Don't Know Much about Economics
By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Europe | Foreign Affairs | Unhealthy Amounts of Capitalistphobia — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As one who loves Europe, it is monumentally depressing to read something like this:
Millions of children are being raised on prejudice and disinformation. Educated in schools that teach a skewed ideology, they are exposed to a dogma that runs counter to core beliefs shared by many other Western countries. They study from textbooks filled with a doctrine of dissent, which they learn to recite as they prepare to attend many of the better universities in the world. Extracting these children from the jaws of bias could mean the difference between world prosperity and menacing global rifts. And doing so will not be easy. But not because these children are found in the madrasas of Pakistan or the state-controlled schools of Saudi Arabia. They are not. Rather, they live in two of the world's great democracies--France and Germany.
Read on . . .
What a country teaches its young people reflects its bedrock national beliefs. Schools hand down a society's historical narrative to the next generation. There has been a great deal of debate over the ways in which this historical ideology is passed on--over Japanese textbooks that downplay the Nanjing Massacre, Palestinian textbooks that feature maps without Israel, and new Russian guidelines that require teachers to portray Stalinism more favorably. Yet there has been almost no analysis of how countries teach economics, even though the subject is equally crucial in shaping the collective identity that drives foreign and domestic policies.
Just as schools teach a historical narrative, they also pass on "truths" about capitalism, the welfare state, and other economic principles that a society considers self-evident. In both France and Germany, for instance, schools have helped ingrain a serious aversion to capitalism. In one 2005 poll, just 36 percent of French citizens said they supported the free-enterprise system, the only one of 22 countries polled that showed minority support for this cornerstone of global commerce. In Germany, meanwhile, support for socialist ideals is running at all-time highs--47 percent in 2007 versus 36 percent in 1991.
It's tempting to dismiss these attitudes as being little more than punch lines to cocktail party jokes. But their impact is sadly and seriously self-destructive. In Germany, unemployment is finally falling after years at Depression-era levels, thanks in no small part to welfare reforms that in 2005 pressured Germans on the public dole to take up jobs. Yet there is near consensus among Germans that, despite this happy outcome, tinkering with the welfare state went far beyond what is permissible. Chancellor Angela Merkel, once heralded as Germany's own Margaret Thatcher, has all but abandoned her plans to continue free-market reforms. She has instead imposed a new "rich people tax," has tightened labor-market rules, and has promised renewed efforts to "regulate" globalization. Meanwhile, two in three Germans say they support at least some of the voodoo-economic, roll-back-the-reforms platform of a noisy new antiglobalization political party called Die Linke (The Left), founded by former East German communists and Western left-wing populists.
Read on for more, including the "thought" that "Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer," a particularly noxious belief that French students are obliged to learn if they want to be able to gain entrance into prestigious universities like Sciences Po. Education normally functions to help point the way to a better quality of life but Europe's current education system gives one the incentive to play hooky.
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Don't Know Much about Economics 5 Comments (0 topical, 5 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
"... has instead imposed a new "rich people tax," has tightened labor-market rules, and has promised renewed efforts to "regulate" globalization."
If I didn't know better I'd say this was part Gov. Mike Huckabee's piece to an Economics Journal.
Europe is a mess and their continued socialist policies will only hurt them more. This is why it is So important that we embrace free market capitalism in America otherwise we Will become another European Union.
We spend billions on education and it gets wasted on pc agenda driven curriculum and bloated school administrations.
Instead of trying to brainwash our kids the schools need to concentrate on the 3 R's and do it well.
Seriously. How unusual is this? In the early to mid 1900s, Europe was the breeding ground for all kinds of statist idiocy. In the 1950-1990, there were plenty of communists and socialists. Europe has never been America. That's why we economically kick their butts.
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I worked in (West) Germany back in the '70s, and even then we wondered where the Germany was that we US expats expected. Our fathers fought WWII, and we grew up with newsreels and Walter Cronkite's "Twentieth Century" that taught us about the economic miracle Germany rendered under the Marshall Plan. We could not find that robust, work-enamored, industrial Germany when we were there. Instead, we came away with the sure knowledge that when the State guarantees your existence, then you lose your incentive to be productive.
That was 40+ years ago. I am not at all surprised that it permeates the educational system: it was noticeable at-large a long time ago. It takes awhile for the old textbooks to undergo a complete reversal. We now know that it can be done in a single generation without anyone the wiser until it it too late. It will take at least another generation to undo this but, of course, that will not happen because it takes much more effort to climb the hill than to slide down it. Buckley "standing athwart of history and yelling 'Stop'", and everything that emanated from that, only arrested but did not stop our similar descent.
I found the last paragraph of the blogpost to be amusing. I have seen a lot of causes, and agendas, and rallying cries come and go during my life. Your recounting of the European capitalist fears "Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer..."
...is not so very different from any other knee-jerk reaction out there. Something like "Going green imposes a destitute lifestyle, producing shortages, loss of commerce, loss of heritage, triumph of liberalism, leading to statist misery and, according to some, even premature death."
Bless us all, I have to take my humor where I can find it.
I have long held the belief that the EU will again devolve into a state of dissension as the forces of Socialism and their anti-capitalistic attitudes devalue the benefits of growth and the work ethic.
I look no further then the French Aubry Act where the mandatory shortened work week, as opposed to actions that increase productivity has reduced the work ethic even more. So instead of increasing productivity, they created more free time to be non-committed to anything in particular. Hence, an increase in apathy, resulting in even greater disgust with anything capitalistic reinforced by "the establishment" and their we will take care of you methodologies.
Fixing the disparity of belief in capitalistic ideals to socialistic will only come from a change in bureaucratic power. Or it could just be that we need to purge the world of the baby boomer generation. Either is good.
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle