At the Freakonomics blog, economist Justin Wolfers criticizes a recent Texas Board of Education effort to include the work of F.A. Hayek in high school economics classes. He sees it as a “conservative” ideological mandate that isn’t justified by Hayek’s scholarly influence:
Sunday’s New York Times reported on attempts by the Texas Board of Education to rewrite the high school curriculum in accordance with its conservative values….. I find the raw ideological force exerted by these “educators” to be both striking and dispiriting.
How do they plan to rewrite high school economics?
In economics, the revisions add Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market economic theory, to the usual list of economists to be studied – economists like Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.
Taking social science seriously surely means teaching the insights of the most prominent, most important, or most influential economists. This involves teaching important theories—even those you disagree with. There’s no doubt about the influence of Smith, Marx and Keynes; Friedman also belongs. But does Hayek belong on this list?
Let’s use data to inform this debate. I counted the number of references to each economist in the scholarly literature indexed by JSTOR, finding 30,708 articles mentioning “Adam Smith”; 25,626 articles mentioning “Karl Marx”; and 4,945 mentioning “John Maynard Keynes” (the middle name was required to avoid articles by his father, John Neville Keynes). “Milton Friedman” sits easily with this group, and was mentioned in 8,924 articles.
But searching for “Friedrich von Hayek” only yielded 398 articles; adding “Friedrich Hayek” raised his total to 1242 mentions; also allowing “FH Hayek” raised his count to 1561….
By the way, “Lawrence Summers” was mentioned 1712 times, adding “Larry Summers” raises his score to 1972 mentions; and also including “LH Summers” raises his score to 2064….
This exercise suggests that Larry Summers is more influential than Hayek, and so I’m led to conclude that teaching “insights from Larry Summers” involves less of an ideological subsidy than teaching “insights from Hayek….”
The message from the Texas Board of Education seems to be: If you can’t win in the marketplace of ideas, turn to government institutions to prop you up. I don’t think Hayek would approve.
Wolfers’ argument has already gotten some strong criticism from the University of Chicago law professor Todd Henderson, economist William Easterly, and my colleague Josh Wright. As Henderson points out, much of Hayek’s influence was in scholarly fields that are not well-represented in the J-STORS database. He notes that Hayek ranks very high in citations by legal scholars (J-Stors includes very few law journals).
Josh and Easterly correctly emphasize that Hayek’s work focuses on broad issues that are of special important to students in an intro course. He wrote about the fundamental tradeoff between the market and government planning, and about the ways in which markets outperform government in conveying and using information. His classic article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” is arguably the most important on this fundamental question, and is readily accessible to nonexperts. By contrast, Summers’ work is mostly on more narrow technical issues. These matters are of great importance to experts, but less likely to be essential reading for high school students. Ironically, Summers himself (quoted by Easterly) has made the same point:
What’s the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today? What I tried to leave my students with is the view that the invisible hand is more powerful than the [un]hidden hand. Things will happen in well-organized efforts without direction, controls, plans. That’s the consensus among economists. That’s the Hayek legacy.
I myself summarized Hayek’s relevance to current debates here. Some of his arguments are badly flawed or outdated. But his central insights are almost as important today as they were when he developed them decades ago.
I think Wolfers also underestimates Hayek’s prominence even in the J-STOR data. Counting Hayek’s cites is difficult because of the many different variations on his name. Wolfers captures some of these ( “Friedrich von Hayek,” “Friedriech Hayek,” and “F.H. Hayek”), but not all. At various times, Hayek also was referred to as “F.A. Hayek” (574 cites), “F.A. von Hayek” (68), “Friedrich A. Hayek” (648), and possibly other variants that don’t occur to me. Including just these three variations adds another 1290 cites to Hayek’s count, pushing him to a total of 2851, well ahead of Summers, though still far behind Keynes and Friedman. Part of the problem arises from the fact that Hayek eventually dropped the aristrocratic “von” from his name because he thought it was incompatible with his egalitarian political views.
Just running “Hayek” through the search engine yields a total of 12,136 cites. A few of these are cites to other people named “Hayek,” but not many. I checked the first several hundred cites that came up and all but one or two were to Friedrich Hayek. The situation with Friedman and Summers is very different, since both names are far more common than Hayek, especially in the English-speaking world; Summers and Friedman also were not referred to by as many different variations on their names as Hayek. If you conservatively give Hayek credit for half or two thirds of the 12,000 “Hayek” citations, he is definitely in the same ballpark as Friedman and Keynes, though still trailing Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
Hayek’s citation count is all the more impressive when we remember that academics are overwhelmingly left of center (including economists), and people naturally tend to pay more attention to ideas they agree with.
Finally, it’s worth noting that, contrary to Wolfers’ assumptions (and possibly those of the Texas Board), the man who wrote an essay entitled “Why I am not a Conservative” was, ahem, not a conservative.
Like Hayek, I am opposed to the control of education by government boards. I think that schooling should be left to the private sector, with perhaps some government subsidization of education for the poor through vouchers. But so long as we do have public schools and government-mandated curricula, it is better that they include Hayek’s work than leave it out – just as it is also good for them to include major left-wing thinkers like Marx and Keynes. Reading Hayek might even lead some Texas students to question whether the state should have control over what they learn.
UPDATE: It turns out that political scientist Jacob Levy has performed some of the same calculations as I did, and got similar results.
UPDATE #2: I have now included a link to the full text of Daniel Klein and Charlotta Stern’s paper on the political views of economists. Among other things, it shows that some 58% of economists identify as Democrats, compared to 23% Republican. It also shows that the average economist is very far from being a consistent free market supporter. The combination of these two findings strongly suggests that the economists really are overwhelmingly left of center, though probably not as much so as scholars in many other disciplines.
ruuffles says:
Why only “some govt subsidization”? Why not have vouchers for the actual cost of education? Who is going to pay the rest? If you’re going to give each student X dollars to spend on private schools, you should make X close to Y, somewhere around the 75 percentile of the cost of private schools.
March 17, 2010, 1:45 pmDilan Esper says:
Nothing wrong with including Hayek in HS economics, based on the same reasoning that includes Lamarck in biology classes and Ptolemy in astronomy classes.
March 17, 2010, 1:46 pmkiwi dave says:
It would be more ironic if von Mises was assigned to public school students, given how deeply opposed Ludwig was to public schooling (he argued in Liberalism that mandatory public schooling was a major root cause of war and interethnic strife).
March 17, 2010, 1:54 pmRPT says:
Thomas Jefferson out; Friedrich Hayek in, along with famous historian Newt Gingrich, think tank, Heritage Foundation, and the uncategorizable Phyllis Schafly. Perhaps we can discuss these changes in context.
March 17, 2010, 1:56 pmkiwi dave says:
RPT:
I don’t get that at all. Hayek has way more in common with Jefferson than he does with Schlafly. I don’t think Friederich, were he alive today, would be a huge fan of the religious Right/SoCon wing of the Republican Party.
March 17, 2010, 1:58 pmKevinM says:
TX board of ed is surpassingly stupid on this, but the methodology of the Freakonomics article (counting JSTOR cites) isn’t much of an improvement.
March 17, 2010, 2:00 pmThe title of the article was kinda funny, though: “Hayek Propped Up by Government Intervention”
Valentino Rossi says:
In too many IL school districts the curriculum is is based on teaching to test for the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, and if Hayek (or anyone or anything else) isn’t a part of ISAT, then it will not be covered in the curriculum by the classroom teacher. Should Hayek be covered in public schools? Of course.
March 17, 2010, 2:04 pmarbitrary aardvark says:
There’s another name missing, Darwin. Smith is important because he explains how the economy is self-ordering through an invisible hand. Darwin read Smith and applied his ideas to nature. Hayek showed how both are part of a larger tendency of spontaneously arising order. Keynes is mostly historical interest, none of us are Keynesians anymore.
March 17, 2010, 2:10 pmWhen I took econ in high school, Keynes was taught as gospel,and I thought I was stupid because I couldn’t understand how government interference could improve the economy, as we were being taught.
yankee says:
But how is the influence of Hayek among legal scholars an argument for including Hayek in an economics course?
