Program of the Joint Council on Economic Education: Economists and Educators Join Forces

Abstract

The case for economics in the schools is made of the same stuff as the case for democracy itself. The logic is inexorable, and its import in today's situation is alarming. Democracy-and this we have on the very highest authority-means government by the people. But the affairs of government, in large and increasing measure, are economic affairs. To be sure, they have political and other overtones, but no one who casts his glance even casually over the range of matters with which modern governments have to deal will doubt that these matters are economic in substance or in effect. Look for a moment: money, credit, commerce, corporations, tariffs, quotas, foreign aid, development, monopoly, fair trade, farm support, small business, oil pro-rates, highways, rails, communications, private power, public power, inflation, employment, management-labor relations, distribution of income, education, health, public debt-and taxes. The simple business of living in the United States in our age calls increasingly upon men to participate actively with other men in the gigantic undertaking of collective governmental decision-making on a vast array of complex economic problems and issues. It is demanded of these men that they have economic understanding. The stakes, to put the matter bluntly, are the survival of democracy and human freedom. Freedom will not remain if democracy expires, and democracy will not last beyond the day when it fails to discharge the political-economic tasks which we ask it to perform. Remember, democracy is government of and by the people, and capacity of the people to perforrn will set the level of performance which it is possible for democracy to attain.