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Quit lying and address the controversies: there are no dogmata, laws, rules or standards in the science of economics.

Article Excerpt
I. Introduction

The "No Child Left Behind" K-12 education initiative is associated with The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP Economics Framework project website http://www. naepecon2006.org/projoverview.asp states that its advisory panel "assures that the assessment specifications meet recognized technical standards." This pre-college thinking has permeated advice on the teaching of economics at the post-secondary levels:

Here we offer a strategy for refocusing the Principles course on economic literacy ... The Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics are the building blocks of our Principles course. The 20 Standards provide an operational definition of economic literacy ... the core of economic knowledge and descriptions explaining what students should be able to do with that knowledge. (Hansen, Salemi and Siegfried, 2002, 464.)

But there are no standards in the science of economics. I will argue here, as I have elsewhere, that other than a need for honesty there are no rules, laws or dogmata in economics and attempts to impose K-12 thinking in higher education will, to paraphrase Veblen, render university faculties to be nothing more than high school teachers masquerading as something much greater. (1) Doing in universities what is arguably legitimate for high schools is remedial education (or training) and not higher education.

II. Controversies in Science

One might assert that if economics is truly a science then like other sciences it must have a core of non-controversial principles that stand the test of time. Even without knowing much if anything about other sciences, however, academic economists should be aware of heated debates in the natural sciences from reading the Wall Street Journal and like media sources readily available to them. For instance, WSJ articles by Begley (2005a; 2005b) detail such controversy. MIT's Frank Wilczek (who shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics) is quoted by Begley saying that some alleged laws of physics are rightfully disputed, giving as an example the concept that mass is conserved, a staple from introductory courses. Wilczek is quoted saying "But that couldn't be more wrong. Massive particles such as protons are built of quarks and gluons, which have zero mass (unless they are moving). Mass is far from conserved." From high school physics we learn that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; yet, Wilczek is quoted by Begley saying that is not universally true: "It fails for magnetic forces between charged particles."

Begley tells of high school biology teachers presenting without question that auxin promotes plant growth, when the reality is far more complex as seen in the raging controversy over how, if at all, it does so. She reports that only recently did Indiana University's Mark Estelle and colleagues find that auxin attracts and binds plant proteins that silence growth-promoting genes. It is the enzymes that then devour the silencers that allow growth genes to turn on. Astronomers argue over the dark matter that pervades the universe. Thus, an up-to-date textbook should state that dark matter exists but its composition remains an enigma. Begley's examples of controversy in the natural sciences that are not being taught in introductory science classes go on and on but can be summarized with the quote from physicist Lawrence Kraus of Case Western Reserve: "Every scientific theory is constantly under scrutiny and has unknowns at the edges." (2)

III. Looking Back

The idea that students need a sense of the historic development and mastery of basic concepts in a science to be literate in the science was dismissed by Richard Feynman (co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, and at the time a faculty member at the California Institute of Technology) when he was asked to teach Caltech's undergraduate 2-year introductory course in physics (Gleick, 1992). Before Feynman, the normal introductory university physics courses went through the historic basic concepts reaching atoms and molecules in the final weeks. Feynman, however, gave short shrift to physics before the 1920s going right to quantum physics in his second lecture, which at the time was the sexy stuff that students could get excited about.

Over 40 years ago economists, such as the late G. L. Bach, who was then Chair of the American Economic Association's Committee on Economic Education, championed the idea of emphasizing a few basic economic concepts in the hopes that students would at least retain something (although his principles textbook was encyclopedic). The late Ben Lewis, also a chair of the AEA Committee on Economic Education, bemoaned the fact that his beloved short list of economics laws was being eschewed by mathematical innovations in the rapidly advancing science of economics. He lamented:

Ours was an economy of principles, law and order. The Law of Self-Interest and the Law of Supply and Demand governed our microconcerns, and our macroconcerns were few and slight. Say's Law insured us against anything more troublesome than exceptional ... money was kept in order by Gresham's Law. No one dreamed of questioning the constitutionality of our laws ... The Depression opened the door ... through the open portal came a couple of mathematicians. They stayed to dinner. They, too, were movers--they moved in ... my old world was gone; economics began its frantic scramble for recognition as an exact science." (1970, 6-7)

To heed the advice of those who continue to advance the doctrinaire teaching of concepts such as opportunity cost and comparative advantage, self-interest and incentives, supply and demand, marginal costs and benefits and the like, with little or no discussion and questioning of the conditions required for their use in analysis and ignoring innovations in economics are giant steps backward in the teaching of economics.

If for no reason other than the time constraint, to say nothing of learning theory, classes in any subject cannot be encyclopedic. The number of concepts to be taught must be limited by the amount of time available for learning. This observation, however, does not imply that a short list of outdated concepts be emphasized to the exclusion of more appropriate alternatives. For example Victor Fuchs (2004) tells of his use of the case method in the 1950s and how he came to believe that in teaching his philosophy is captured by the aphorisms of "less is more" and "there is no teaching, only learning," which 50 years later are two views that are still being advanced by many in the economic education movement as novel. But unlike many of the current advocates of the "less is more" philosophy, Fuchs calls attention to the limitations of economics and the need for honesty in spelling out the shortcomings of economic analysis. Similarly, eminent economist and textbook author Edmond Malinvaud (2004) warns teachers of economics to avoid a set of dogmatic and typically invalid methods of old and the misuse of so-called stylized facts as if they were empirically valid. There must be real empirical...

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