Really, there’s no point in pretending that this has anything to do with Hayek’s quality as an economist. The Texas Board of Education wants to use the curriculum to promote political views it finds ideologically congenial, and liberals, who oppose those views, want to keep them out.
March 17, 2010, 2:11 pmys says:
You forgot to include Marx in your list of curiosities.
March 17, 2010, 2:14 pmyankee says:
I presume Marx is included due to his historical influence rather than because his theories are taken seriously by economists today. Lamarck and Ptolemy might be worth teaching as examples of what people once believed, but we now know to be wrong. I think Lamarck was actually included in my HS Biology class for exactly that reason.
March 17, 2010, 2:20 pmPine_Tree says:
Slightly OT, but this seems the best opportunity to ask:
Can anybody recommend a good Austrian book for young (~3rd grade, or higher if necessary) children?
I’m a homeschooling dad, and while our library has some unabridged Smith, Friedman and Hayek, that’s a bit heavy for little ones. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.
March 17, 2010, 2:24 pmDjDiverDan says:
As a Texan, I am often embarrased by the moves of the so-called “Conservatives” [in this context, read "Conservative" to mean "Religious Right"] on the Texas Board of Education, especially the ongoing fight to either not teach evolution at all, or to teach it side-by-side with the religious mythology of “intelligent design” [which really fails on all levels as a "science" since it is inherently untestable and cannot be confirmed or rebutted by observation]. Having learned that these same folks are now adding two of my heroes, Milton Friedman and F. Hayek, to the curriculum at last gives me something about Texas public education to be proud of. Now if the Local School Board would only figure out that it is unnecessary and wasteful to spend 40% of its total capital budget on athletic facilities – it is really true, High School Football in Texas is close to a religion, and in the eyes of many School Boards, the single highest budget priority, and the gold standard for judging a school’s achievement (“Who cares if only 60% of the Students passed the TAKS tests, our Football Team went to State last year!”).
March 17, 2010, 2:28 pmfrankcross says:
The paper you cite about economists being left of center on economic issues does not support that conclusion. It establishes that a majority of economists are not total libertarians but the questions do nothing to show they are left of center on these matters.
March 17, 2010, 2:31 pmDjDiverDan says:
For those who view Ptolemy as an historical oddity, his view of the Universe might have been dead wrong, but his measured estimate of the Earth’s Circumference was a lot closer to the actual number than later estimates until well after Columbus. If Columbus had known (and trusted) Ptolemy’s estimate, he would have known when he reached Hispaniola that he was still a long, long way from China or the East Indies.
March 17, 2010, 2:33 pmDesiderius says:
“Lamarck and Ptolemy might be worth teaching as examples of what people once believed, but we now know to be wrong. I think Lamarck was actually included in my HS Biology class for exactly that reason.”
Um, Dilan is trying to imply that Hayek is akin to Larmarck and Ptolemy in disreputability/quackitude.
Sorry, such ignorance is too much for me to stomach. Find somebody else to spar with this time.
March 17, 2010, 2:34 pmvonneumann says:
My fourth grader has been assigned four essays so far this year. They were on MLK, Michael Jordan, Dr. Charles Drew and his mother. He knows who Eleanor Roosevelt was, but not FDR. He identifies Albert Einstein as “a famous immigrant”. He knows who Rosa Parks was, but not Abe Lincoln.
Hurray for somebody teaching Hayek. At this point, even teaching who Salma Hayek is would be an improvement.
March 17, 2010, 2:43 pmDilan Esper says:
Um, Dilan is trying to imply that Hayek is akin to Larmarck and Ptolemy in disreputability/quackitude.
You won’t find any greater number of mainstream economists endorsing Austrian economics than you will find creationists in biology faculties, Desid. This isn’t a matter of ignorance, it’s simply a fact that Hayek’s ideas are nowadays endorsed by ideologues and not by scientists.
March 17, 2010, 2:49 pmfrankcross says:
Hayek is a hero of mine. But not for his economics. His insight was broader than that, I guess you could call it political science.
March 17, 2010, 2:55 pmG. May says:
Re: vonneumann
I’m not really sure what historical figures my fourth grader has been taught as my hands are full with teaching him how to properly multiply and divide instead of using whatever the hell it is they’ve got him so screwed up with now.
I don’t even want to go in there and ask him about the people you mentioned.
March 17, 2010, 2:58 pmIlya Somin says:
Nothing wrong with including Hayek in HS economics, based on the same reasoning that includes Lamarck in biology classes and Ptolemy in astronomy classes.
As Summers points out, much of modern economics is based on Hayek’s insights. You can’t say the same thing about Lamarck’s or Ptolemy’s continuing relevance.
March 17, 2010, 3:09 pmIlya Somin says:
Thomas Jefferson out; Friedrich Hayek in, along with famous historian Newt Gingrich, think tank, Heritage Foundation, and the uncategorizable Phyllis Schafly.
I think there’s a pretty obvious difference between Hayek and Gingrich or Schlafly. Hayek was a Nobel-Prize winning scholar. Gingrich and Schlafly pretty obviously are not. To say that they’re alike is like saying that Keynes is equivalent to Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore just because they’re all in some sense on the left.
March 17, 2010, 3:11 pmKazinski says:
My own research found “about 4,990,000″ links “for Salma Hayek”. Including several images my company’s internet filter wouldn’t let me “research”. Who says Hayek isn’t still relevant?
March 17, 2010, 3:12 pmbyomtov says:
AA,
Keynes is mostly historical interest, none of us are Keynesians anymore.
When I took econ in high school, Keynes was taught as gospel,and I thought I was stupid because I couldn’t understand how government interference could improve the economy, as we were being taught.
Actually, many of “us” are.
March 17, 2010, 3:16 pmDilan Esper says:
As Summers points out, much of modern economics is based on Hayek’s insights. You can’t say the same thing about Lamarck’s or Ptolemy’s continuing relevance.
Sure you can. Darwin built on Lamarck and Copernicus and Kepler built on Ptolemy.
The problem is, in all three cases, the predecessor’s fundamental theories turned out to be bunk which were rejected by the mainstream of their sciences. Austrian economics is historically important and interesting– it is also useless as a description of how macroeconomics works and pernicious in its policy prescriptions.
March 17, 2010, 3:21 pmbyomtov says:
I’ve read the Klein/Stern paper on a different site, and it really is as frankcross describes it:
The paper you cite about economists being left of center on economic issues does not support that conclusion. It establishes that a majority of economists are not total libertarians but the questions do nothing to show they are left of center on these matters.
March 17, 2010, 3:22 pmIlya Somin says:
The paper you cite about economists being left of center on economic issues does not support that conclusion. It establishes that a majority of economists are not total libertarians but the questions do nothing to show they are left of center on these matters.
Actually, it shows that a substantial majority of them are Democrats, which is highly correlated with being left of center. It also shows that most of them are not consistent free market supporters, which is relevant to the question of whether they are likely to be sympathetic to Hayek’s views.
March 17, 2010, 3:24 pmBruce Hayden says:
My view is that if you have Keynes, and maybe Marx in, you need Hayek as balance. Of course, I would also throw in Friedman. But given the choice between the two, I would pick Hayek. A lot of what Hayek said is relevant, esp. in contrast to both of Keynes and Marx.
And, arguably, we are again seeing how Keynesian economics is a failure. Almost a trillion dollars in stimulus money (mis)spent to guarantee that unemployment didn’t exceed 8%.
March 17, 2010, 3:31 pmvonneumann says:
G. May:
My son has some talent in math, but no interest or aptitude in anything that requires reading. Thus I tend to focus on that. If you can avoid it, I suggest you do. While knowing the rituals of the Lanape native Americans may be fascinating to some, I would prefer to save that for him after he actually understands something about our world.
March 17, 2010, 3:31 pmBruce Hayden says:
Which is, frankly, scary.
March 17, 2010, 3:33 pmorca says:
Please list for us the Republicans who are in favor of less government spending.
March 17, 2010, 3:33 pmvonneumann says:
BTW, I think they should include Richardo, Bastiat, and Henry George.
March 17, 2010, 3:33 pmtheobromophile says:
Funny – yesterday, when reading Thomas Sowell’s book about intellectualism, he mentioned Hayek as someone whose ideas influence many people who don’t even know about them.
