<p>I've said it before. The greatest pressure comes from other students rather than profs. Profs are not likely to call their students stupid. But students have no qualms in doing so. And they are the least likely to be aware that what they believe is not necessarily gospel truth or shared by "everybody." That certainly was my experience coming from a foreign country for college.
I went to college in the 60s and had profs who pretty much covered the spectrum in terms of being liberal/conservative, supporting the war and opposing it. In retrospect, I feel I learned from them all because they were willing to entertain different opinions. The only class I walked out of after a lecture was one in which the prof seemed to be a knee-jerk liberal. But the overwhelming majority of the students were liberal and at the same time very parochial. More than once I would say something and see my classmates' jaw drop while the prof remained imperturbable.</p>
<p>I have not read articles by academics about how stupid people who live in the red states are, though I have read plenty of those by self-anointed pundits along those lines.</p>
<p>"Profs are not likely to call their students stupid."</p>
<p>You're probably right. My experience as a teaching assistant and graduate student in the 70s left me thinking Professors often had enormous egos and could become petty and childish when challenged. The ones I knew were capable of anything. Maybe time has just darkened my memories.</p>
<p>My children have been taught to think for themselves and advised to pay close attention to what their Professors are like. Some are good and some are bad, but most expect you to repeat what they said rather than what you think.</p>
<p>"Adam Smith wrote about people like C. Wayne Andreas back in 1776. The theory assumes there needs to be a countervaling force to oppose that tendency."</p>
<p>I am saying that Adam Smith was writing his treatise at exactly such a time as the first Quaker in northern England was selling the first cannon to King George III to fight the colonial upstarts, thus ending the 20-year experiment in free market industrialism that was never to exist anywhere else in the world again. Not in the Old World, nor the new (where the rise of northern industrialism received virtually all of its capital formation from slave profits forced into their configuration by govenment enforcement of the Triangle Trade.)</p>
<p>The point is that the market system in the rest of the world is a subtext of power relationships, something that neo-liberals of whatever stripe find themselves unwilling to teach. A free market might be very efficient, and it may have been in northern England in 1760, but is not likely something you or I are ever likely to see.</p>
<p>Alternatives? How about a 10-course major - both micro- and macro-economics focusing on the systemic subversion of free market principles, beginning in 1776, analysis of "true" costs of production and consumption. the historic role of slavery in capital formation in the United States, the relationships between empires and markets, the destruction of intellectual capital in the 3rd world, the creation of the legal fiction of the corporation and its role in the destruction of free markets, and the role of the military in economic theory.</p>
<p>You may like or dislike such an approach, agree or disagree with it. That's fine. But let's not make believe there isn't another alternative</p>
<p>"Alternatives? How about a 10-course major - both micro- and macro-economics focusing on the systemic subversion of free market principles, beginning in 1776, analysis of "true" costs of production and consumption. the historic role of slavery in capital formation in the United States, the relationships between empires and markets, the destruction of intellectual capital in the 3rd world, the creation of the legal fiction of the corporation and its role in the destruction of free markets, and the role of the military in economic theory."</p>
<p>Now I think you're the one who has politics and power confused with economics. You have offered nothing more than a view of the things you don't like about the current economic system, not an alternative economic system. I don't like the way some people use rhetoric either, but that's not a reason to have nothing but courses on its abuse rather than on its theory and practice, is it?</p>
<p>No - what I am suggesting is an integrated theoretical exploration of how current economic systems work. It is not the job of economics (or any subject) to be utopian, but rather to be descriptive and explanatory. It is not the job of economics to offer "alternatives" to the way we live, but to help explain how we live. And it is certainly not the job of economics to try to justify the current way we live as the only possible one (what a "Popeian" 18th Century view that would be!)</p>
<p>What IS the theory and practice of current economic systems? What is the role of the military in economic and cultural formation, both historically and today? How are markets "opened"? Taking away public costs, are markets really efficient? (I know of at least 50 economists that suggest otherwise.) What is the role of the legal theory behind the corporation in a market system, or with a democratic polis? </p>
<p>You have made lots of assumptions about what I like and don't like. (I happen to believe the free market would be a GREAT idea.) Why do you take the rather leftist notion that it would be the job of an economics department to offer an "alternative"?</p>
