A Nagging Doubt
[Unpublished]
We’ve spent a lot of money in the last two months. $800 Billion on a stimulus package, $400 Billion on a spending bill, $275 on an emergency homeowner recovery bill – and let’s not forget the one that started it all, the $700 Billion bailout. All said and done, we’ve committed to over $2 Trillion dollars in spending over the next four years, and we are only two months deep in the new administration.
I’m not going to deconstruct any of this spending – such information is widely available from other sources. There are much more troublesome agents at work here than fiscal irresponsibility, and while the earmarks peppered across these bills are shameful, they are inconsequential in comparison.
Before you raise your shields, know that I bear no malice toward our new president. While I disagree with much of his policy, he never made a secret of his intentions during the primaries or the presidential race, nor does he hide them now. My disappointment rests not with Obama, he is merely the product of a long and heartbreaking decline in our education, media, and civic sensibilities.
Grade School
Never before have so many known so little about so much. Money, that is. We are the only first-world country that does not educate our children on economic reality. Ask any high school graduate what the prime interest rate is, or how it is determined, and you will likely meet with a blank stare. Similarly, query that same youth on the workings of the stock market, treasury bonds, GDP, or any other vaguely financial term and you’ll be lucky to receive a half hearted shrug. This is not entirely the fault of the student, however.
The dumbing-down of grade school education is the result of a generation-long chain of policies aimed at accommodating the lowest common denominators. In the interests of inclusion, curriculum is more concerned with the warmth of personal feelings and politically expedient interpretations than with cold, scary facts. Don’t believe me? Rifle through a textbook or two. Here are a couple of quotes from economics textbooks provided to students in Michigan:
"The public sector can redistribute income more efficiently than the private sector."
—J. Holt Wilson and J. R. Clark, Economics
"If a nation guarantees absolute freedom to pursue individual gain, it will ensure misery for those who are least able to succeed."
—Mary H. McCarty, Dollars and Sense: An Introduction to Economics
Really? I thought economics and political theory were two different classes. Moreover, the prosperity of this nation stands in direct opposition to both of these soft-headed observations. America is the only nation on earth where the poorest fifth of the population often face health challenges from obesity.
Still, perhaps grade school does not have a mandate to educate students on economics, and such intricacies should be left to higher education.
College
An interesting thing happened in 1965 – the Equal Employment Opportunity, an executive order designed to eliminate discrimination during the hiring process, was signed by President Johnson.
All well and good. Denying someone a job based on skin color, gender, or religious proclivity is, and should be, illegal. However, should testing someone on general knowledge of subjects related to the job be permitted?
A result of the EEO was the barring of just such practices. Employers are now unable to test prospective employees on English, Finance, History, or the like. Makes it difficult to hire people to write, account, or teach, no? How can you be assured that the person applying for the job has a healthy comprehension of whatever it is you need them to do? Aha! I have it: rather than test employees directly, let’s require a college degree in a related field of study. Problem solved.
Forty years later, it is widely understood that the best jobs – that is, the best paying jobs – require a college degree. Result: higher education has become anything but. No longer is the emphasis on learning, but on passing. Complicit in this shift of purpose is the University system itself, conscious of the pressing need of those who roam its halls to receive a Degree and, thusly, a Good Job. Put eloquently by a reader of one of my previous blogs: “Cs get degrees.” Comprehension, retention, personal growth – all take a backseat to the passing grade. College is now a prologue to work rather than a good in its own right.
Classes on a chosen major are more rigorously tested than the areas of secondary study intended to ‘round-out’ the mind of the scholar. The existence of the pass-fail grading system in many institutions for non-major subjects makes it even easier to coast through them. To which we return to our previous quandary – our national shortage of economic awareness. The only way to receive an education in economics, even in the University system, is to pursue a degree in that field. Economic instruction for the English major is limited at best, and after the compulsory cramming and testing, is all but forgotten.
Incentive
Once we have trudged through High School and jumped through the hoops of University, our degree clasped firmly in hand and letters affixed squarely after our name, we find our job and begin climbing our preferred ladder.
But what incentive is there, after a grueling day of shuffling and sorting, to continue on the path of education? Perhaps a certification in networking or CPR will provide us with a bump in pay or increased marketability, but these weekend workshops are merely an extension of our employment.
Never again will we crack a philosophy book, bone up on our physics, or peer backward into history. Gone are the days of Plato, Einstein, and Churchill. Some few of us may retain a masochistic penchant for learning, but the majority of us will lock the memories of our old textbooks in the attics of our minds, to gather dust and disintegrate.
Media
Ultimately we are left with a mental chasm where economic knowledge should be, and neither culture nor education arms us with a desire or motive to cross it. The result is a kind of monetary mysticism – a nebulous and fragmented vision of our economy that fails to comprehend it as a whole. Without knowing where tax dollars come from, or how, or why, and without understanding the stock market or the banking industry, the interlocking mechanisms of the system are never fully understood.
Like the Wizard of Oz, the subject of economics is, at first, thoroughly intimidating. Until the curtain is drawn back to reveal the simple foundations, we can only wonder and tremble under terrifying illusions. Failing to dispel these illusions, and instead feeding them, is a failure of our news media.
Emotion sells papers, and fear is an easy emotion to invoke in an ignorant throng. Like stage magicians, both demagogues and talk show hosts prefer a stupefied audience. That politicians wield the sword of misinformation unashamedly is no surprise, but a complicit news media is a travesty. Still, providing accurate information to an uninformed public may be more difficult than one imagines. It could be that our national drought of economic acumen is itself the cause of our arid news agencies. If a population believes in magic, one can hardly teach them science.
Wrap up
Perhaps I am off the reservation, and these melancholy lamentations have no place in a column on economics. But to my mind, our current economic woes and our substandard education are tightly intertwined. Perhaps it is unavoidable; perhaps the critical mass of historical blindness and intellectual laziness has been reached, and the resulting cascade failure is as unstoppable as a descending avalanche. The irony is that it is precisely this alchemy of complacency and ignorance that history has repeatedly cautioned us would inevitably culminate in the tearing down of any democracy from within.
Plato’s disdain for democracy was born of his belief that the majority are not capable of, nor interested in, understanding the intricacies and tactics necessary to helm the Ship of State. He feared that the people would vote capriciously and ferociously for charisma and honeyed language, but would not have the mental discipline to properly analyze policy.
Ben Franklin, after the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, was queried by a passing woman, “What have we got – a democracy, or a monarchy?” To which he famously replied “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Did Franklin fear a military takeover from a hostile nation? Or was he, like Plato, vexed with the nagging doubt that a smug and well-fed majority would unknowingly trade away our Constitution for a rebate check?