it’s the exact opposite of what all those Gradgrindian businessman[sic] want - rote-learning of specific skills and enforcement of work discipline.

What businessmen exactly? This doesn’t correlate with my experiences at all - imhe critical thinking and ability to learn are the priorities for businessmen.

Given that, and the great breadth rather than great depth of learning the wide range of subjects implies, it’s the exact opposite of what all those Gradgrindian businessman want - rote-learning of specific skills and enforcement of work discipline. These last are certainly important to earning a good living and so have to be taught sometime and somewhere, but man does not live by bread alone.

I think everybody should learn history, as much of it as they can bear, and a language (Mandarin would be great, and might well be my next language, but any will do). Then, I agree with learning some base in economic frameworks as you suggest. I think the parts you suggest should be spread out with history and language being for the length of the entire course.

I think, really, that what students learn at university is not ultimately terribly important as long as they learn whatever it is well, and the whole experience doesn’t destroy their natural curiosity and interest in the world, or leave them sure that they’ve learned all there is to know.

‘Systems of thought’ vs. ‘a bunch of interesting topics’ - the former is obviously (or, obviously from the point of view of older people who have learned about and regret the frightening gaps in their own education) more valuable to have a grasp of and seems like a far better use of the limited time students are up at the university. But to be honest the majority of students commencing their university careers find abstract topics boring or baffling and do much better accumulating a good range of interesting niche knowledge and skills first, and joining them together as a system later on and independently.

All that said I think it would be both useful and interesting for most people to learn something about the Enlightenment and about Romanticism.

I don’t think I’ve criticised ‘economic principles’ courses here or anywhere else. I think ‘economic principles’ are the most important part of the course - economic thinking if you will and that the rest is the box of tools to operationalise the principles or to further analysis.

I don’t mean students of the kind of intro course I’m talking about should read Smith - they could if they wanted as some special assignment for assessment or whatever, but I’m talking about them being taught the ideas and their power.

“Is there something fundamental you think we’re doing wrong?”

Well I’m not sure if teachers are particularly to blame, but the culture of the profession is pretty terrible I’d say in that the connections between things are simply left out. If you read Marshall, Keynes or pretty much any book of economic theory before WWII you will find careful discussion of whether or not the particular techniques that are deployed are justified, what their weaknesses are and strategies to minimise the problems. Hicks’ stuff in Value and Capital about making a risky getaway with perfect competition is a terrific case in point. If you don’t know what passage I’m talking about, say so and I’ll quote it.

That simply doesn’t happen any more. Published articles and often books simply plough on with the technique without any regard for the question of whether this particular effort is worth it or not. A field like strategic trade theory gets going without any careful consideration, with virtually no commentary from any of its practitioners of the kind that Hicks employed in explaining his choice of perfect competition in Value and Capital.

And then latter on people say “well it didn’t amount to much, but we couldn’t have known that in advance”. This is Krugman’s line. Perhaps that’s so, but it might have been worthwhile to give it just a few column inches before the event.

And one has completely bizarre fields develop like real business cycles.

These are my worst complaints, but the post is about another lacuna which is pretty important, namely that what it is that economists do is no longer regarded as solving those economic problems that look most prospective of solutions (better legal procedure would be an excellent example). Rather economics is that activity which uses certain tools and strategies. To me the subject matter and the commonsensical purposes should govern the methods, not visa versa.

Also, did you mean literally that students should read Smith and Ricardo in a principles course? I’m all for including a history of economics subject in a degree program (indeed I have a vested interest in it), or including Smith and Ricardo in a subject on the history of modern liberal thought, which might be part your broader ‘Modern Greats’ program. But I don’t want to have students reading Smith and trying to get a systematic grasp on the theory of markets simultaneously.

I expect a fair bit of your philosophy studies would have been political philosophy.

No, that came later.

Epistemology and philosophy of mind were where I focused. I also did a major in psychology.

