understanding that money does not buy happiness,
particularly with those students who have a religious background (as with two Muslim
students and a Christian student in the individual interviews) or have a philosophical take
on the world (as with a Colombian student in the focus group studying Philosophy,
Politics and Economics). With these students, proverbs act as a confirmation of things
students already knew, but which their mainstream economics education (and possibly
the world around them) had been making them deviate from.
Transformative learning theory (as well as the holistic approach pioneered by Carl
Rogers) advocates the use of provocative, thought-stimulating material which will induce
the student to question the validity of his or her views, for example how he or she relates
to wealth15. Such questioning can lead to transformation of meaning perspectives
(including how a student looks at life) and is essential if the experience of higher
education is to be truly engaging and vitalizing. Such material may be even more
thought-provoking if coming from cultures other than that of the student; in this sense
proverbs from around the world make striking, thought-provoking material.
Mezirow believes that lucid logical analysis, i.e. reason, is capable of unmasking the
false assumptions by which we value the world around us16. An argument can be made
15
There is a similarity here with Socrates’ dialectic method, where the philosopher’s role is to extract
(maieutiké) from students highly personal thoughts, as opposed to impose his ideas on them through
rhetoric. He did so was through sharp, humorous interjections.
16
It is essential to successful transformative learning that in the classroom the conditions for rational
discourse be conducive. Students need to have access to accurate and complete information, be willing to
consider alternative perspectives, and have equal opportunity to question, challenge and refute. It is vital
that the educator make every effort to establish standards within the classroom that diminish the influence
of power and an I win- you lose kind of discourse. This requirement is identical to that of the humanistic
approach, which we will talk more about later.
16
that (a) the world around is materialistic and encourages us to believe that money can
buy us happiness; alternatively, that (b) mainstream economics education (seen as a
proxy for “the world around us”) encourages students to be materialistic by narrowly
focusing on the positive aspects of money (essentially that money pays the rent, buys
holidays, etc. – i.e. the purchasing power that money affords) whilst entirely disregarding
the negative aspects of money (e.g. that it can complicate relationships between
people). In this case, proverbs from around the world, which, as we saw earlier, include
the negative aspects of money, can serve to unmask the false assumptions by which we
value the world around us.
Mezirow even goes as far as to suggest that, because false assumptions about reality
can be unmasked by means of unclouded reason, a consensus could be achieved in
class (which can then become the basis for making decisions and taking action).The
experiment with proverbs is consistent with this view, in that the experiment strengthens
the belief of the majority that money does not buy happiness, with the number of
students with this belief rising from 15 to 18 (out of 30)17, largely as a result of the
number of students neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the statement that money buys
happiness falling from 8 to 5.
The tremendous faith that Mezirow places in reason is disputed by other exponents of
transformative learning theory, such as Robert Boyd. For Boyd, the subconscious, by its
very nature, eludes the conscious and hence logic, putting a severe limit on Mezirow’s
exclusively reason-based approach. Instead, transformation is captured by Carl Jung’s
idea of individuation, “the lifelong process of coming to understand through reflection the
psychic structures (ego, shadow, persona, collective unconscious, etc.) that make up
one’s identity” (Taylor (1998)). Individuation involves the discovery of new talents, a
feeling of empowerment and confidence, and greater sense of self-responsibility (Boyd
1991). Transformation for Boyd is defined as “a fundamental change in one’s personality
involving conjointly the resolution of a personal dilemma and the expansion of
consciousness resulting in greater personality integration” (Boyd (1989), quoted in
Taylor (1998)).
In contrast with Mezirow, who focuses on cognitive conflicts experienced by the
individual’s relationship with the culture around him, Boyd is much more focused on
conflicts within the individual’s psyche. In the experiment using proverbs, there is some
17
Sometimes what students write in the questionnaire and what they report in the interview differ. For
example, a student said in the interview that “it’s hard to find real friends when you are rich”, yet in the
questionnaire she only gave this proverb’s truthfulness a zero (rather than a 2 as her interview statement
would suggest). Similarly, the same student said in the interview that the proverb “Great wealth and
contentment seldom live together” is not true, but gave it a score of 2 in the questionnaire (i.e. she sees the
proverb as very true); I think that what the student is indicating is that, as her country (Slovakia) has grown
wealthier over time, there is a shift in perception taking place over time that “great wealth and contentment
seldom live together”, so that the proverb was not seen to be true in the past (when her country was poor)
but is now seen to be more true (as people are beginning to realize that money is not all). In general, I
have the impression that there are some students who actually agree with proverbs although in the
questionnaire they claim not to. If my impression is correct, the results from the questionnaire
underestimate the extent to which students find the proverbs truthful.
