Intellectual diversity is a good thing. UA's Economics dept includes liberals, conservatives,and libertarians. Let's have that dept rather than the Philosophy dept teach high school economics. The Phil 101 course is problematic because it lacks intellectual diversity. And for many students it will be their only exposure to economics. Don't they deserve to hear the range of viewpoints in contemporary economics? Instead students are being given only the Koch view.
Dr. McKenna is correct in noting that not all folks associated with the Freedom Center are libertarians. The problem, however, is that 100% of those involved with the high school economics course are. And they are eager to push their political agenda onto young students. Thats right out of the Koch/Kendrick playbook. Dave Schmidtz and his wife Cathleen Johnson control this course as well as the 3 graduate courses to train teachers. Dr. Johnson is not a regular faculty member hired through an open search requiring support across the whole department. Rather she is staff hired by her husband. My issue is that Schmidtz alone controls this course and hes teaching it from a slanted perspective. While hes a good philosopher (his PhD is in philosophy not Economics), the UA has a large number of actual PhDs in Economics. Our history department teaches history, our math department teacher math. Why is the Philosophy Department and now the Department of Moral Science teaching intro economics to high school students? The answer is simple: if the Econ department did, they would ensure a balanced approach and people from multiple perspectives would be involved. By allowing one personSchmidtzto control the course, only his perspective is presented. As McKenna says the course and the textbook lean in a direction favorable to libertarians and others who are right-leaning. See https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-handmaiden-of-entrepreneurship for a review of the text used in the class. Im happy to have the libertarian perspective included in a survey course, but intro economics needs to focus on mainstream economic ideas from multiple perspectives. It should be neither right nor left wing. Lets leave the teaching of economics to the Economics Department.
Recent Comments