<p>Sorry, I haven't made any assumptions about what you like, just notice the prejorative nature of the descriptions you give for the courses you think should be offered. </p>
<p>I don't really see what you describe as an alternative to current economic teaching. It's as if you believe economic theory should be taught only from the perspective of history and politics. The history of how that theory has changed iand even the way it's be misapplied in the past s useful (fascinating, actually), but that's only a course or two, not the whole curriculum. Another analogy? It would be as if you taught physics solely from the perspective of how people have used and misused it. Teach economic theory and practice as we best understand it as we do physics.</p>
<p>It's the absolute job of any academic area to offer alternatives. For that matter, that's normally where the alternatives come from, isn't it?</p>
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<p>Some are good and some are bad, but most expect you to repeat what they said rather than what you think.>></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<p>That's not my personal experience. Some do, but the better profs don't. Maybe we've been around different sets of profs. When I was researching schools for my S, I talked to a young prof at a prestigious LAC about her teaching experience. She expressed dismay that her students were unwilling to depart from the written text, to be critical of what they read (or heard from her).</p>
<p>"I don't really see what you describe as an alternative to current economic teaching. It's as if you believe economic theory should be taught only from the perspective of history and politics."</p>
<p>I don't believe there IS economic theory independent of its context and how it is played out in the lives of real people. Some economists do agree with me. (actually, lots do, starting with Nobel Prize winner Amrita Sen.) That's why it isn't physics. Others don't, which is why there could be other ways of teaching. But there doesn't exist, in the U.S. as far as I am aware, a program which isn't focused on the neo-liberal orthodoxy, even when it offers a critique of it.</p>
<p>You, for example, raised wonderful questions about Cuba, about which I know very little. I would like to know, for example, the extent to which Cuba's economy over the past 45 years has been shaped by economic embargoes. Would it look like China's otherwise, an economic miracle? And if so, what were the economic costs born by the United States and others in keeping Cuba the way it is. I'd like to know whether the Cuban public health miracle - the lowest infant mortality rate in Central and South American, and highest life expectancy -- is due to taking health care out of the market, or some other factor? Is this subject to economic analysis? (The population health group based - a team of economists and physicians based out of the University of Washington - suggest that the single largest determinant of good health, on a population basis, is the smallest possible divide between rich and poor.) Most of all, I'd like to know much more extensively about the role of government in capital formation, beginning in the 18th century, so that there could be actual economic analysis as to whether markets are in fact more efficient, or whether they are truly more efficient only when they are not free?</p>
<p>Come to think of it - going back to your Cuba example - I want to know "efficient for whom?"</p>
<p>"It's the absolute job of any academic area to offer alternatives. For that matter, that's normally where the alternatives come from, isn't it?"</p>
<p>Looks like we agree that the neo-liberal economics departments at U.S. universities aren't doing their jobs, don't we?</p>
<p>"Would it look like China's otherwise, an economic miracle?"</p>
<p>Oh, heavens, no. China's miracle began in the 80s when it abandoned Maoist economic policy and started emulating Hong Kong, what some say is the freest market in the world. We know from the before and after examples that a economy that is planned is generally a disaster and opened it becomes productive. </p>
<p>"I don't believe there IS economic theory independent of its context and how it is played out in the lives of real people." </p>
<p>Plenty do. Just don't confuse it with politics.</p>
<p>I haven't read any of the responses...but I'll respond to the OP.</p>
<p>It's funny that you can use stats and "consensus" to back any fact up. You say that colleges are dominated by liberalism, somehow purposely slanted that way...</p>
<p>How about looking at it from the angle that (and I'm only playing Devil's Advocate) academics are dominated by liberals because the educated people are the ones who are progressive and free-thinking. I mean, not too many colleges will hire (a generalization) the average NASCAR fan to teach game theory...you've got to have a Ph.D, and have studied for many years. Their education has turned them into liberals, instead of education being dominated by liberals.</p>
<p>Colleges and Universities thrive when ideas are shared. Perhaps conservatives have spent too much time banning and censuring books, arts and speech to feel comfortable in schools. Perhaps conservatives are less inclined to spend their time teaching when there are so many more profitable opportunities out there.</p>
<p>There are conservative colleges out there that have a faculty with a conservative philosophy, people just don't seem to want to go to them as much so colleges that want students don't adopt this approach. I think the free market works in this situation.</p>