17
evidence that students come to know themselves better as a result of the one –to-one
interviews (e.g. a student who claimed that, even though he was normally very confident
about his views, these had been successfully challenged in the interview, and felt
grateful for this). However, there is little evidence of conflict in the students’ psyche as to
whether money buys happiness or not (though of course this absence of evidence need
not necessarily imply that a conflict is absent in the students’ psyche). This is a possible
area of future research, another bridge linking the still up-to-now separate fields of
psychology and economics as part of the growing literature on behavioural economics.
Whilst individuation is of fundamental importance to both Mezirow and Boyd, the two
authors have vastly different understandings of the process by which individuation takes
place. For Mezirow, individuation is about acquiring a rational autonomous perspective;
for Boyd, on the other hand, it is a transformation that involves coming to terms with
latent aspects of one’s personality, and represents a movement from the personal,
where ego consciousness dominates, to the transpersonal, where “the ego is a servant
of the spirit” (Washburn (1988), quoted in Taylor (1998)). Like Mezirow, Boyd places
much value on crises in one’s life as a means of undergoing transformation, in particular
grieving over the loss of a loved one. Boyd sees the purpose of education as helping
students come to recognize their spirit “abiding within the person”, which “is a truth, a
knowledge, […] not separate from socio-economic, political, and other cultural
influences, but [which] transcends them” (Boyd and Myers (1988), in Taylor (1998))18.
Scott (1991, see Taylor (1998)) takes further Boyd’s concept of psychic development
and discusses spiritual descent beyond the Mezirow’s ego-centred stages of
development. “When one transcends his/her ego, collective needs, wants and desires
represent a stronger force . . .[and the discussion] group [in class] can serve to
represent symbolically alternative thoughts, structure, directions, and images for what is
appropriate in today’s society”. Instead of becoming more autonomous as envisaged by
Mezirow, the individual develops a more interdependent, compassionate relationship
with society19,20,21.The experiment with proverbs strongly suggests that proverbs help to
18
The adult educator is encouraged to practice two virtues, whose purpose is to arouse the spiritual energy
necessary for self-reflection in learning throughout life. The first virtue, known as seasoned guidance, is
that of an experienced mentor who reflects on their own journey with the intention of helping guide others.
The second virtue is that of making compassionate criticisms, i.e. “assisting students in questioning their
own reality, facilitating the process of discernment, which ultimately reveals the present and creates a path
for the future” (Boyd and Myers 1988). Again, there are sharp similarities with the humanistic approach
described below.
19
In a similar vein, Zohar and Marshall (2000) introduce the notion of spiritual intelligence, which they see
as a development of Jungian psychology made possible by advancements in neurology. Spiritual
intelligence solves problems of meaning (such as suffering) and value. It is necessary for rational
intelligence (IQ-related) and emotional intelligence to be in a constructive dialogue with each other. It
allows us to aspire to higher goals, to solve problems of right and wrong, to choose by what rules we play
our lives. In the same spirit as Scott(1991), Zohar and Marshall argue that “through a more cultivated use
of spiritual intelligence and through the personal honesty and courage that such cultivation requires, we
can reconnect with the deeper sources and meanings within ourselves, and we can […] serve causes […]
much greater than ourselves”.
20
To encourage the development of such compassion, I believe, is an important goal of education. In
addition, I agree with Dirkx (1997), when he states that coming to know ourselves in the world and how we
18
make this transition from ego-centred to other-centred thinking as they highlight how
money affects relationships between people; this attractive feature of proverbs was
explicitly identified by a student in the focus group.
