Political Theory

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

Coase — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 22:08:38 GMT

There are Advanced Placement tests in microeconomics and macroeconomics for high schoolers, so you could have a fairly rigorous economcs class at that level.

I just wonder if economics will get them to start asking questions. If there are gains to be realized from trade, what good are tariffs? Why not a real market in education? And so on. Of course any competent statist can easily answer these questions, but surely it would better than what we have now. If we are ever to abolish the public school system, people must first have an understanding of how a market in education would a superior alternative, which requires an understanding of economics. Most are unlikely to pursue economics independentely, so perhaps as long as public education exists it makes sense to force students to study economics.

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

swimmingpie — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:20:46 GMT

Walter Block once said that the government is actually a very important institution and that its only purpose should be to force everyone to read Man, Economy, and State.

But in all seriousness, most high school students are uninterested in economics. In order for economics to be in a high school curriculum, it has to be extremely simplified or the school risks leaving the vast majority of students behind. Last year, I took an economics/gov't class at my high school and it was pitiful. At least at my school, students learn more about economics in their history classes than they do in the actual economics class.

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

James — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:06:37 GMT

It wasn't a compulsory course, but there was this thing called 'business economics' at my high school.

It had absolutely nothing to do with economics as a science, and was simply an exercise in robotic wrote-learning of terms and concepts arbitrarily associated with 'business' as we know it. You basically learned what close-corporations were, how to file an income tax return, the basic aspects of various state intrusions into the free market, such as affirmative action...

To draw an unsophisticated analogy, it would be like giving slave children a course called "freedom", and using it to teach them about the benefits of forced labour and physical torture.

Since high-school, I've had a part-time job helping primary and secondary students do well at school, so I get to see all sorts of curriculum material I wouldn't otherwise. There is a subject referred to as "agricultural science", in which the very basics of supply and demand schedules are taught. On the one hand, this is what 1+1 is to mathematics. On the other, they also teach the infinite desirability of trade protectionism and quotas... Really, there's no winning with the public school system.

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

fakename — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 01:21:49 GMT

It'll be like, "whoa dude, this production function implies that there should be constant average cost! There must be somethin' mezzed up about this neoclassical shizzle."

I think the average student is given too much credit here, if they could easily see through mainstream econ. we would have long ago exorcised economic fallacies to the past.

Instead, I think that 1) most students are too bored to be bothered by the ramblings of economics 2) to the extent that they do pay attention to economics it can only obfuscate and confuse their sensibilities -or in most cases -confirm their most anti-capitalist biases.

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

Esuric — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:59:37 GMT

not a good idea; like you said, the state will merely water-down economics.

They can control the curriculum but they can't control the students and their intellectual curiosity. Students exposed to mainstream dogma may say to themselves, "wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense!" This is basically what happened to me when I chose economics as my major. Of course, the number of drones who drink the kool-aid will greatly outnumber those who realize the internal inconsistencies.

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

Coase — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:57:20 GMT

But is watered-down economics better or worse than the status quo of ignorance??

Re: Compulsory Economics Education

fakename — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:40:04 GMT

not a good idea; like you said, the state will merely water-down economics.

Compulsory Economics Education

Coase — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:26:42 GMT

I'd like to abolish the public school system, and I imagine most of you do as well, but as long as we have it, what do you all think about compulsory economics education? There's a pretty simple economic argument you can make in favorite of it: knowledge of economics produces positive externalities in the form of wiser voters but few internal benefits. Therefore it is being underproduced and should be subsidized.

I find this idea appealing because it seems to me that the extended anonymous order of exchange that our freedom and prosperity depends upon runs counter to our natural instincts (Bryan Caplan's anti-market bias) and so if people are going to ever understand freedom as an expedient they'll need to understand economics. As long as we have state provided education, they may as well provide economics education.

There's an obvious problem with this, of course, namely that if the state is in charge of economics education it will teach economics in a manner that promotes statism. And yet wouldn't even that be better than the current level of mass ignorance? Furthermore, perhaps this could be remedied to some degree by simply mandating that everyone needs to take x number of classes about economics and giving people vouchers to go to economics classes that need not be run by the government. Or perhaps you could simply mandate a required minimum of economics classes for everyone and trust a market for economics education to spring up.

Trust me, I see how this would be far from ideal and runs counter to the principles most of you hold, but I'm considering this as an expedient. What do y'all think?