Students of economics are in revolt again. This year, 65 groups of students from 30 countries established an International Stude

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问题     Students of economics are in revolt again. This year, 65 groups of students from 30 countries established an International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics. In no other subject do students express such organised dissatisfaction with their teaching. It seems, however, to little lasting effect. Impermanence is inherent in student life: they don suits, collect their first salary and leave their complaints behind until the same gripes are rediscovered by a new group of 19-year-olds with similar naive hopes of changing the world. Still, recurrent dissatisfaction among both students and employers suggests they have a point.
    One cause of the problem is not specific to economics. Modern universities prize research above teaching, to a degree that would astonish people outside the system, who imagine its primary purpose is to educate the young. In reality, teaching ability plays a negligible role in university hiring, tenure and promotion decisions. Many academic staff regard teaching as a nuisance that gets in the way of their "own" work. If most students were not having such a good time outside the classroom, they would be angrier than they are. They should be.
    Students demand for more pluralism in the economics curriculum is well made. Yet much of the "heterodox economics" the Manchester students suggest including is flaky, the creation of people with their own political agenda, whether Marxist or neoliberal; or of those who cannot do the mathematics the dominant rational choice paradigm requires. Their professors reject the introduction of these alternative schemes for the same good reasons their science colleagues would reject phlogiston theory or creationism.     Yet teachers are mistaken in their conformity, to a single methodological approach—encapsulated in the claim that has taken hold in the past four decades that approaches not based on rational choice foundations are unscientific or "not economics". The need is not so much to teach alternative paradigms of economics as to teach that pragmatism, not paradigm, is the key to economic understanding.
    This eclecticism is reflected in the curriculum proposals. The subject of economics is not a method of analysis but a set of problems—the problems that drew students to the subject in the first place. The proper scope of economics is any and all ideas that bear usefully on these topics: just as the proper scope of medicine is any and all therapies that help the patient.
According to the author, the key of understanding economics is______.

选项 A、paradigm
B、conformity
C、methodological approach
D、pragmatism

答案D

解析 根据题干关键词定位到第四段最后一句:The need is not so much to teach alter—native paradigms of economics as to teach that pragmatism,not paradigm,is the key to econom—ic understanding。此句意为“与其说需要向学生们教授其他的经济学范式,还不如说需要教会他们,理解经济学的关键在于实用主义而非范式”。故D项“实用主义”符合题意,为正确答案。A项“范式”,B项“墨守陈规”,C项“方法论”,均不符合题意,故排除。
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