Europe's school books demonise enterprise

> Europe's school books demonise enterprise
>
> By Stefan Theil
>
> Published: January 7 2008
>
> There has been much debate over the ways in which historical ideology
> is passed on to the next generation – over Japanese textbooks that
> downplay the Nanjing massacre, Palestinian textbooks that feature maps
> without Israel and new Russian guidelines that require teachers to
> acclaim Stalinism. Yet there has been almost no analysis of how
> countries teach economics.
>
> In France and Germany, schools have helped ingrain a serious aversion
> to the market economy. In a 2005 poll, just 36 per cent of French
> citizens said they supported the free enterprise system. In Germany,
> support for socialist ideals is running at all-time highs: 47 per cent
> in 2007 versus 36 per cent in 1991. In both countries, attempts at
> economic reform have been routinely blocked by a consensus against
> policies considered "pro-market". Might some of this be traced to the
> ideas instilled at school? In a project for the German Marshall Fund,
> I analysed French, German and US high-school curricula and textbooks
> for their coverage of the economy, the welfare state, entrepreneurship
> and globalisation.
>
> "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 Histoire du XXe siècle,
> a text memorised by French high-school students as they prepare for
> entrance exams to prestigious universities. Start-ups, the book tells
> students, are "audacious enterprises" with "ill-defined prospects".
> Then it links entrepreneurs with the technology bubble, the Nasdaq
> crash and massive redundancies across the economy. Think "creative
> destruction" without the "creative".
>
> In another widely used text, a section on innovation does not mention
> any entrepreneur or company. Instead, students read a treatise on
> whether technological progress destroys jobs. Another briefly mentions
> an entrepreneur – a Frenchman who invented a new tool to open oysters
> – only to follow with an abstract discussion of whether the modern
> workplace is organised along post-Fordist or neo-Taylorist lines. In
> several texts, students are taught that globalisation leads to
> violence and armed resistance, requiring a new system of world
> governance. "Capitalism" is described as "brutal", "savage" and
> "American". French students do not learn economics so much as a highly
> biased discourse about economics.
>
> German textbooks emphasise corporatist and collectivist traditions and
> the minutiae of employer-employee relations – a zero-sum world where
> one loses what the other gains. People who run companies are
> caricatured as idle, cigar-smoking plutocrats. They are linked to
> child labour, internet fraud, mobile phone addiction, alcoholism and
> redundancies. Germany's rich entrepreneurial history is all but
> ignored.
>
> A typical social studies text titled FAKT has a chapter on "What to do
> against unemployment". Instead of describing how companies create
> jobs, it explains how the jobless can join self-help groups and
> anti-reform protests "in the tradition of the East German Monday
> demonstrations" (which in 1989 helped topple the communist
> dictatorship). The text concludes with a long excerpt from the
> platform of the German Union Federation, including the 30-hour working
> week, retirement at 60 and redistribution of work by splitting
> full-time into part-time jobs. No market alternative is taught. FAKT
> blames unemployment on computers and robots – a recurring theme in the
> German books.
>
> Describing globalisation, another text has sections headed "Revival of
> Manchester Capitalism", "Brazilianisation of Europe" and "Return of
> the Dark Ages". India and China are successful, the book explains,
> because they practise state ownership and protectionism, while the
> freest markets are in impoverished sub-Saharan Africa. Like many
> French and German books, it suggests students learn more by contacting
> the anti-globalisation group Attac.
>
> It is no surprise that the continent's schools teach through a
> left-of-centre lens. The surprise is the intensity of the anti-market
> bias. Students learn that companies destroy jobs, while government
> policy creates them. Globalisation is destructive, if not
> catastrophic. Business is a zero-sum game. If this is the belief
> system within which most students develop intellectually, is it any
> wonder French and German reformers are so easily shouted down?
>
>
>
> The writer is Newsweek's European economics editor. Reproduced with
> permission from Foreign Policy #164 (January/February 2008)
> www.foreignpolicy.com. Copyright 2008, Carnegie Endowment for
> International Peace
>
> Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
>
>
>