5.2 Proverbs as an example of Roger’s holistic approach
Humanistic psychology began as a reaction against ‘scientific’ reductionism: rationalism
and people being treated as objects (see www.infed.org/biblio/learning-humanistic.htm).
Such a mentality is typical of mainstream economics, where, for example, entrepreneurs
are seen as rational agents (able to compare costs and benefits) who treat workers and
machines as mere substitutes in production, thus according them the same level of
dignity. In contrast, psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers sought an
approach to their discipline which embraced a wide range of on uniquely human issues,
such as the self, self-actualization, hope, love, creativity and meaning. Maslow
hypothesized that the human self goes through stages of development, with mental
health marked by progression through these stages. Subsequent criticism of Maslow’s
work focused on the fixed ranking of these stages.
Carl Rogers developed the implications of humanistic psychology for education,
especially in Freedom to Learn. On the basis of his experience as a psychotherapist,
which indicated to him that the client usually knows better to how to proceed than the
therapist, Rogers suggests that the teacher take a step back and allows the student
much initiative in carrying out his or her learning. Teachers are co-learners with the
students, and catalyse the students to become effective learners. He had a passion for
education which engaged with the whole person and which embraced his or her
experiences, combining both logical and intuitive learning, the intellect and one’s
feelings; ‘When we learn in that way’, he said, ‘we are whole, utilizing all our masculine
and feminine capacities’ (Smith (1999), who cites Rogers and Freiberg(1993)).The
approach embodies the following elements of experiential learning:
o The student feels that his whole person is involved in the learning process
o The student senses an urge to discover which comes from within, even if the
assignment is largely set by the teacher
o The student evaluates the learning experience and assesses to what extent it
meets her need for knowledge
Proverbs point to a number of aspects of human behaviour, and in particular economic
behaviour, which are either not covered at all in present mainstream education, or only to
a limited degree. In so far as proverbs treat the individual holistically as a person, i.e. as
make sense of the other within this world are critical aspects of learning, and that this requires a dialogue
between the mind and soul, the rational and the intuitive.
21
Such a transformation is consistent with the purpose of various religions. For a Christian account of how
contemplation can transform the subconscious with a view to attaining wholeness, see Keating (2002).
19
characterized by various dimensions (emotional, rational, etc.) and in constant
relationship with the people around him, using proverbs in the classroom is consistent
with Roger’s holistic approach. The aspects include:
o Affections (e.g. “When you have wealth and fame, even strangers gather round; in
times of poverty and lowliness, even relatives depart from you” - Japan)
o Virtues (e.g. “After a rich man gets rich, his next ambition is to get richer” - USA)
o Illusion (e.g. “you can buy a bed, but nor sleep” - China)
o Contentment (“Great wealth and contentment seldom live together” England/Europe)
o Death (“Wealth will not keep death away” - Wales)
o Priorities (e.g. “Wealth counts not so much as good will nor as knowledge and
pleasant speech” - Greece)
o Attitude toward money (e.g. “Wealth is not his who has it, but his who enjoys it” –
England/Europe)
o Survival (Much wealth brings many enemies- Africa/Swahili)
o Ephemeral nature of money (Wealth and happiness, like smoke, vanish Philippines)
o Justice (The rich man’s wealth swallows the morsel of the poor - Rumania)
o Power (e.g. “When money talks, people listen” – various countries)
Central to his approach are the notions of relationship and trust: “human beings become
increasingly trustworthy once they feel at a deep level that their subjective experience is
both respected and progressively understood” (Rogers (1992), in www.infed.org). The
educator should establish a direct personal encounter with the learner, meeting her on a
person-to-person basis. This enables both the educator and the students to be who they
truly are. The focus here is not so much on the individual, nor on the community of
individuals, but on the encounter between two individuals22.Educators should seek to
understand students empathically23, rather than judge them, they should try to
understand them from their point of view and to develop in themselves an awareness of
the way the process of education and learning appears to the student, in what is clearly a
student-centred approach. One cannot teach another person; one can only facilitate his
learning, so that differentiated perceptions of the same event emerge.
Discussing proverbs in class helps to build up this relationship of trust: students need to
feel comfortable about expressing their views about different proverbs, and the tutor has
to reassure students that their interpretations will not be discarded even they seem to be
22
Buber considered the spiritual dimension of encounter (or meeting) in depth (see
www.infed.org/thinkers/et-buber.htm). “All real living is meeting”, he said. It is in encounter “that the
creative, redemptive, and revelatory processes take place”. For Buber, the experience of genuine dialogue
can be so powerful that it offers a glimpse into the nature of God. Unfortunately most people, when they
meet, engage in a monologue disguised as dialogue, and so this powerful experience cannot take place.
Yet they “imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources”. Genuine
meeting involves a meeting of souls. It is not found so much by seeking, but by grace. For this, we need to
be led by conversation rather than us leading it.
23
For a discussion of the dangers of treating education as psycho-therapy, see Ecclestone and Haynes
(2008).
20
far from a proverb’s conventionally understood meaning. In open and frank discussion, a
real encounter is generated, in particular between the tutor and individual students, but
also between students, as Rogers’ humanistic approach recommends. This does not
necessarily imply that the discussion will consist of only subjective viewpoints: as
discussed in the section on transformative learning theory, a consensus is usually found
in the process of discussion, so that generalized statements of the kind which
economists are used to can be made.
As in the spiritual approach to transformative learning of Boyd, Dirkx and others, both
masculine and feminine capacities are called into action, in a way that which releases
the “incredible potential in every student” (Rogers, 1994). I rather suspect that the use of
proverbs involves drawing on both masculine and feminine capacities; in particular,
students need to rely on the their intuition develop as they struggle to make sense of
proverbs, an (arguably) feminine faculty which students do not really use in mainstream
economics educations, which involves instead the more “masculine” skills of analysing
diagrams and handling mathematical equations. Indeed I believe that proverbs act as a
bridge between the intuitive and the rational, allowing one to shift from one kind of
intelligence to another (on this, see Zohar and Marshall (2000)).
5.3 Proverbs and the internationalisation/cultural inclusivity literature
Jones and Brown (2007) for a discussion of the internationalisation process that is taking
place in the higher education system of many countries as a result of globalization.
According to Jones and Brown (2007), “HE [Higher Education] in many countries is
provided for students who come from an enormous range of cultural backgrounds [...].In
a world where global perspectives must be considered in all kinds of [cultural] contexts,
Higher Education can no longer be immune from changes and, instead, should be
leading it.” It seems to me that the use of proverbs from around the world in the
classroom represents an attempt in this direction. The same authors disapprove of
international students being seen by universities as “cash cows” and of being seen by
staff as in a state of deficit in relation to home students; instead, the authors suggest an
approach which “situates the international student at the heart of the university as a
source of cultural capital [...], enriching the learning experience both of home students
and for one another, [...] building a more powerful learning community and deepening the
HE experience as a whole”. De Vita (in Jones and Brown (2007)) sees cultural inclusivity
in the classroom as part of a set of educational goals which are not merely “instrumental
to the development of intercultural competencies dictated by changes in the
demographic and cultural composition of our societies and the new requirements of the
world of work; collectively, they form an agenda of social responsibility in fostering
greater understanding, tolerance and respect among all people.” A similar spirit
permeates my work on using proverbs from around the world.
Such cultural inclusivity needs to be explicitly encouraged: according to Lander (2003)
(in Jones and Brown (2007)), “Universities are deluding themselves if they believe that
the presence of international students on campus contributes to the internationalisation
21
of higher education”. De Vita (in Jones and Brown (2007) believes that “the onus
primarily rests on teaching practitioners to make their teaching and assessment
practices culturally inclusive”. By using proverbs in the classroom, I am putting into
practice the same principles that De Vita and Lander purport. As De Vita says, the
literature on cultural inclusivity is still in its infancy, making the use of proverbs part of this
underdeveloped but budding field of education.
