The Failure to Teach Economics in Schools

Here is a thought- the real reason why our country might be on the decline and we elect legislators who are economic morons is because our school system is run and staffed by those people who have no experience in business, work in an industry severed from economic reality, and frequently have ideologies that oppose capitalism and free markets. The reason why this country elects people who think any sort of spending is a stimulus (Obama) is because the very people who are training and teaching our students about economic principles are the worst sort of people to do so.

This is not just an off-hand comment- I'm a little ticked off today about a conversation that we had in our department meeting about the teaching of economics. The MME test expects students to know basic principles about economics, and yet the students who graduate from our school don't have the foggiest notions of supply and demand, and when I talk about inflation and investment, they get blank looks in their eyes. So in our staff meeting, I tried to bring this up, and got lectured by two 'veteran' teachers about how economics should be taught- these two teachers thought that scientific principles were beyond students comprehension, so instead spent class time debating such things as minimum wage, CEO compensations, buy-American policies, and low pay for teachers.

Yes, that's right, rather than teach students economic principles, we are teaching them how to think and vote like a liberal Democrat (since liberal Democrat's usually also have no idea on how basic economic principles work). I tried to battle back, pointing towards the curriculum, and mentioned how an example like the Great Depression could be a good opportunity to connect economic principles, history, and modern day together, and suddenly most of the department was against me- they were upset that the curriculum attempted to be balanced when dealing with the Great Depression, and they phrase "capitalism caused the Great Depression and there is no arguing it" was thrown around once or twice.

If any of you are in business, if any of you are conservative economists, or even if any of you have read a good book in economics, I suggest you contact your local school and find out if you could come in one day to explain the book or an economic principle to these students. If you can't get in to the schools, at least make sure that you teacher your own students about economic principles, because they sure aren't going to learn about them in public schools.