Um, Dilan? If a scientist wanted to endorse Hayek, that’s cool and all, but I’m still failing to see the connection between DNA or thermodynamics and economics.
I mean, I spent years in the sciences, got my degree, and the only economics I ever had to do was knowing how much money the government had given us to make military toys. Not sure where Hayek – or any other economist – comes in there.
March 17, 2010, 3:33 pmSarcastro says:
[The Austrian school always struck me as pretty extreme, both in it's predictions and in it's prescriptions. But so is Marx. And there are more disciples of Hayek around these days than of (unadulterated) Marx.
So yeah, I've got nothing against putting in Hayek in principle.
I do worry a bit about the specific presentation of economics in these textbooks, based upon what I've heard about the rest of the changes Texas has made.]
March 17, 2010, 3:41 pmbyomtov says:
Ilya,
It also shows that most of them are not consistent free market supporters, which is relevant to the question of whether they are likely to be sympathetic to Hayek’s views.
The paper identifies such positions as favoring pollution regulation, anti-discrimination laws, and the use of monetary policy to influence the economy as “anti-free market.”
OK, but let’s not hear any more complaints when I say (as I did in Kenneth Anderson’s thread on Telos) that libertarians are driven by theories without much regard for the complexity of the real world.
The paper can be found for free here. To get an idea of the survey questions, which are not listed in the paper, look at the tables on pages 317, 318, and 320.
March 17, 2010, 3:41 pmfda says:
Pine Tree,
Try Jonathan the Gullible, more Bastiat than Hayek, but a fun read. Also, but not as good, An Island Called Liberty. Finally, all of Heinlein juvenalia is a great way to get young children to think about liberty (and space exploration!).
March 17, 2010, 3:58 pmRPT says:
In looking back at my post, I see that I left out the necessary prelude that this is the result of recent actions by the Texas Board of Education. I apologize. I noted this in Prof. Post’s post re his Jefferson’s Moose talk, but not here. Since I don’t know Hayek’s work I can’t comment about him.
However, it is probably not helpful for those who commend his work to have him included with PS, HF and NG as the sort of “electoral spoils” of history rewritten by anti-intellectual dentists and worse, just because they can.
March 17, 2010, 3:59 pmPLR says:
Of course the free market lies somewhere between a construct and a myth, but I digress…
March 17, 2010, 4:01 pmRPT says:
All of them, until they take power. Then, not so much.
March 17, 2010, 4:01 pmDesiderius says:
“This isn’t a matter of ignorance, it’s simply a fact that Hayek’s ideas are nowadays endorsed by ideologues and not by scientists.”
Oh bullshit. Soros named his own organization after Popper’s Open Society. If any of Soros’s legions of followers ever read any Popper they would see there ideas very consistent with Hayek’s insights.
Just because you can’t be bothered to research the ideas behind your own movement, don’t kid yourself that others are so lazy or vindictive. There is more to life than petty pissing contests.
March 17, 2010, 4:05 pmbyomtov says:
Bruce hayden,
No doubt. After all, it’s only leftist economists like Greg Mankiw
or
Martin Feldstein
who give Keynes even the slightest credence.
March 17, 2010, 4:06 pmDjDiverDan says:
Well, there’s Jeb Hensarling, Rick Perry, and a whole bunch of Republicans that don’t hold public office (unfortunately).
March 17, 2010, 4:13 pmfrankcross says:
Ilya, the majority are Democrats but that doesn’t necessarily speak to their position on economic issues. On the economic issues, they asked questions like do you favor public education. If you said yes, they counted you as anti-free market. Now, I don’t think that is accurate, but even if it were, it would not be evidence of being left of center.
March 17, 2010, 4:16 pmruuffles says:
Lovely. Out of ~250 Republicans in Congress and Governorships, you can name two.
March 17, 2010, 4:18 pmFub says:
Except that Lamarck was just flat wrong and Ptolemy was largely correct except for his choice of coordinate system and his assumption (prevalent in his time) of perfectly circular motion. Transforming coordinates is a straightforward mathematical operation.
To use an analogy, Ptolemy’s celestial model error is more akin to Bohr’s atomic model error. Lamarck’s biological model error is more akin to Hahnemann’s homeopathic theories.
One could navigate reasonably but imperfectly on the Earth’s surface using Ptolemy’s model. One could not breed better potatoes or cows using Lamarck’s model.
March 17, 2010, 4:21 pmTravis Ormsby says:
I’m curious as to how many of you have actually ever tried to teach economics a classroom full of high school students. Here’s a link to the IB syllabus that I use. The syllabus is focused almost entirely on areas of broad economic consensus, and it’s still too long for students to effectively learn (even after leaving out banking systems, yikes!). While a lot of this consensus is consistent with Hayek’s analysis, I’m not sure why I should go out of my way to talk about the man himself or discourse on any ideas of his that aren’t consistent with that consensus.
March 17, 2010, 4:23 pmorca says:
My theory is Republicans these days are just self-loathing socialists.
Did Texas actually refuse to accept its stimulus money, or did it just emit the usual phony conservative noises as it stuck its snout into the government trough?
March 17, 2010, 4:24 pmIlya Somin says:
Ilya, the majority are Democrats but that doesn’t necessarily speak to their position on economic issues. On the economic issues, they asked questions like do you favor public education. If you said yes, they counted you as anti-free market. Now, I don’t think that is accurate, but even if it were, it would not be evidence of being left of center.
Actually, being a Democrat is at least highly ocrrelated with left of center positions on economic issues (and was in Klein and Stern’s results too). As for their specific questions, they asked not only whether you support X or Y, but also the degree of your support or opposition. They counted a respondent as “pro free market” if he even “moderately” supported the pro-market side on the issue in question.
March 17, 2010, 4:27 pmbyomtov says:
Ilya,
It also shows that the average economist is very far from being a consistent free market supporter. The combination of these two findings strongly suggests that the economists really are overwhelmingly left of center,
Are you seriously claiming that supporting regulation of pollution makes one “left of center?” Indeed, does it even really mean one doesn’t “support” free markets?
There is hardly a better-known problem with markets than externalities, of which pollution is the canonical example.
Lots of other issues in the paper are silly as as well. Monetary policy? Foreign aid? Is it “overwhelmingly left-of-center” to favor pharmaceutical regulation?
March 17, 2010, 4:27 pmDilan Esper says:
Um, Dilan? If a scientist wanted to endorse Hayek, that’s cool and all, but I’m still failing to see the connection between DNA or thermodynamics and economics. I mean, I spent years in the sciences, got my degree, and the only economics I ever had to do was knowing how much money the government had given us to make military toys. Not sure where Hayek — or any other economist — comes in there.
Theo, economics is a behavioral science, and uses the observation-hypothesis-testing model and peer review just like other sciences do. And in THOSE quarters (as opposed to among ideological political conservatives and libertarians who would like to latch onto some theory that “proves” liberals wrong), Austrian economics has been pretty well debunked.
March 17, 2010, 4:28 pmMark Field says:
This blog post might be interesting in terms of this discussion, though it’s hard to tell how much his comments apply to Hayek specifically.
March 17, 2010, 4:32 pmsteve says:
If all of those people are left of center, maybe the center is not where you think it is.
Steve
March 17, 2010, 4:32 pmPine_Tree says:
Thanks.
March 17, 2010, 4:37 pmdearieme says:
If an Economics course is to include the history of economic ideas, it would have to include Marx, Keynes and Hayek, surely. If it is to contain some economic history, you’d surely expect Friedman to crop up, with his account of the cause of the Great Depression – to be compared with at least one other explanation, I’d hope. But given the nearly complete failure of macroeconomists to predict our present predicament, I don’t see why you’d teach macroeconomics – it now seems all too much like astrology. There’s always a case for teaching Smith and Ricardo; the question is whether there’s a case for teaching anyone else much.
March 17, 2010, 4:51 pmRPT says:
JH and RP are all talk no action on this issue. They will never turn down federal dollars. Assuming public office has an immediate effect on the action, despite the continuing talk. See 2001-2008.
