Economics to be required in Arizona high schools.

A few years ago the entrance of a center-liberal party called "Civic Platform" to a coalition government in Poland caught my attention--I'm always interested in seeing what the world's liberal parties are doing right that that libertarian party is doing wrong. One of their more notable platform planks was that economics be taught at all levels in schools. (An aside: If you're thinking about leaving a comment or sending me an e-mail in Polish, don't. The combination of the last two sentences and my obviously ethnic surname might get you thinking differently, but I neither speak nor read the language. European political parties have an interesting habit of translating some of their Web content into English.)

That's an idea we should try here in the States. Students, most of whom still go to public schools, grow up to be voters, and voters who believe strange things about how the economy works tolerate politicians who believe strange things, the equivalent of witch-doctoring about how the economy works. Beyond this, an economic education will likely enrich the students personally, by having them see opportunity in a world that would otherwise seem stifling, and having them think of themselves not as belonging to some class (workers, etc.) but universally, no matter how they put food on the table, as capable entrepreneurs seeking their comparative advantage.

It's gone largely unnoticed, but Arizona has partially adopted this idea. The state standards set forth an ambitious program that has students as early as the fifth grade thinking of their history lessons in economic terms (e.g. "Describe how specialization (e.g., division of labor) improved standards of living in the three colonial regions and the Pre-Civil War North and South.") and has high-school students expected to learn things most college-educated adults don't know (e.g. "Explain the effects of monetary policy on unemployment, inflation, and economic growth.")

I can't determine when it was decided, but just stumbled on a remark from a very credible source--the Arizona Freedom Center, which is affiliated with the University of Arizona's Department of Philosophy--stating that starting in 2012 Arizona's high school students will be required to take one semester of economics to graduate. (The standards I quoted appear already to be in effect, but no separate economics course or unit is required.)

Both this and the inclusion of economics in the "social studies" standards is a great idea, and if I could figure out who is responsible, praise would be in order. My only concerns are that schoolteachers lack enough prior exposure to the subject to meet the standards, and that some will take the mainstream ideas required by the standards to be some special ideological "free market economics", mistakenly think they're being required to propagandize, and either interject their own beliefs indiscriminately or simply shirk their duty.

I've dropped in on Arizona public-school classrooms as a guest speaker on two subjects, and think that despite social promotion, low expectations and an anti-intellectual culture (sometimes encouraged by parents--one of these days I'll pass on a story about this) students are capable of learning the material. My question to readers is: How is this working out? Are teachers following the standards? Are kids learning the material?

Those laws of economics are still in effect.

Say no to Newton's Law of Gravity! It is a sexed equation, so unyielding in its symmetry between masses and in the geometric precision of the inverse square law. It codifies the false egalitarianism of right-wing reactionaries--it's crypto-fascist--by not taking into account either mass's individual circumstances or background, the authenticity of its struggle, or the possibility that one or both of the masses might feel on the inside as though its inertia really ought be different from its gravitational charge. That it is so unforgiving--ouch!--further belies its extreme right nature. Newton's Law is incompatible with progressive, enlightened values and the replacement of dog-eat-dog, rugged individualist capitalism with a more equitable, just, and sustainable society.

We can do this at the polls, right? After all, back in 2006 we succeeded in repealing the laws of economics. Price theory would no longer apply to wages. Raising the price of a service beyond the market equilibrium would not result in people buying less of the service. It will not result in an increase in price of other goods and services. It will not result in some services or goods provided or made using wage labor becoming unprofitable. And anyone who tells you post-hoc that the increase hurts the marginal worker--at first teenagers, people coming off of welfare, the retarded, the disabled--is spouting the propaganda of a special "right-wing" economics, and can't be trusted because of self-interest, anyway. Folk economics is right. There are victims and villains, have-nots and haves. The wage payer, a "have", who doesn't give his workers, "have-nots" a "living wage" is guilty of murder, after all, people need a "living wage" to live. And it's giving, not purchasing. Wage payers are responsible for the welfare of wage laborers just like chieftans are responsible for the young braves. It's the order of things.

Oh wait, it's not. Restaurant owners are being hurt by the minimum wage law which in turn results in less opportunity for those who would sell their services as waiters or busboys or dishwashers to restauranteurs. But they can't be, because we're hearing it from those greedy "haves". It must be special Right-Wing Economics and propaganda.


Does anyone else think that economics needs to be taught in schools at all levels? People who think in terms of zero-sum economics, of "haves" and "have-nots", vote, to our detriment and theirs.