Classroom Politics
Further to comments on the ideological shaping of young minds, Newsweek’s European economics editor, Stefan Theil, casts an eye over some of France’s remarkably loaded school textbooks.
“Economic growth imposes a hectic form of life, producing overwork, stress, nervous depression, cardiovascular disease and, according to some, even the development of cancer,” asserts the three-volume Histoire du XXe siècle, a set of texts memorized by countless French high school students as they prepare for entrance exams to… prestigious French universities. The past 20 years have “doubled wealth, doubled unemployment, poverty, and exclusion, whose ill effects constitute the background for a profound social malaise,” the text continues. Because the 21st century begins with “an awareness of the limits to growth and the risks posed to humanity [by economic growth],” any future prosperity “depends on the regulation of capitalism on a planetary scale.” Capitalism itself is described at various points in the text as “brutal,” “savage,” “neoliberal,” and “American.” This agitprop was published in 2005, not in 1972.
When French students are not getting this kind of wildly biased commentary on the destruction wreaked by capitalism, they are learning that economic progress is also the root cause of social ills… The ministry mandates that students learn “worldwide regulation as a response” to globalization… The overall message is that economic activity has countless undesirable effects from which citizens must be protected… And just in case they missed it in history class, students are reminded that “cultural globalization” leads to violence and armed resistance, ultimately necessitating a new system of global governance.
French students… do not learn economics so much as a very specific, highly biased discourse about economics. When they graduate, they may not know much about supply and demand, or about the workings of a corporation. Instead, they will likely know inside-out the evils of “la McDonaldisation du monde” and the benefits of a “Tobin tax” on the movement of global capital. This kind of anti-capitalist, anti-globalization discourse isn’t just the product of a few aging 1968ers writing for Le Monde Diplomatique; it is required learning in today’s French schools.
If, as Theil suggests, students are being steered towards an absurdly loaded outlook and zero-sum thinking, one has to wonder what impact this may have, not only on the individuals concerned, but on the economic performance of the country more generally. Teaching teenagers that capitalism causes cardiovascular disease and “according to some, even the development of cancer” hardly seems a recipe for inspiring the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, or for instilling rationality and a sense of proportion.
France is unlikely to matter much longer. Even with Sarkozy at the helm, they’re too socialistic, too entitlement-minded, too infertile, and too willing to cede their country to their Muslim immigrants.
The next 20 years are going to be interesting:-(.
Jason,
As Theil argues later in the article,
“This bias has tremendous implications that reach far beyond the domestic political debate in these two countries. These beliefs inform students’ choices in life. Taught that the free market is a dangerous wilderness, twice as many Germans as Americans tell pollsters that you should not start a business if you think it might fail… The loss to Europe’s two largest economies in terms of jobs, innovation, and economic dynamism is severe.
Attitudes and mind-sets, it is increasingly being shown, are closely related to a country’s economic performance. Edmund Phelps, a Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate, contends that attitudes toward markets, work, and risk-taking are significantly more powerful in explaining the variation in countries’ actual economic performance than the traditional factors upon which economists focus, including social spending, tax rates, and labour-market regulation.”
Fortunately none of those French kids will ever do anything more siginificant than serve coffee in an English Starbucks so it doesn’t matter what they learn.
It is worrisome, and it does matter. Ignorance of this sort when combined with the rest of France’s problems could lead to an increase in violence within the country, and perhaps an expansion of that violence outside of France’s borders.
France has an odd divide between its ultra-lefty intelligentsia, and its many extremely successful international corporations- fortunately there are many people in France who understand economics, but they work for companies, not the government or educational institutions.
It’s hard to tell how representative the textbooks in question are and it’s not entirely clear how many students are exposed to them, but that *any* school textbook should include such portentous overstatement is difficult to excuse. I guess this is what happens when subjects become fused with “social studies” – and with the outlook so often associated with it. It’s odd, at least to me, how capitalism is rarely depicted in the way I’d imagine most people actually experience it. But then, examples of people risking their savings to start a business and subsequently employing, say, 20 people, who then have a livelihood, doesn’t sit too well with the model being advanced.
The authors of those textbooks are obviously ignoring some of the side effects of France’s oppressive government regulations, which can, themselves, cause a little overwork and stress on the part of business owners, as David Frum noted in an article in the National Post a few months ago: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=c3f80585-652b-4cca-b10e-9da3bd7253cf
Steven,
In not unrelated news…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1719875.ece
and,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19961107/ai_n14080045
“…in a carefully packaged set of articles, the Figaro, a staunchly pro-government newspaper… has admitted the scale of France’s problem, and Britain’s gain. No fewer than 1,200 French companies, it says, have set up operations of one kind or another on the other side of the Channel. In a delicate turn of phrase it describes France as the ‘third largest foreign investor in Britain, after the United States and the Netherlands’.”
Saturday Links
Answer the questions and find your candidate, here.An ad Ms. Magazine doesn’t want you to see. PowerlineIf you think US corporate tax rates are too low, read this at Surber.The taxpayer is helping to underwrite the Countrywide buy-out.French textbooks: go