March 17, 2010, 5:18 pmlatinist says:
I think this raises what I’ve long thought of as a problem in demands for the inclusion of conservative (or liberal, for that matter) thinkers in various kinds of courses, or more generally for a sort of “neutral,” universally accepted set of “important names.” I really don’t think it works, in the end, to try and argue about whether someone’s ideas are important while leaving aside the question of whether those ideas are in any way right. To take JSTOR citation rankings (even if these were reliable as far as they go) as a measure of whether someone should be taught is to define “important” as “widely thought to be important, by important people.” Which, of course, leads in circles. You can always say “Sure, there are people who still use [Hayek/Keynes/whoever]; but those people are ignored by the important economists.” And then someone says, “Well what about X? He’s a devoted follower of H/K/w, and he’s an important economist,” and you respond “No he’s not, only unimportant people like you think he’s important.” There’s no end to it.
March 17, 2010, 5:41 pmalkali says:
Personally, I’m going to lobby the Mass. Board of Ed. to require Foucault.
March 17, 2010, 5:47 pmCJColucci says:
major left-wing thinkers like Marx and Keynes.
Huh?
This kind of thing makes me doubt whether we should teach any “names” in K-12 economics at all. In theory, there is value in a “liberal artsy” acquaintance with the big names, just as in physics we talk about Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. But what’s on the test isn’t facts or theories about Newton, but physics itself, f=ma and the like. If someone is going to classify Keynes and Marx indiscriminately as “left-wing thinkers,” then maybe we should leave all the names out and just teach economics itself, intersecting supply and demand curves and what-have-you.
March 17, 2010, 5:57 pmShelbyC says:
Unfortunately, that’s probably true. Equally unfortunately, many Democrats are just non-self-loathing socialists.
March 17, 2010, 5:59 pmDilan Esper says:
To take JSTOR citation rankings (even if these were reliable as far as they go) as a measure of whether someone should be taught is to define “important” as “widely thought to be important, by important people.” Which, of course, leads in circles. You can always say “Sure, there are people who still use [Hayek/Keynes/whoever]; but those people are ignored by the important economists.” And then someone says, “Well what about X? He’s a devoted follower of H/K/w, and he’s an important economist,” and you respond “No he’s not, only unimportant people like you think he’s important.” There’s no end to it.
The problem is that the alternative is to allow hacks, ideologues, cranks, and extremists to claim the mantle of science.
Like it or not, every science has to have a “mainstream” of ideas that are generally accepted, and exclusive of ideas that are considered to have been established as incorrect. That doesn’t always make the “mainstream” right, but that’s not as big a problem as letting people into the tent that shouldn’t be there, as the scientific method and continued observation helps correct the mainstream over time. Letting people into the tent who shouldn’t be there, over time, leads on a path away from the truth, whereas continued observation and hypothesis leads on a path towards it.
March 17, 2010, 6:14 pmyankee says:
Very funny.
March 17, 2010, 6:16 pmFub says:
Many high schools already do include Foucault in their science curriculum. But Léon, not Michel.
March 17, 2010, 6:19 pmq says:
Austrianism is pretty hackish, but Hayek is mostly known for two things: 1) arguing that social planners are generally inferior to markets in resource allocation, 2) arguing that social planning leads to totalitarianism. The first one is true, the second one is perhaps only true in extreme cases, as the European welfare states are in no danger of abolishing their many freedoms. So despite Hayek’s economic views, including him in a general course on economics is not at all comparable to including a creationist’s view in a Biology course.
After all, Adam Smith, Karl Marx and to some extent Keynes all held economic views that are now recognized as clearly wrong. But some of their insights are important.
March 17, 2010, 6:34 pmlatinist says:
Dilan Esper: I’m certainly not saying “let absolutely anyone into the curriculum.” But I’m not sure that the question of who’s in and who’s out should be argued in terms of mainstream-vs.-fringe rather than right-vs.-wrong.[1] Or that we really can, or should try to, keep those two oppositions separate. That is, I tend to think that, rather than saying “well, whether or not you agree with Hayek, he’s important to mainstream economic thought,” his defenders should be arguing more along the lines of “look, you should at least agree with his points X,Y, and Z, even if you disagree with some of the others, and if you don’t, here’s some evidence to convince you.” (Likewise with Keynes, Marx, etc.) If “importance” comes in, it should be pretty strictly in the form, “Well, maybe Hayek was wrong about W; but that idea led Friedman to come up with W’, which is right.” I think this kind of argument is often implied, but sometimes people try to avoid the question of rightness entirely, and I don’t think that can or should be done.
[1] N.B., this is about how it should be argued. How it should be announced is obvious: by Heidi Klum at the end of each episode.
March 17, 2010, 6:59 pmElliot says:
Considering a HS econ course is probably all the economics most folks will get, what would an intellectual dentist do? Or perhaps an intellectual lawyer?
March 17, 2010, 7:11 pmuberVU - social comments says:
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by xtapol: does hayek belong in high school economics classes? http://is.gd/aMs17 #tcot #tlot // ABSOLUTELY…
March 17, 2010, 7:55 pmDesiderius says:
latinist,
“I think this kind of argument is often implied, but sometimes people try to avoid the question of rightness entirely, and I don’t think that can or should be done.”
Thanks for saying what I was thinking, more clearly and graciously than I managed.
Too many have mastered the form of intellectual endeavor, while forgetting the function.
March 17, 2010, 8:17 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » IN A WORD, YES: Does Hayek belong in High School Economics Classes? To hold up the inclusion of Ha… says:
[...] A WORD, YES: Does Hayek belong in High School Economics Classes? To hold up the inclusion of Hayek as evidence of excessive conservative bias is self-refuting. I [...]
March 17, 2010, 8:25 pmDesiderius says:
MarkField,
“This blog post might be interesting in terms of this discussion, though it’s hard to tell how much his comments apply to Hayek specifically.”
A. He’s probably got a point – missing the trees for the forest is a danger in any gathering of academics.
B. For better or for worse, we can’t get to the heart of the present crisis without considering epistemology (i.e. issues of knowledge). To do so is not silly. Would that it were. We don’t know as much as we’d like.
alkali,
“Personally, I’m going to lobby the Mass. Board of Ed. to require Foucault.”
It’s a free country. Do it.
Look, teaching consensus only and omitting any controversy is a guaranteed way to get one’s students to do the minimum necessary to punch their diploma ticket and forget everything they’ve learned by the next week. They know that there are people arguing about these things. Pretending otherwise costs the credibility of subject, teacher, and, ultimately, education itself.
March 17, 2010, 8:35 pmhedger says:
Please, keep Hayek out of the public’s base of knowledge. Applying his theories to investing is making me rich and I don’t want anyone else to know. Shhhhh. . .
March 17, 2010, 8:39 pmic says:
I believe Scrooge McDuck was mentioned more than all of them combined.
They actually included Karl Marx, and excluded Hayek. That explains why we’re in such a mess.
March 17, 2010, 8:45 pmSFAlphaGeek says:
Ahh, another example of the pendulum swinging in Mass . . .
March 17, 2010, 8:46 pmAndrew says:
If you’re going to teach it to High Schoolers the question to ask is – Is it available in Cliff’s Notes????
March 17, 2010, 9:22 pmSDN says:
Why should they turn down the Federal dollars that are thieved from their constituents? Let us opt out from being robbed and you can keep your bureaucrats.
March 17, 2010, 9:25 pmfrissell says:
Government has a worse externalities problem than markets because all its actions are external. Almost none of its revenue is related to goods or services produced. The money comes in and the regulations and subpar services go out without connection. When AC Transit had a monthlong strike in the Eastbay years ago, they ended up with more money for not running buses for a month than they would have if they’d actually run buses (because no driver’s pay and no fuel costs). And the externality of being coerced is a major uncompensated one.
Regulation of pharmaceuticals costs $ mega billions annually and kills plenty of people by slowing or stopping drug development. The FDA is not technically better than Walmart in determining product safety and it lacks all incentives. (Walmart calculates that the average person who walks in for the first time is worth $200,000 in lifetime revenue to them. If they’re dead they won’t pony up.)
