A number of soon-t0-be exquisitely credentialed Harvard students staged a walk-out of Professor Greg Mankiw’s Economic 10 primer last week, in expression of solidarity with the OWS crowd. They wrote an open-letter explaining their actions to an admiring world:
A legitimate academic study of economics must include a critical discussion of both the benefits and flaws of different economic simplifying models. As your class does not include primary sources and rarely features articles from academic journals, we have very little access to alternative approaches to economics. There is no justification for presenting Adam Smith’s economic theories as more fundamental or basic than, for example, Keynesian theory.
The authors ask that Professor Mankiw “take their concerns and walk-out seriously.” Which would be easier to do, if one sensed that the students were in any way serious. Because one of his previous students – one that had actually bothered to sit through the course for its full term – authored a response, proving that some people, at least, understand the value of an education:
(The) authors of this letter are in for a treat: there’s plenty of Keynesian theory to come in the second semester of Ec 10. In fact, Mankiw is a great Keynes admirer, and once wrote, “If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the problems facing the economy, there’s little doubt that that economist would be John Maynard Keynes.” The only reason that these students have not yet studied the father of modern macroeconomics in Ec 10, of course, is that the first semester of the class is devoted to microeconomics.
He goes on to say that the first-years don’t have as full an appreciation of the coolly analytical elements of the “dismal science” as well as they do their feelings:
(They) seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what economics is. One lesson from the first day of Ec 10 that will stick with me for the rest of my life is learning to separate positive questions from normative ones. Most of the economics that we read about in the news involves normative questions (eg. Should Congress raise the marginal tax rate on the highest income bracket?) whereas most of what economists actually study involves positive questions (eg. What would happen if the marginal tax rate on the highest income bracket were raised?). Ec 10 is an introduction to the academic discipline of economics, and the vast majority of the course focuses on teaching students how to answer positive economics questions. Economics is not philosophy, and the primary goal of Ec 10 is not to teach students how to make the world a fair place.
The quest to cure cancer is a laudable goal, but the prospective oncologist does not start that journey with little more than a sense that cancer is, in and of itself, somehow unfair:
You can’t hold informed positions on these normative questions without being able to answer the positive ones, and you can’t answer the positive questions without a fundamental understanding of the principles of economics. But building this foundation takes time. Premeds don’t grumble that Life Science 1a does not qualify them to practice medicine; Ec 10 students should understand that the class will not equip them to fully understand the vast complexities of economic policy. Ec 10 builds a foundation to begin to answer these questions intelligently, but as in all academic disciplines, if you want to be an expert, you’ll have to invest more than one year of study.
Study, by the way, that ought to do more than reinforce adolescent preconceptions (especially at the rates that Harvard charges):
(Perhaps) what is most objectionable about this walkout is that students should not be opposed to being exposed to ideas that might conflict with their prior held beliefs. Indeed, this is largely the point of a liberal arts education, and if you go through college and never change your mind about anything, I would question how much you got out of your college education to begin with. But the very best courses are not merely ones that change our minds on specific issues; they are ones that change our understanding of the world and cause us to approach problems in novel ways.
Those walking out of Professor Mankiw’s course are expressing solidarity with the OWS squatters. They are all too successful in that goal:
Remarkably, these protesters have managed to connect their complaints of the pedagogy of Ec 10 with the Occupy movement and “the increasing economic inequality in America.” Because the protesters do not explicitly state their complaints, it is impossible to reconstruct their argument for this bizarre claim, so I can do little to refute it. Suffice it to say, one major criticism of the Occupy movement is that protesters do not generally seem to be well-informed on the economic issues they care so strongly about. Walking out of an economics lecture will do little to quell this stereotype.
Well, there are all kinds of stereotypes. The protestors have actually reinforced one; that too many Ivy League students believe that their policy preferences ought to be academically reinforced merely because they happen to hold them, regardless of how well they are grounded either in the real world of marketplace competition, or indeed in rational analysis.
