Economcis indocrtination

Stefan Theil, Newsweek's European economics editor, has an article - Europe's Philosophy of Failure - in the January/February 2008 issue of Foreign Policy outlining what passes for economics in some French and German schools. Theil opens his article with,

In France and Germany, students are being forced to undergo a dangerous indoctrination. Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias.

As far as France is concerned Theil writes,

"Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer," asserts the three-volume Histoire du XXe siècle, a set of texts memorized by countless French high school students as they prepare for entrance exams to Sciences Po and other prestigious French universities. The past 20 years have "doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise," the text continues. Because the 21st century begins with "an awareness of the limits to growth and the risks posed to humanity [by economic growth]," any future prosperity "depends on the regulation of capitalism on a planetary scale." Capitalism itself is described at various points in the text as "brutal," "savage," "neoliberal," and "American."

I would guess that being "American" is capitalism greatest sin. But Germany is little better,

Germans teach their young people a similar economic narrative, with a slightly different emphasis. The focus is on instilling the corporatist and collectivist traditions of the German system. Although each of Germany’s 16 states sets its own education requirements, nearly all teach through the lens of workplace conflict between employer and employee, the central battle being over wages and work rules. If there’s one unifying characteristic of German textbooks, it’s the tremendous emphasis on group interests, the traditional social-democratic division of the universe into capital and labor, employer and employee, boss and worker. Textbooks teach the minutiae of employer-employee relations, workplace conflict, collective bargaining, unions, strikes, and worker protection. Even a cursory look at the country’s textbooks shows that many are written from the perspective of a future employee with a union contract. Bosses and company owners show up in caricatures and illustrations as idle, cigar-smoking plutocrats, sometimes linked to child labor, Internet fraud, cell-phone addiction, alcoholism, and, of course, undeserved layoffs.

Globalisation is another hot topic all round the world. In student workbooks on globalization in Germany, students get to read about a number of different topics,

One such workbook includes sections headed "The Revival of Manchester Capitalism," "The Brazilianization of Europe," and "The Return of the Dark Ages." India and China are successful, the book explains, because they have large, state-owned sectors and practice protectionism, while the societies with the freest markets lie in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Like many French and German books, this text suggests students learn more by contacting the antiglobalization group Attac, best known for organizing messy protests at the annual G-8 summits.

One wonders what effect this has on the upcoming generations of voters in France and Germany. Politicians in democracies are in the business of agreeing with the preferences of the majority of their constituents, that's what gets them into power. So if future voters maintain the biases they have been taught this will continue to affect both election and policy outcomes in these countries.

It is worth noting that the Nobel Prize winning economist Edmund Phelps argues that attitudes and mind-sets affect the economic outcomes of a country. In Phelp's view attitudes towards responsibility, markets, work, and risk-taking are significant factors in explaining the variation in countries' actual economic performance. More so, in fact, than the factors which economists' normally consider, things like social spending, tax rates, and labour-market regulation etc. Europe's economic problems may not be quickly reversed.