March 17, 2010, 9:42 pmRicardo says:
Hayek certainly associated himself with the Austrian school of economics but that’s irrelevant to evaluating his own ideas and influence. Hayek was rarely dogmatic or rigid in his writing which is exactly why people who you could describe as “orthodox” Austrian economists have been quite critical of Hayek. I have to believe that you either have not read anything by Hayek or else that you are mixing him up with people like Rothbard and von Mises.
Hayek devoted a lot of his work to the bigger questions in social science and was a genuine interdisciplinary thinker. I would say the same about more left-wing thinkers like Thorstein Veblen and Karl Polanyi as well, who should also get more attention from economists.
March 17, 2010, 9:57 pmfrissell says:
When I make the obvious observation that 95%+ of the schools in America (public or private) are hard core left-wing institutions, most people find it hard to credit. Then I offer proof and they still can’t believe it. Shows that most have incorporated commie ideas w/o even knowing they are commie.
Most schools teach:
Higher taxes
Higher spending
Secularism
Environmentalism – rainforest and wetlands not jungle and swamp
Mandatory Diversity but only for (left wing) womyn, victims of color, and any random deviants (it amazes me that those who intentionally deviate don’t know that that makes them devients by definition).
Equality of outcome rather than equality of condition
Coercive interaction as the preferred method of social organization (Would you kill your mother to pave I-95?)
A Peoples History of the United States
Social Justice (and other code language)
Public Schools
————-
I could go on forever…
March 17, 2010, 10:06 pmRicardo says:
The difference is that physics is pretty useful in describing the real world while economics has much too far to go. Economists could not agree back in 2006 as to whether there was a housing bubble, in 2007 they disagreed on whether the rapidly deflating bubble would cause dislocations in the financial sector, in early 2008 they disagreed on whether dislocations in the financial sector would spill over into the “real economy” and cause a recession, and then in late 2008 through 2009 they were debating over whether fiscal policy will help stimulate the economy.
That’s a pretty poor record for a discipline by any standard. It’s as if doctors were still debating the germ theory of illness. This isn’t the fault of economists, incidentally. It’s inherent in the nature of social science and the limits of trying to apply scientific methodology to a messy and complex system like the economy. Hayek understood this and comes out looking good compared to many macroeconomists (it’s true that Hayek himself misunderstood the nature of business cycles but his business cycle theory writings are very small part of his overall output).
March 17, 2010, 10:11 pmWilliam O. B'Livion says:
What part of the internet do you come from? Shit, this thing was BUILT on petty pissing contests.
March 17, 2010, 10:15 pmbyomtov says:
Frissell,
Thank you for your comments. I hope Ilya will read them carefully, and consider their implications.
March 17, 2010, 10:30 pmDesiderius says:
W.O.B.
Actually, I believe it was built by the government.
Damn.
= )
March 17, 2010, 10:33 pmMark Field says:
I’m more a fan of case studies myself, but epistemology does have its place.
This. My biggest complaint about education is that it’s bloodless. Students aren’t told anything controversial, thanks alike to left and right, so they never realize that people fight and sometimes die over something that has been drained of all passion by the time they see it.
March 17, 2010, 10:48 pmRicardo says:
Another defense of Hayek, from the very liberal Nobel Prize winning economist and philosopher Amartya Sen:
March 17, 2010, 10:49 pmBoss says:
The New York Times missed the story: Texas Board of Education Introduces Atheist Into Curriculum.
March 17, 2010, 10:49 pmRicardo says:
Hayek on the conservatives and creationism:
From Why I Am Not a Conservative.
The thing about these kinds of discussions is that I am very far from a Hayek scholar but I find that many people on both the left and right have simply never read a word of Hayek even though they have impassioned views on him and his intellectual contributions.
March 17, 2010, 10:59 pmArthur Kirkland says:
I have no strong feeling about including Hayek in the curriculum; seems a coin flip to me.
Compared to forcing Phyllis Schlafly, the Heritage Foundation and an homage to McCarthyism into public schools’ lesson plans, however, devoting an entire semester to Hayek would seem downright sensible.
March 17, 2010, 11:12 pmBohemond says:
“the second one is perhaps only true in extreme cases, as the European welfare states are in no danger of abolishing their many freedoms.”
Boy, you haven’t been paying much attention to the EU lately, have you?
Next time you see an Englishman ask him how many “freedoms” he has left.
March 17, 2010, 11:33 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
Right, it is much more important to teach that Muse of Butchery, Theft, and Starvation Marx than to teach Hayek. Perhaps we should compare body counts?
March 17, 2010, 11:42 pmDesiderius says:
byomtov,
“Frissell,
Thank you for your comments. I hope Ilya will read them carefully, and consider their implications.”
As no doubt you’re poring over the ravings of the nearest Chomskyite as we speak.
Pick on someone your own size.
March 17, 2010, 11:43 pmjj08 says:
Unbelievable. And who gets to decide what is “mainstream” and what is not? If someone wanted to come up with a system guaranteed to turn science into an over-politicized brain-dead field, it would be hard to come up with something more effective than the “mainstream” idea.
I would point out that quantum mechanics, continental drift, DNA, General Relativity, and the “Big Bang” are just a few examples of science outside the “mainstream”. In particular, Einstein spent most of his final years fighting tooth and nail against quantum mechanics, and much of the “mainstream” went along with him.
Furthermore, science is not a field that is overrun with too many ideas. On the contrary: history shows us that it suffers from too few. As a mathematician, I find that the “mainstream” argument can be both misleading and intellectually stifling. All too often, when a scientists argues that something should not be taken seriously because it is “outside the mainstream,” he/she really means, “I don’t like the idea, but I have no proof to the contrary.” Disparaging critics, not offering evidence, seems to be the general direction of science today.
Besides – the “mainstream” is far less substantive than Dilan Esper would admit. As we have seen with global warming cultism and recent revelations of data fraud, the “mainstream” can be artificially created. But that does not mean that the “mainstream” is some harmless construction. Scientists, who in my opinion are far too reliant on government research grants, are often under enormous pressure to please those who hold the purse strings.
On the whole, we should be suspicious of the “mainstream” argument, which has become a lazy way of avoiding the scientific process.
March 17, 2010, 11:51 pmDOuglas2 says:
If you want to see the documents and proposed revisions that the Texas State Board of Education were working from at the meeting, they are here:
http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index2.aspx?id=3643
It is my impression that the New York Times articles and blogs, as well as many other people that have written about this, have all sourced their article from a “live-blogging” by someone who was actively supporting one faction in the controversies. There are a few independent reports of the same event out there, and it might be worth reading them before rushing to judgment.
March 18, 2010, 12:12 amorca says:
As long as the Chinese Commies continue to prop up America’s flailing brand of Kapitalism, it’s the least we can do.
March 18, 2010, 12:15 amDave says:
JH and RP are all talk no action on this issue. They will never turn down federal dollars. Assuming public office has an immediate effect on the action, despite the continuing talk. See 2001–2008.
The egg head talk in here needs some reality. Republicans like Democrats are politicians. They have to sell a product and voters have to buy it. In recent past, if you had gone to the electorate and said “Washington is going to dole out money. We will pass on our share while {insert left of center state here} is going to suck down large gobs.”, what do you think your chances would have been to gain/hold office? The deficits are starting to reshape some of that thought. Unfortunately, most GOPers are getting there a little late. (Better late than never – see Democratic Party.)
As to the idea that we should offset Marx with Smith or Keynes (that really is what the effect is when you exclude Friedman or Hayek), then I will have to side with the Texas Board.
Great Thread.
March 18, 2010, 12:30 amDavid Sucher says:
Dilan,
Have you actually read any Hayek?
Anything at all?
I’d wager not.
Whether one is a liberal or not, Hayek’s information theory of markets is absolutely essential — and obvious, after it’s stated — and is based on the emerging approach to urban planning as communications theory.
It’s preposterous — though attention-getting — to claim that Hayek is outdated.
March 18, 2010, 1:00 amHyphenated American says:
Personally, I have a very hard time understanding how can there be a debate on this topic. Anyone who has been in former socialist states knows that Hayek was dead right when he described socialism. Moreover, anyone who pays attention to American economy notices that Hayek’s predictions about Social Security were correct. All in all, Galileo still is rarely quoted by the Catholic Church – but is this a reason why he he should not be introduced to the students?
