Saving the Children-A Rant

The conception of economics education implicit in the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics is fundamentally at odds with what ought to be a primary goal of a liberal education: to teach students of all ages to treat all truth as provisional. Articulate the consensus, but also articulate questions about this consensus, questions coming from the very limitations of the consensus. One limitation is what is omitted-pollution is shortchanged, and sustainability gets nary a mention. Another is the retrogression the document reflects (e. g., the standard that interest rates are determined by flows of saving and investment). For 75 years, a better theory has been available-Keynes's General Theory-a cornerstone of which is that interest rates are determined in markets for stocks of financial assets.