Their respondent, on the other hand, has done his bit to demonstrate that for every rule, there is at least one exception. And that not every Ivy education is necessarily wasted on its beneficiaries, so long as university students are sufficiently careful to keep an open mind.
I would be tempted to add -even though I am not an Econ major- that our real-world history contains many examples reinforcing Smith’s work, and equally many demonstrating the flaws of the Keynesian system.
That action is like physics students demanding to learn string theory in their freshman year, before F= dp/dt.
I suggest that Harvard admissions go back over their admissions process to learn what went wrong in their selection of “the few”.
I know: “Mistakes were made.”
My undergraduate major was economics. I went through Econ 1A and 1B in the 1961-62 academic year. Just as at Harvard, we started with micro economics in the first semester and macro economics in the second semester. My professor was a fine hard drinking Irishman who’d been a big deal New Deal economist in Washington in the late 1930′s and early 1940′s. I always suspected he’d come to Southern California to teach partly to dry out. That said he was a fine professor, knew his economics and was a Keynesian at heart. The failure of Keynesian economics in the 1960′s hadn’t happened yet (of course it had failed in the 1930′s so the 1960′s failure was “two strikes’).
In any event Professor Ryan left a favorable impression on me. I probably had him for a least four different classes. He knew his stuff. When he learned in my junior year that I intended to go to law school he pulled me aside and urged me not to–I’d have a fine future as an economist etc, and besides “all lawyers do is handle divorces”.
Well perhaps. Economists have never been very good at predicting the future, and Professor Ryan’s view aside, I never handled a divorce!
But these young twits at Harvard have a vastly overinflated view of their importance and relevance in the world. ‘Twas only five months or so ago that they were staggering home from their high school senior prom.
For the take on this as reflected by the academic left see the folks at Crooked Timber in post by Henry Farrell (a George Wash Univ academic who was also a member of JournOlist, btw) entitled Occupy Greg Mankiw! @http://www.crrokedtimber.org
sorry– http://www.crookedtimber.org
Doesn’t Econ. 210 get into that stuff?
Dynamic economics applied to aggregate economic fluctuations and economic growth. Solving dynamic, stochastic rational expectation models using discrete time dynamic programming. Growth theory (neoclassical models, growth accounting, technical change, endogenous growth) using optimal control theory.
I attended Florida Institute of Technology, School of Aeronautics and enjoyed two years of Economics as a Junior and Senior with none other than Adjunct Prof. R.P. Lee.,Col., Retired USMC and former Marine Aviator. His curiculum consisted of intense study of the formula used on hundreds of graphs with elastic and in-elastic curves, supply and demand, price, cost and time. As a former USMC Air Wing Commander with air to ground fighter bombers, he was quite an entertaining instructor who never talked about airplanes in class. We concluded that Prof. Lee had some test pilot background as well be he never spoke of it. He erased the chalkboard with his hands and usually had two pair of glasses hanging from string around his neck. Short of stature with a flatop haircut, he was one hombre we learned not to mess with. He said prolifically in 1981, “if you don’t double your income every ten years, you won’t keep up.” I had my doubts then but now, 30 years after graduating with a BS in Air Commerce/Transportation Technology, I’d have to say he was right.
Were I their professor, I would accept their plea to “take their…walkout seriously,” and demonstrate my seriousness by locking the door behind them, and forwarding drop slips to Admissions.
Physics explains reactions to actions; maybe they’d be happier in that part of the campus.
You’re just too damned literal sarge, lighten up. After all, it’s not like it’s “The Children are Our Future” or anything…right?….right? Why do you think I consume “mass quantities” of Barbancourt? And here you thought the “I weep for the future” bit uttered by the obsequious maitre d’ in Ferris Bueller was just a throw-away line..
VX, I’m beginning to get a deeper appreciation every day of the statement Bill Cosby attributed to his own father: “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out. And it won’t matter to me because I can make another one that looks lust like you.”