March 18, 2010, 2:14 amdennymack says:
I would note that this debate nicely frames Hayek’s ideas. Isn’t it nice when we have experts dictating what we value? So much more effective than all of us choosing for ourselves what our children should learn. What do we know, after all?
There’s even a nice tie-in to “Why I am Not a Conservative” if you think about all of the mandates from the Texas Board.
As a side note, I am a teacher, and I will tell you that one of the hardest things is to teach an idea as valid when you don’t believe in it yourself. If you want to change the liberal slant of social studies education, look at how the profession repels conservatives and attracts progressives. Classroom doors do close, you know. Do they have a way to mandate tone of voice and demeanor while these ideas are taught?
March 18, 2010, 2:30 amDilan Esper says:
Unbelievable. And who gets to decide what is “mainstream” and what is not?
Peer reviewed and published scientists.
Look, this issue only comes up because the conservative movement attempts to cloak various ideological claims, whether in the form of creationism or global warming denial or Austrian economics, in the mantle of science. (This is the same thing the tobacco companies used to do.)
It’s perfectly appropriate for publishing, peer reviewed scientists to push back against these attempts.
March 18, 2010, 4:14 amDilan Esper says:
Have you actually read any Hayek? Anything at all?
Yes.
March 18, 2010, 4:15 amk a 0 s says:
Economic thought is an aggregation of viewpoints across a spectrum of thought that incorporates mathematics, politics, psychology, philosophy, et cetera.
Consequently, a broad exposure is necessary to every individual element of economic thought from Aristotle/Plato, the Scholastics, the Classicals, the neoclassicals, the marxists, the keynesians, the austrians, the capitalists,the Chicago School… well, you get the point.
High School kids are too ignorant and lack life experience to fully grasp any economic thought of any depth, let alone the policy implications and political wrangler that occurs due to ignorant economists.
The best we can do to serve young minds would be to show them all the ingredients used to synthesize current social policies.
That is what high school education is best suited; evoking thought and creating ideas. Regardless if the thought evoked creates some sort of perverted anarchistic-marxist-neocon-socialist-totalitarian economy…
These kids are exposed to economics for one semester in high school. Nobody is going to become brainwashed after one week of Keynes, Friedman, Hayek, Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Plato, Aristotle etc
March 18, 2010, 4:33 amAmerican Psikhushka says:
orca-
As long as the Chinese Commies continue to prop up America’s flailing brand of Kapitalism, it’s the least we can do.
You’re right that our highly interventionist system is pretty far from laissez faire. But the Chinese economic system has been liberalized to the point where it would be referred to as a “hampered market” economy according to the Austrian School. (I understand Mises hinged this mainly on the existence of a stock market.) In any case its a horrible amount of debt, regardless of who holds it.(I don’t begrudge them or anyone else holding it, we shouldn’t have gone into it in the first place.)
March 18, 2010, 4:35 amRicardo says:
Dilan, such as what? Why don’t you discuss some of what you think are Hayek’s key ideas that have been rejected by the economics profession? I’ll save you the trouble of slamming Hayek’s business cycle theory: here’s Berkeley’s Brad DeLong with a qualified defense. An idea doesn’t have to be completely right (and Hayek’s certainly was not) to be valuable to our understanding of something that we still simply do not understand. But few people would embrace everything Keynes ever wrote either. Economics needs more humility after the current crisis and, as Sen says, Hayek is a crucial part of the dialectic within economics.
Ilya already provided defenses of some of Hayek’s ideas by Bill Easterly and Larry Summers. I provided you with a defense of Hayek from one of the economics profession’s most famous liberal public intellectuals, Amartya Sen.
So you are simply wrong on the merits here. Brad DeLong, Larry Summers, Bill Easterly and Amartya Sen — while each being an original and heterodox thinker in his own right — are all decidedly mainstream economists who find Hayek crucial for understanding the big questions in economics.
March 18, 2010, 4:45 amRicardo says:
Dilan, so why don’t you tell us what the four economists (all of whom have extensive publication records in peer-reviewed journals) I named missed as well as what the Nobel Committee missed when it awarded Hayek the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with the left-wing economist Gunnar Myrdal?
March 18, 2010, 5:04 amAmerican Psikhushka says:
Dilan Esper-
Look, this issue only comes up because the conservative movement attempts to cloak various ideological claims, whether in the form of creationism or global warming denial or Austrian economics, in the mantle of science.
That’s hysterical. Nice try attempting to claim that Austrian economics isn’t science. Hayek is one of the main members of the Austrian School and he won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974. If you accept Al Gore’s Nobel then you’re going to have to accept Hayek’s as well. If not I’d like to hear your reasoning. For the long run my money is on Hayek, the Austrian School, and not much of Florida being underwater. (Apparently Mr. Gore agrees about the Florida part at least – allegedly he owns some real estate there.)
March 18, 2010, 5:05 amDesiderius says:
k a O s,
“High School kids are too ignorant”
Adults ignore many more things than high school kids do.
March 18, 2010, 6:40 amKev says:
And if you look at what the Texas board is doing in that context, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a ridiculous lurch to the right; it may well be an effort to pull things back toward the center.
March 18, 2010, 7:03 amHassell says:
I left this comment at the times. They will probably censor it:
No one can reasonably dispute that Hayek was the second most influential economist of the 20th centrury behind only Keynes. He discredited the theories of the most influential economist and provided the intellectual framework for the Thatcher and Reagan revolutions.
So why are liberals so threatened by Hayek that they need to censor him from school curriculum? This is because Hayek’s work “generated the truth” revealing the link between economic freedom and political freedom. As advocates of economic central planning, liberals would rather students not learn this truth.
March 18, 2010, 7:03 amFearsome Tycoon says:
That whole Geert Wilders thing must have been a figment of my imagination. As is the emerging British police state.
March 18, 2010, 8:52 amShelbyC says:
And what is the left doing with their ideological claims, wrt global warming or econ? When the left does it it’ just applying the lasted scientific principals, and when the right does it it’s wrapping idology in them mantle of science, it that it?
March 18, 2010, 9:03 amDjDiverDan says:
Hey, please go back & read the multple posts on rational political ignorance. I know my own Representative, my own Governor, and the Two Senators from Texas, John Cornyn (whose position on a lot of issues, including judicial appointments, I like a lot, but he’s not as much of a Deficit Hawk as Hensarling), and Kay Bailey Hutchison (who is much too much a “Corporate Republican” for my taste – she lost me forever when she fought to stop a complete repeal of the Wright Amendment in order to preserve in part American Airlines’ competitive edge at DFW). I don’t know a lot about a number of Republicans, because it’s not my job to know, and I have better things to do with limited time. While I know a lot about a number of Democrats, like Obama, Biden, Schumer, Clinton, Dodd, Barney Frank, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, etc., there is not a one of them I could ever be proud to vote for. So which Democrats are you proud of, and, for god’s sake WHY???
March 18, 2010, 9:43 amKirk Parker says:
Dilan,
I’m not sure you need any more nails in the coffin of your credibility on this issue, but if you do the fact that you think of economists as scientists will surely do.
ShelbyC,
I’m sure there’s an equal amount of self-loathing on the D side of the aisle; it’s just that for them, their socialism isn’t part of what they feel conflicted about.
yankee,
Heh. He said “peer review”. Heh heh.
March 18, 2010, 10:09 amKirk Parker says:
DjDiverDan,
Just to provide another reference point, in case ruuffles ever gets around to answering you, here’s a list of some Democrats I’m proud of: Harry S. Truman, JFK, Hubert Humphrey, Dixy Lee Ray, Warren Magnuson, Henry M. Jackson…
It doesn’t take a Nobel-prize-winning economist to figure out what other factor these all have in common. :-(
March 18, 2010, 10:30 amAndy Rozell says:
I think that public schooling ought to be limited to reading, math, grammar and composition, the hard sciences, and maybe a little bit of very basic geography of the “Where is Bulgaria and what are its principal agricultural products?” variety.
