A Textbook Case

Are French and German students being brainwashed to reject capitalism, despise the entrepreneurial spirit, and oppose globalization? Stefan Theil believes so ("Europe’s Philosophy of Failure," January/February 2008). He lashes out at the presumably ill-informed and misleading economics curriculum in Europe. He even holds the economics teachers in Europe responsible for the backward European economy.

Not only is his unwavering belief in the market remarkable but his confidence in the powers of teachers and textbooks is astonishing. As an author of a forthcoming economics textbook myself — An Introduction to the Economic Conversation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) — I can only dream about having such influence. Having taught economics for 30 years, I am especially impressed by the ability of students to forget what I taught them, or to twist my lessons toward whatever direction they want to take them. Nonetheless, I agree with Theil’s assertion that the way economists speak of the economy influences the way people perceive things.

There are at least two serious problems, however, with Theil’s argument. First, he cannot account for the European economy’s positive performance at the moment; in fact, it’s even outperforming the U.S. economy. Should the teaching of economics be held responsible? And though his citations from European textbooks are disturbing, his own take on economics is just as disturbing. It does not account for the role of governments or society. At least some economists are becoming increasingly aware of the role of culture, social formations, and values in countries’ economic performance. I agree wholeheartedly that the teaching of economics is flawed. But Theil’s solution — preaching the gospel of the market — is equally flawed.

–Arjo Klamer
Professor of the Economics of Art and Culture
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Rotterdam, The Netherlands

—-

Theil employs rhetorical tactics all too common among those pushing the orthodoxy of neoclassical economics. French and German students, he suggests, are receiving a dangerous, anticapitalist indoctrination. They are being force-fed a worryingly "skewed ideology," a set of outrageous political and economic ideas and attitudes that read like the "punch lines to cocktail party jokes." This biased economics curriculum, we are told, is not only threatening Europe’s long-term prosperity, but it is also contributing to some of the world’s greatest challenges, including anti-Americanism. Quelle horreur!

Theil proclaims that the preferred alternative is the "straightforward, classical economics" presented to high school students in the United States. An ever-so-lightly veiled implication here, of course, is that the economics curriculum taught in the United States is somehow less biased than those presented to students in Germany and France. Les sciences économiques françaises are treacherous, heretical, and fatally flawed; economics à la Yankee represents divine truth. But is the American economics curriculum really free of bias?

The straightforward economics teachings that Theil lauds actually rest on a series of highly problematic assumptions concerning human nature and social life. Among these assumptions are a notion of the individual as inherently atomistic, self-interested, and insatiable; a belief in the primacy of economic growth above all else; a conviction that the unfettered market is able to address all social ills; and a faith that ever higher levels of individual consumption offer the route to personal and societal well-being. This means that when students in the United States learn economics, they are also receiving instruction in a particular, and incomplete, set of ideas about what it means to be human. And they are receiving moral instruction (dare I say, indoctrination) about how to get ahead in a hypercapitalist society, and about why it’s proper to act in ways that reproduce that society. Despite what his rhetoric suggests, Theil isn’t arguing for the teaching of economic realities in Germany and France. Instead, he’s arguing for the teaching in those countries of a particular ideology — one that more closely aligns with now-sacred beliefs and entrenched interests of the United States.

Theil is quite right to suggest that what is taught to a nation’s youth has profound implications. His error, though, is in focusing his attention on Europe. His sharp lens and critical pen might have been better turned toward the economics curriculum in the good old U.S. of A.

–Simon Nicholson
Instructor and Doctoral Candidate
School of International Service
American University
Washington, D.C.

Theil argues that Europe’s economic problems can be traced to anticapitalist ideology in French and German high school economics curricula, which he contrasts unfavorably with pro-market, entrepreneurial American economics instruction. We disagree.

Consider Theil’s argument that European economies are being "left behind." Although the United States may score better on some counts, France and Germany outperform the United States in measures of life expectancy, work hours, infant mortality, and income distribution.

Meanwhile, American high school instruction is not unbiased, as Theil implies, but rather it leans uncritically toward the ideological right. As we describe in our book Introducing Economics: A Critical Guide for Teaching (M.E. Sharpe, 2007), the underfunding of American public education, in contrast to most European countries, has created a vacuum into which corporate-sponsored foundations have moved. Consider two organizations explicitly endorsed by Theil: Junior Achievement and the U.S. Federal Reserve. Junior Achievement’s financial backers include AT&T, FedEx, General Electric, and United Technologies, and its widely used textbook informs students that, for example, even the problem of air pollution is caused by "an absence of private ownership and markets." Similarly, branches of the U.S. Federal Reserve, nominally a government organization, have partnered with conservative economists and foundations to distribute materials to high school educators. Many are embarrassingly one-sided, with titles such as "Messing with the Market" and "Profits: The Consumer’s Best Friend."

Theil is correct on one point: "What a country teaches its young people reflects its bedrock national beliefs." Rather than teaching either pro- or antimarket viewpoints, however, the most important skill we could teach our young people is the ability to analyze controversial issues, taking into account arguments from both sides.

–Mark H. Maier
Professor of Economics
Glendale Community College
Glendale, Calif.

–Julie A. Nelson
Senior Research Associate
Global Development and Environment Institute
Tufts University
Medford, Mass.

Stefan Theil replies:

The three responses challenge my assertion that the French and German socioeconomic systems underperform, contend that American schools — and I — uncritically preach the gospel of the market, and question the impact of teachers and textbooks.

On the first point, France and Germany have consistently underperformed on measures of growth, employment, innovation, and the length and depth of downturns, for two decades. Even after recent improvements, unemployment remains significantly higher than in the United States. Their corporatist and anti-entrepreneurial structures, combined with their highly regulated labor markets, tend to shut out immigrants and other outsiders. Mark Maier and Julie Nelson also argue that French and Germans work fewer hours than Americans. But a good part of that statistic is the effect of lower labor participation rates, especially among women, immigrants, and the young.

Second, though I personally believe the track record of the market economy with modest redistribution is fairly clear, especially compared with the alternatives, my article makes no such claims. The subject of the article was the depth of antimarket bias and sometimes vicious prejudice in some French and German textbooks.

Do U.S. textbooks suffer from reverse prejudice, indoctrinating children in hypercapitalism, as Simon Nicholson asserts? Hardly. There exists nothing close to a pro-capitalist equivalent of French and German texts, which teach that economic growth causes cancer, that globalization regresses society back to the Middle Ages, and that entrepreneurs create chaos and unemployment. U.S. textbooks do not, for example, demonize civil servants or teach that government spreads lethal disease. In fact, the government often plays a clear and benign role in U.S. history textbooks, with positive coverage of social and economic policy during the Progressive, New Deal, and Great Society eras.

The question of the actual impact of textbooks is a valid and difficult one. Arguably, textbooks and curricula are indicative of a broader social and political consensus that gets passed down; otherwise, why should we care what they say at all? I completely agree with the respondents that balanced, unbiased teaching should be the goal. Teaching habitual distrust of markets makes life too easy for illiberal populists and contravenes European leaders’ stated intentions of creating more open, equitable, and opportunity-driven societies.