I also did some a fair bit of philosophy of science, some philosophy of language and a bit of ethics. Ethics was the most difficult — at the time I wasn’t sure it was possible to say anything sensible. As for normative political philosophy I thought it was built entirely on naive assumptions and prejudice — a complete waste of time. I think I may have decided that it was all about power.

But graduating didn’t prevent me from reading and thinking. And eventually I did develop an interest in political theory.

Mate, I went to the westiest worst comprehensive state school going, BUT - like you - I was good at, and LOVED, Maths: YOU (like me) already know the entire Greek alphabet and the sounds that go with each letter. I have been teaching myself Ancient Greek on the back of only my Maths education and uni History courses.

You would have NO trouble.

Ancient Greek is just so exciting, because it (and NOT Latin) is the source of all our western words and concepts about science, philosophy, ethics, philosophy, emotion, blah, blah, blah.

If you live in Sydney, perhaps we could start a redaing group!

I’m not sure I can do such a great job of defending what I’ve said, but I still think it’s true. One of the things implicit - and at one place expressed in the post - is the idea of being ‘ready’ for something. I recall a lesson our science teacher gave his year 11 or perhaps year 12 kids which was along the lines of ‘all I’ve taught you is wrong’.

One could take some of the subjects I’ve mentioned and say they should be taught in school. Maybe they should be. I have no objection to their being so taught. But in my experience of teaching of both economics and law in schools the subject is not really taught as a discipline, but rather as a bunch of interesting topics. In economics at high school you might do a project on banks, or the car industry or consumers. In Legal Studies you might learn ‘your rights’. But you’re not typically introduced to a system of thought.

Philosophy - or much of it - is such a rarefied subject that as an undergraduate you often think you get it, but you actually don’t. I remember when I did ‘doubt and certainty’ in Philosophy 1 at ANU I wrote a silly essay in which I introduced some killer argument about doubt - like how do I know I’m not dreaming - then argued that I couldn’t know, and went on to argue that we should forget the whole subject since it got us nowhere. In some ways I think that’s an OK response to some of the formal arguments - in Descartes for instance - but it’s pretty damn shallow. And it doesn’t really get one anywhere in terms of understanding the world.

I’m not really sure I understand the arguments today. But for me the concerns of academic philosophy proper are often too abstruse to help one ruminate constructively on the things that life and study throws up.

Then again Don, I may well be wrong, but I expect a fair bit of your philosophy studies would have been political philosophy. And from what I’ve read of political philosophy, I’m wondering if it’s not closer to rhetoric (I’m not using the word in a disparaging way) than other branches of philosophy.

Latin has an attraction to me because of French. I am also possibly deterred from learning Ancient Greek on account of its alphabet being co-opted to torture me in multivariate integral calculus.

Fuck the Latin!! Dopey derivative wogs that the Romans were! Ancient Greek is the window to western civilisation, dude.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/01/04/cultural-elites-dont-exist-study-finds/#comment-424782

Interestingly enough, this sort of stuff comes up all the time. You, an economist by training, say economics to be part of the standard curriculum. Several books on computer science I have read think that programming will become part of the curriculum. I have seen similar cases made for every subject I studied in highschool.

I think that there is no amount of understanding that cannot be improved. I am forever stumbling over yet another way of thinking, another metaphor, another methodology, another subject. It is fascinating but at the same time disheartening. As I often say to people: computer science is about the limits of computing, but programming is about the limits of humans. I am acutely aware of how stupid I really am whenever I find a new way of thinking.

It was better put by the most famous doctor (short of House): Ars longa, vita brevis, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile.

I’d like to learn Latin someday. Mandarin would probably be a useful skill too.

Philosophy is very intriguing for undergrads, but I reckon they’re not ready for the full on thing

As an undergrad I was so intrigued by philosophy that I stuck with it all the way to honours.

So I’m curious. What do you think the full on thing is?