What passes for teaching the so-called “social studies” is really just indoctrination of one kind or another. I got conservative indoctrination back in the 60s and early 70s; nowadays the kids get way-out nutjob indoctrination, but none of it is real education. I’m not sure it is at all possible to take political wrangling and posturing out of government-controlled schooling, and so I don’t see how the history and social sciences curriculum can ever be anything more than indoctrination.
March 18, 2010, 10:38 amk a 0s says:
Desiderius,
“Adults ignore many more things than high school kids do.”
I agree.
Like alcoholism, ignorance is a disease which progresses over time — even when one is “in recovery.”
…and most alcoholics began their careers in high school.
…time to break the chain.
March 18, 2010, 10:39 amGreg Ransom says:
Game over — Wolfers identifies Hayek as “a serious influence” on his own work, and a Google Scholar search for “Wolfers” and “Hayek” pulls up 328 hits. More details here:
http://hayekcenter.org/?p=2094
March 18, 2010, 10:43 amtheobromophile says:
If you need to stick a qualifier before “science,” then it isn’t science. Behavioural science? Political science? Social science? Please. (I think that the only exception to this is “materials science”, which is actually a science.)
You can’t run a controlled experiment with economics. You can run an uncontrolled one (such as the stimulus) and then try to guess what will happen, why it will happen, and when it will happen, but that’s not science.
Methiks, based on this and other conversations, that Dilan does not understand what science is all about.
March 18, 2010, 10:54 amAndy Rozell says:
To amend what I said earlier, a course in elementary logic – what a syllogism is, how to identify the more frequently encountered fallacies, etc. – would probably be of more use to the students and more benefit to the community than would all the history and economics in the world.
March 18, 2010, 11:26 ambyomtov says:
Desiderius,
I take your point.
Still, one of the relevant comments was addressed directly to me, and at least some of the content is not exactly a unique point of view.
Theobromophile,
You can’t run a controlled experiment with economics. You can run an uncontrolled one (such as the stimulus) and then try to guess what will happen, why it will happen, and when it will happen, but that’s not science.
You can’t run a controlled experiment in astronomy either. Not a science?
March 18, 2010, 11:38 amRicardo says:
I’ll say for the record that you actually can run a controlled experiment in economics. There’s quite a lot of literature in behavioral and experimental economics as well as labor and development economics that is based on experimental methodology.
But the bigger questions are more impervious to controlled or experimental conditions: estimating the impact of stimulus money is a good example. There is something of a quasi-experiment here, though. Different countries passed stimulus packages around the same time of different sizes and we can compare the difference between actual GDP and forecasts that were made of GDP before the packages were passed and compare to the size of the stimulus packages. We do see a positive effect.
Karl Popper pointed out that two essential traits in any science are that the claims of the discipline make risky predictions and that the lead adherents of the discipline do not make ad hoc revisions to rescue their theories when they are falsified. Both of these are a real problem for economics and for economists. If you doubt this, look at the time-line of the financial crisis and look at what many economists were saying at each stage.
March 18, 2010, 12:02 pmNony Mouse says:
Umm guys, you realize there’s a YouTube rap out there about economics that a bunch of people have seen, right? And if the high school econ class didn’t even cover one of ‘em, it’d look like the teacher didn’t know half the debate? Considering that the average high schooler is certain that they’re smarter than at least one of their teachers, I think this could be considered partially motivated by self-defense.
March 18, 2010, 12:18 pmSmallholder says:
I teach AP US history and I regularly incorporate Friedman and Hayek into my classroom. I also include Smith, Keynes and Veblen, and to a lesser extent Ricardo, Mills. We actually have a whole class on the idea and implications of the Laffer curve when we hit the 1980s. Kids ought to be exposed to competing ideas.
Now, much of what the Texas School Board did is unforgivable (pretending that the Enlightenment wasn’t the driving intellectual force behind the American Revolution). Saying we should teach two economists who are already being taught in the classroom isn’t one of them.
March 18, 2010, 12:42 pmJW Deming says:
My daughter was homeschooled. She’s now at MIT. She read Henry Hazlitt’s novel “Time Will Run Back” at age 10. She loved it. It made her a confirmed advocate of freedom and free markets by telling a compelling story of how a fictional dictator of a communist Russia discovers free markets one step at a time. It’s a wonderful way to learn economics. And a great read for adults as well.
Non-fiction works of econ contain too much twisty logic for kids. Fascinating to adults but frustrating & boring for kids.
March 18, 2010, 1:34 pmJW Deming says:
My daughter was homeschooled. She’s now at MIT. She read Henry Hazlitt’s novel “Time Will Run Back” at age 10. She loved it. It made her a confirmed advocate of freedom and free markets by telling a compelling story of how a fictional dictator of a communist Russia discovers free markets one step at a time. It’s a wonderful way to learn economics. And a great read for adults as well.
Non-fiction works of econ contain too much twisty logic for kids. Fascinating to adults but frustrating & boring for kids.
March 18, 2010, 1:34 pmJeff Black says:
Jeff Flake
March 18, 2010, 1:46 pmDilan Esper says:
An idea doesn’t have to be completely right (and Hayek’s certainly was not) to be valuable to our understanding of something that we still simply do not understand. But few people would embrace everything Keynes ever wrote either. Economics needs more humility after the current crisis and, as Sen says, Hayek is a crucial part of the dialectic within economics.
This is a pretty milquetoast defense, along the lines of “a broken clock is right twice a day”. Hayek was wrong about ideas big and small– wrong about monetary policy, wrong about business cycles, wrong about countercyclical policy during recessions, and wrong about government spending. Even the big thing that he is celebrated for being “right” about– his attacks on central planning in The Road to Serfdom is actually completely over the top as he goes off and predicts that central planning creates an infinite feedback loop that leads to totalitarianism, which is clearly not true.
Look, I conceded that Hayek is an important thinker in economic history who should be included in the curriculum, but that’s not the use that conservatives and libertarians want to make of him. They want to say that his ideas are correct, that the econmic mainstream is wrong, and that society would benefit from applying Hayekian / Austrian policy prescriptions to the modern economy. Sorry, but on that level, the guy’s ideas are very dangerous in the same way that teaching creationism in a biology classroom or geocentrism in an astronomy class would be.
March 18, 2010, 2:37 pmDilan Esper says:
Methiks, based on this and other conversations, that Dilan does not understand what science is all about.
Theo, you seem to have your own personal definition of “science”, which is fine, but in the real world, the word refers to the method of observation, hypothesis, and testing, which is certainly used by the behavioral sciences, including economics. The fact that something can’t be tested using a double-blind model and a control group does not mean that it cannot be tested at all.
The advocates of Hayek and the Austrians stand outside of that model– they don’t test, they pontificate, and those pontifications are based on their ideology rather than observation, hypothesis, and testing. The “mainstream” economists that they and their friends on the right decry, in contrast, work within the constraints of the scientific method. (And, by the way, that mainstream rejects a lot of shibboleths of the left as well as the right– you will find few Marxists or protectionists in economics faculties.)
March 18, 2010, 2:41 pmtheobromophile says:
Dilan: as someone who spent many years in the field of science and engineering, I’m pretty damn sure that my definition would survive muster.
Your sole claim to scientific expertise, however, is being a liberal, and assuming that everything that backs up your position is science, because you’re liberal and are therefore backed up by science. There’s a reason why people are laughing at you here… you might want to pay attention.
March 18, 2010, 2:54 pmDilan Esper says:
Dilan: as someone who spent many years in the field of science and engineering, I’m pretty damn sure that my definition would survive muster.
Theo, you have blinders on (perhaps because of your background). I certainly have sometimes criticized the behavioral sciences– I’ve joked that some psychiatrists have taken one patient and constructed an entire book-length theory based on their observations of him or her. But nonetheless, the scientific method is not limited to the “hard” sciences, and the fact that engineers may very well look down at the more squishy sciences as not engaging in “real” science doesn’t mean there isn’t a real and distinct difference between what, say, a real conservative economist like Gary Becker does and what the Austrians do.
Your sole claim to scientific expertise, however, is being a liberal, and assuming that everything that backs up your position is science, because you’re liberal and are therefore backed up by science. There’s a reason why people are laughing at you here… you might want to pay attention.