Presenting proverbs from different parts of the world has the added advantage that it
makes education truly multicultural, in harmony with our times of globalization. More
importantly, this approach can help the students to feel included, by including in the
syllabus relevant material from their cultures. Thomas(2002) argues that, in a society
which values diversity, its higher education institutions must also value it and promote it,
in particular they should not demand that students deviate radically from their “habitus”,
meaning their cultural heritage and way of thinking. Students should be allowed to “be
themselves” so as to feel less like “a fish out of water”. The curriculum should be adapted
to so as to be inclusive, holistic and showing a respect for difference. Cultural diversity in
the curriculum can lead to a transformation of meaning perspectives, in so far as at
university a person may for the first time engage in deep multicultural comparisons.
Thomas (2002) reports a student saying “Coming here was the biggest shock of my life.
It was a great learning experience. It was like an awakening” 24.
Jones and Killick (in Jones and Brown (2007)) take “a broader definition of curriculum
than is usual in [literature] reviews and see it as encompassing all the experiences which
inform a student´s development (cognitive, attitudinal and affective) while undergoing
their Higher Education studies.” The same authors state that “learners need to be
challenged both cognitively and affectively if learning is to be transformative. This point is
quite relevant to mainstream economics education, which seeks to develop only
cognitive skills (essentially analytical skills). The interviews have confirmed my hope and
expectation that proverbs (about economics issues) do not challenge students just
cognitively, but emotionally too, probably because they relate to the students’ lives more
directly than does mainstream education, embracing diverse aspects of behaviour such
the affections, attitudes, virtue, priorities, etc. in a holistic fashion.
5.4 Resources for economics tutors
Tutors wishing to explore with the use of proverbs in the classroom can consult the list of
proverbs containing the word “wealth” in the Prentice-Hall Encyclopaedia of World
Proverbs, which I have included in the Appendix.
In addition, I have constructed, with the help of my assistant, a database of proverbs
from around the world, using a variety of sources, including books, journals and web
sites. There are altogether 221 proverbs listed and classified as follows: wealth (71),
money (59), labour (29), savings (18), risk (17), borrowing (11), happiness
24
There is here a link with the ‘economics of wonder’ project, in that diversity of views at university
produced in the student a sense of wonder.
22
(8),sustainability (4) and preferences (4). The database is available on the Economics
Network website:
http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/projects/mini/girardi_proverbs
Finally, the above website includes the questionnaire which I gave to students to assess
(a) how truthful they consider proverbs to be, (b) how positively wealth is treated in
different proverbs, and (c) if they underwent a change in values as a result of being
exposed to different proverbs.
6. Conclusion
The following is a summary of the results of the experiment by addressing each research
question as laid out in the introduction:
First, students found the proverbs used in the exercise on the whole truthful and
embodying wisdom. This is important for the exercise to have meaning for the students.
Second, students found proverbs to be on the whole negative about the effect of wealth
on one’s well-being, in contrast with what they are taught in economics classes. In
general students recognize that money has positive as well as negative effects; proverbs
make these effects clear and explicit. Proverbs covers economic behaviour not normally
covered in mainstream economics education, such as affections and attitudes. In my
view, if we educators are going to be responsible towards our economics students, we
should cover many more aspects of economic behaviour than we do at present, in
harmony with the holistic approach to education proposed by Rogers.
Third, there is some evidence of transformative learning as a result of being exposed to
the proverbs exercise, with 7 students moving away from the belief that money can buy
happiness, and 3 towards it. The experiment with proverbs can be given a formal
theoretical underpinning using transformative learning theory. Interestingly, when
proverbs clash, students do not reject any of them, but find ways to reconcile them or to
apply them to different situations, showing respect for the wisdom which, in their view,
proverbs reflect.
Finally, there is no evidence that students agree more with proverbs of their ethnicity
than with proverbs of other ethnicities. In addition I hope to have shown that proverbs
from around the world can be an effective tool with a view to attaining cultural inclusivity.
This is particularly true if students are able to offer proverbs from their own culture.
Clearly this has only been an exploratory experiment and one should be wary of
over-generalizing from a group of thirty students. Nonetheless I think that the experiment
has generated some new insights which may truly enrich the learning experience of
students (and of staff in general, some of whom I think will welcome the more holistic
approach I am proposing). A potentially fruitful area of future development is, as
suggested by a student in an interview, to prepare a few case studies to which proverbs
23
can be applied, example proverbs can “help students not follow money blindly before you
go for very long hours of work in your new job”, as remarked by a student. Once these
case studies have been prepared, they can be put to the students and refined to
maximize the relevance to the students’ lives.