If these ‘childern’ are our future, then I move we reboot with version 2.0.
It’s true that the future will be shaped by some of these children. However a large portion of them will never shape anything more significant than a couch cushion. I have a feeling most of the OWS followers fall into that latter category.
Like these? http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/11/rampaging-occupiers-attack-78-year-old-woman.php
A little extreme perhaps. I had a Physics teacher in High School who had the perfect response to such foolishness. When Senior skip day came around, he merely pulled a pop quiz which was easy in the extreme. The makeup quiz, on the other hand was a royal B*tch. For a grade of course.
The value of an Ivy League education is overblown quite badly. I’ve had to deal with grads of Harvard Law as well as some from supposed “cow colleges.” In every case I found I’d rather deal with the “Cow College” grads.
It’s ’cause us Cow College grads grew up shoveling the real stuff instead of spewing it out verbally, and unlike the Ivy Leaguers know that the only place BS is useful is when it’s coming out of the far end of the manure spreader…
Related, I think: the occupiers claimed they were not at fault, but too many others saw the reality AND stayed around to chat with officers …
WASHINGTON – District of Columbia police said Saturday that a driver will not be charged for striking three people taking part in an Occupy DC protest in downtown Washington.
Lt. Christopher Micciche of the D.C. police said the driver was not cited because he had a green light when his vehicle struck the three on Friday night.
He said witnesses told police that the three pedestrians “either ran toward or jumped in front of the moving vehicle.” He said one pedestrian jumped on the hood of the car. One of them was cited for being in the roadway.
“The protesters were apparently trying to block the roadway,” Micciche said. “It was essentially an accident where three individuals were injured but they were in violation by being in the roadway.”
Officer Araz Alali said Saturday that all three were transported to local hospitals and released, though Alali could not release their names or the name of the driver because a police report detailing the incident was not yet available Saturday evening.
Hundreds of protesters affiliated with Occupy DC shut down streets Friday near the city’s convention center in downtown, where a conservative group was gathering.
The male driver of the vehicle was traveling southbound on 7th Street NW at K Street NW when the accident occurred at about 10 p.m.
One protester, 29-year-old Jesse Folks of Riverdale, Md., told The Washington Post that he was standing in the street with other demonstrators near the convention center when the car “just gassed it into a bunch of people.”
“We were in the street, but this guy didn’t even give us a chance to get out of the way,” Folks said.
Micciche said witnesses provided a different account.
You will love this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1K1r_w8u38&feature=player_embedded
A guy I know who was a prosecutor in NY said that he saw 6 violations in that that he could take those people to court on.
Son, that’s exactly what life is going to do to you and your cohort; you’ll be standing around in the middle of the street, bleating about what you don’t like, and life is going to give you no chance to get out of the way.
Deer in the headlights, the whole herd of them. Yet smellier.
They had their chance to get out of the way when they saw him coming. They are just so used to their terror tactics getting them what they want that they didn’t think that anyone would dare to defy them.
I don’t even know where to begin… So I won’t.
Maybe later.
I can hardly wait for your apology and how the professor, the text, Harvard, the several states, and the US are all wrong and evil.
Here are a few more of interest:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20111104/ARTICLES/111109727/1350?Title=New-Occupy-site-Yountville-s-French-Laundry
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20111104/ARTICLES/111109813/1334/news?Title=Protester-gets-stuck-climbing-bicycle-obelisk
You know, walking out of class to protest is a bit like going to Walmart, filling your cart, checking out, then leaving everything behind. These kids have already paid their money, the best they can hope for is a 5 minute disruption of class as they file out. Anyone who stays behind gets more face-time with the professor, and if everyone leaves the professor gets to enjoy a free hour.
Of course if they were intelligent they wouldn’t be Liberals.
“These kids have already paid their money”…
Probably not. Mummy and Daddy paid, not the kiddies. They’re blowing money by walking out but likely haven’t lifted a finger to earn the money that’s paying for their ‘education.’