Theo, is there any part of your brain that isn’t powered by resentment of the left? No wonder you like Sarah Palin so much.
March 18, 2010, 3:03 pmBohemond says:
Dilan:
“They want to say that his ideas are correct, that the econmic mainstream is wrong, and that society would benefit from applying Hayekian / Austrian policy prescriptions to the modern economy.”
As if Keynes wasn’t wrong about them?
I find it rather astonishing that you seem to identify the “mainstream” with the Keynesians and neo-Keynesians, and fail to recognize that Friedman and the Chicagoans are the direct descendants of the Austrians aside from the goldbuggery. Sure, Keynes has dominated academic faculties (and governments) for ages, but that’s precisely because he provides intellectual cover for unrestrained government spending and so aligns well with the political disposition of most academics.
March 18, 2010, 5:01 pmDesiderius says:
k a o s,
“…time to break the chain.”
Yeah, good luck with that. A mind is like a parachute: if it’s open all the time it’s a real drag. Adults have to ignore a great deal, simply to get on with life.
byomtov,
“I take your point.”
And I yours, including one directly to my keister, if I’m not mistaken, in your reply to AP in the previous thread. You got me.
Seems a much more fertile field than cheap guilt-by-association games.
Maybe we have fled too much into theory as the rising generation has provided their inevitable critique of our (relatively libertarian) critique of the generation before ours. Given the demographic dominance of that generation, and their continuing lack of all shame in throwing their weight around (see Dilan above), we can get a little tetchy in these matters.
“Less” government seems less appealing now than “limited” government, with specific consideration of where those limits lie, and as importantly, don’t. Hard experience has shown that government does have an important role to play as Roberts’ umpire, but I think I remain as concerned as ever with the extent to which government’s compulsion to grab the bat undermines it’s umpiring function.
We’ll fight against that compulsion to the last man.
“Still, one of the relevant comments was addressed directly to me, and at least some of the content is not exactly a unique point of view.”
On the internet, silence is the cruelest response.
March 18, 2010, 5:47 pmDilan Esper says:
I find it rather astonishing that you seem to identify the “mainstream” with the Keynesians and neo-Keynesians, and fail to recognize that Friedman and the Chicagoans are the direct descendants of the Austrians aside from the goldbuggery.
First, Keynes may be the mainstream, but there are different stripes of Keynesians, including more conservative economists as well.
Second, Friedman and the Chicagoans are also well within the mainstream, but there is quite a bit more that distinguishes them from Austrians than goldbuggery. Specifically, their views about the role of monetary policy are quite different.
But there’s also a more fundamental difference. Friedman was quite libertarian, but he was also intellectually honest and indicated where the science stopped and his ideology took over. For instance, he never claimed that his views on occupational licensing established that a system of such licensing would necessarily result in economic inefficiency.
Austrians, in contrast, simply conflate what they want to do with the laws of economics. If somebody points out that the data doesn’t conform to their hypotheses, the usual response is that this is only because we haven’t enacted all their other policy preferences. It really is the mirror-image of Marxism in that respect.
As I said, though, we can celebrate Hayek’s role as a great thinker and major figure in economics without teaching Austrian economics in economics classes. The problem is that this is not the agenda here.
March 18, 2010, 6:00 pmorca says:
“The real traditions of the Chicagoans are rum, goldbuggery and the lash.”
March 18, 2010, 8:39 pm- Winston Churchill
Elliot says:
Example of 1) mainstream economist, 2) mainstream idea they say is wrong?
March 18, 2010, 9:28 pmRicardo says:
Your concession on this point is appreciated.
So what? Every serious thinker who was doing any kind of academic work more than 50 years ago has been wrong about several things as well. It’s interesting that you liken protectionism to creationism — Keynes was anything but an enthusiastic proponent of free trade and favored capital controls that are rejected by the vast majority of economists today.
As for Hayek on monetary policy, there is a genuine debate within economics right now about the role monetary policy played in the housing bubble. I actually don’t think the Federal Reserve was responsible for the bubble — I put much more weight on Chinese monetary policy. There are many others who disagree with that view. But it is certainly not the case that the old Austrian and Hayekian view on monetary policy and its role in asset bubbles is wrong or irrelevant. There are still mainstream economists (like Eugene Fama at University of Chicago) who deny bubbles exist at all!
March 18, 2010, 11:45 pmmattski says:
It’s weird, isn’t it?
Although statements like, “the word ‘bubble’ drives me nuts” are revealing.
March 19, 2010, 7:31 amAmerican Psikhushka says:
Dilan Esper-
This is a pretty milquetoast defense, along the lines of “a broken clock is right twice a day”. Hayek was wrong about ideas big and small– wrong about monetary policy, wrong about business cycles, wrong about countercyclical policy during recessions, and wrong about government spending.
Let’s see – the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe went pretty much according to what Hayek and other Austrians would predict. And many Austrians and libertarians predicted the Tech Bubble and then the housing bubble quite accurately. (Pointing out that as the Tech Bubble was deflating the housing bubble was inflating.) Just because you ignore or aren’t aware of evidence doesn’t mean it is not there.
In fact, one could point out that the practice in “mainstream” economics/academics and leftist politics is to marginalize and ignore Austrian economics and then claim it is “wrong” because it isn’t more popular. Much like what was done to the “climate change” academic skeptics. A “consensus” built on blackballing anything that doesn’t agree with your agenda and ideology isn’t a legitimate or correct one.
Even the big thing that he is celebrated for being “right” about– his attacks on central planning in The Road to Serfdom is actually completely over the top as he goes off and predicts that central planning creates an infinite feedback loop that leads to totalitarianism, which is clearly not true.
Really? Where? The most centrally planned economies in existence tend to be the most controlled ones. To the point where places like North Korea has to keep its citizens from voting with their feet with draconian force. And its quite well recognized that things like price and wage controls, protectionism, trade restrictions, etc. require an expansion of the police state to enforce them. Witness the Soviet authorities confiscating western goods like blue jeans and walkmans and going after black and gray marketeers during the 80s like they were going after drug smugglers. And there is likely numerous pieces of evidence out there that the higher tax rates go the higher the cost and the more extensive the police state has to be expanded to collect them. (To diminishing returns – the higher tax rates go the more the private economy is weakened and the higher the expense of collection which leads to lower overall collections…etc, etc, etc…)
March 19, 2010, 2:36 pmAmerican Psikhushka says:
orca-
“The real traditions of the Chicagoans are rum, goldbuggery and the lash.”
- Winston Churchill
I don’t recall Churchill enumerating the exact mechanisms by which the true socialist economies would stagnate and collapse like the Austrian School did.
March 19, 2010, 2:40 pmscineram says:
Not specifically children, but maybe Economics for Real People by Callahan.
March 19, 2010, 6:12 pmBob says:
Heh, I read the headline as a criticism of Hayek’s economics. Like, “Go back to HS, Freddy, ya need to re-learn economics!”
March 20, 2010, 7:44 pmCBI says:
I took a look at the posted curriculum standards on the Texas Education Association website, which is the January 2010 update. (The March 2010 update is not yet posted as of today.)
Thomas Jefferson is required to be taught in 5th grade and 8th grade social studies, and in both U.S. Government and World History. Schlafly is required to be mentioned in U.S. History Since 1877. Hayek is not mentioned, nor is Newt Gingrich, so these are later additions.
Reading between the lines of the ‘report’, it appears that the latter two have been added, and that (perhaps) Jefferson was removed from one of the four instances, or changed from the “including” category to the “such as” category. I’ll be interested in seeing what the reality is, compared to the news ‘reports’.
Given the inclusion of Jane Addams (5th grade), John Deere (5th grade), Colin Powell (5th grade), Wentworth Chesswell (8th grade), Samuel Dole (!, U.S. History since 1877), and Harriet Martineau (Sociology), then the inclusion of Newt Gingrich, Hayek, and Schlafly aren’t out of line.
Of course, I am a physicist, not an economist (although “there but for the grace of God . . . “). I therefore found Mr. Esper‘s comments on ‘global warming’ and ‘peer review’ somewhat revealing, since without doubt the corruption of the peer review process aided the elevation of anthropogenic global warming theories to current political prominence.
March 21, 2010, 12:20 am