If our aim as economics practitioners, and particularly as academic economists, is to
move towards a more ethical economy and economics, we need an economics
education which addresses the stark limitations of the current economics syllabus, and
proposes to our students a fresh, more holistic approach to economics in which wisdom
is sought rather than excluded a priori. Using proverbs in the economics classroom can
make a significant contribution in this direction.
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Appendix
List of all 51 proverbs containing the word “wealth” in the Prentice-Hall Encyclopaedia of
World Proverbs (first column shows the reference number of proverbs in the
Encyclopaedia):
17122
17123
17124
17125
17126
17127
17128
17129
17130
17131
17132
17133
17134
17135
17136
17137
17138
17139
17140
17141
17142
17143
17144
17145
17146
17147
17148
17149
17150
17151
17152
A man's wealth is his enemy (English/European)
Bear wealth; poverty will bear itself (English/European)
By labour comes wealth (African/Yoruba)
Great wealth and content seldom live together (English/European)
Great wealth, great care (Dutch)
Great wealth will marry off even an old woman (Yiddish)
He that marries for wealth sells his liberty (English/European)
If there is wealth, there is joy (Filipino)
Ill-begotten wealth and illicit pleasure are both bad (Indian/Tamil)
In wealth beware of woe (English/European)
Inherited wealth has no blessing (African/Swahili)
It will do no good to have wealth that you won't use (Malagasy)
Little avails wealth, where there is no health (English/European)
Much wealth brings many enemies (African/Swahili)
The best wealth is health (Welsh)
The greatest wealth is contentment with a little (English/European)
The rich man's wealth is enjoyed by crafty tradesmen (Greek)
The rich man's wealth swallows the morsel of the poor (Rumanian)
The unjustly acquired wealth never reaches the third generation
(Serbian/Croatian)
The wealth which enslaves the owner is not wealth (African/Swahili)
There is no wealth where there are no children (Africa/Jabo)
There is no wealth without pouring out one purse into another
(Serbian/Croatian)
Wealth and content are not always bedfellows (American)
Wealth and happiness, like smoke, vanish (Filipino)
Wealth can be concealed, but not poverty (Finnish)
Wealth can be sought, but reputation never (Filipino)
Wealth counts not so much as good will nor as knowledge and pleasant speech
(Greek)
Wealth is a fine thing, but to find an heir is not easy (African/Ashanti)
Wealth is best known by want (English/European)
Wealth is cautious (Greek)
Wealth is an enemy to health (English/European)
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17153
17154
17155
17156
17157
17158
17159
17160
17161
17162
17163
17164
17165
17166
17167
17168
17169
17170
17171
17172
Wealth is invited, but poverty invites itself (African/Shona)
Wealth is like a pool: as soon as you dig a channel, it all runs out (Rumanian)
Wealth is like a rheum, it falls on the weaker parts English/European)
Wealth is like smoke (African/Fulani)
Wealth is not his who has it, but his who enjoys it (English/European)
Wealth is not picked up like lice (African/Bemba)
Wealth is of no use to the dead (Filipino)
Wealth is short-lived (African/Jabo)
Wealth is the poison of pleasure and the root of sorrows (Indian/Hindi)
Wealth makes wit waver (English/European)
Wealth makes worship (English/European)
Wealth may be bequeathed to the children but it never reaches the
grandchildren (Greek)
Wealth will not keep death away (Welsh)
Wealth without learning is like beauty without chastity (Indian/Tamil)
When there is wealth, there is power (Indian/Tamil)
When you have wealth and fame, even strangers gather round; in times of
poverty and lowliness, even relatives depart from you (Japanese)
Where wealth is established it is difficult for friendship to find a place (Russian)
Where wealth is, there sorrow is (Indian, Hindi)
Where wealth, there friends (English/European?)
Who seeks for wealth without previous wealth is like him who carries water in a
sieve (Egyptian)
END OF DOCUMENT
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