Fall 2002, Volume 7 Number 3

Table of Contents

Corporate Influence On High School Economics Classes...

Every year, over one million high-school students, about half of all graduates, take an economics course-usually in their senior year. Thirteen states, including California, New York, Texas, and Florida, require economics for high-school graduation. Course content varies between states, ranging from “Free Enterprise” in Louisiana to a consumer education option in Illinois. Most people are not aware of how decisions about these courses are made, but corporate foundations, particularly those with an extreme conservative bent, have paid close attention. Textbooks, classroom activities, websites, and new national standards depend increasingly on corporate donors whose ideological influence often goes unrecognized. With national economics testing due to  begin in 2005, economics course content is likely to swing even further toward a “free-market” ideology.

 A CORPORATE CURRICULUM 

When high-school economics courses were first introduced in many states during the 1970s and 1980s, publishers filled the textbook void. At the same time, corporations and nonprofit organizations, often working together, stepped in with a wide range of supplementary readings, classroom activities and, in recent years, websites.

Some of these materials are blatantly self-serving corporate promotions. For example, the McDonald's video, Great Breaks: Taking Charge of Your Future, shows the “importance of the skills and discipline learned through one's first job.” Seemingly more credible materials are offered through privately-funded, nonprofit organizations such as Junior Achievement, which claims to reach four million U.S. students every year with its “free enterprise message of hope and opportunity.” Junior Achievement offers a kindergarten through 12th-grade economics curriculum with a high-school economics course taught by business executives. UPS, Exxon-Mobil, Goldman Sachs, and New York Life Insurance are among the corporations that have provided large grants to Junior Achievement. Kraft Foods is the largest single provider of volunteer economics instructors.

The Foundation for Teaching Economics (FTE), a nonprofit organization endorsed by Junior Achievement, also offers classroom activities. In 2001, more than 2,000 teachers participated in FTE's week-long teacher training workshops thanks to foundation and corporate funding, including support from two of the largest donors to     right-wing causes, the Coors family and Richard Scaiffe (heir to the Mellon oil and banking fortune). The FTE  offers internships for teachers, primarily at conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the National Taxpayers Union. It also uses an “Economics of Water and the Environment” curriculum funded by Coca-Cola and written by the Political Economy Research Center, a Montana-based research organization that has led opposition to the Endangered Species Act and the Superfund. The FTE's environmental workshops want teachers to reject “old myths” that “only government is big enough to solve environmental problems,” in favor of  “new understandings” that "clearly defined property rights and market transactions can provide environmental quality.”

 Through FTE programs, students and teachers-in-training receive a one-sided, pro-market message that does little to encourage a critical analysis of today's important economic policy issues. FTE materials support the group's  mission of training teachers to “understand the value of free markets at work,” while consistently opposing government intervention when markets cause problems such as growing economic inequality or environmental  destruction. The FTE  assesses the effectiveness of its programs on the basis of how much teachers changed their “understanding of government’s role.”

 The group most influential in pre-college economics is the National Council on Economic Education (NCEE), the largest provider of curriculum materials for use in kindergarten through 12th grade. The NCEE has successfully urged states to incorporate economics into their social studies curricula and to establish separate economics courses as well. It also created a network of councils in all 50 states as well as more than 200 affiliated university centers for training primary and secondary school teachers.

Although the NCEE has worked in partnership with Junior Achievement and the FTE, its course materials are less overt in promoting the corporate agenda. However, it receives generous support from corporations such as State Farm Insurance, International Paper, NASDAQ, and UPS. The NCEE's website is well stocked with lesson plans, current events articles, and a growing list of publications. These classroom materials actively engage students in cooperative group projects with clever titles such as “Great Economic Mysteries” and “Hey, Mom! What's for Breakfast?”

On occasion, the conflict of interest between the subject matter and the funding source is obvious. For example, the NCEE's Stock Market Game curriculum is sponsored by the Securities Industry Association, a trade group representing banks, brokers, and mutual fund companies. Teacher instructions and student activities give the mistaken impression of equal ownership of stocks across income groups, and downplay negative consequences such as stock market bubbles. (See Mark Maier, “Teaching About Stocks-For Fun and Propaganda,” D&S, March/April 2001.)

Usually, however, corporate influence is more subtle, noticeable in what is left out of the curriculum. For example, Bank of America pitched in over $3 million for the NCEE's Financial Fitness for Life, attractive teaching materials coauthored by accomplished but decidedly conservative economics educator Mark Schug. The first lesson plan tempts students, “How to Really Be a Millionaire,” based on the content of two bestsellers, Getting Rich in America and The Millionaire Next Door. The “millionaire” approach reinforces unrealistic expectations among many youth. A recent poll by Junior Achievement found that nearly one quarter of teens believe they will have $1 million in assets by age 40, while 15% think they will earn more than $1 million a year. Aside from being unlikely (the actual proportion of current million-dollar earners is about one in a thousand), the curriculum downplays the impact of inheritance and the earnings of corporate executives, both important starting points for understanding the U.S. economy.

A more complete curriculum would ask students to think critically about the “me first” approach endorsed by Financial Fitness for Life. In addition to warning against credit scams, a personal finance course should examine why there is pervasive consumerism and unnecessary advertising in the U.S. economy. The curriculum should introduce students to empirical facts about income and wealth distribution, pointing out the role of race, sex, unionization, and executive compensation-information ignored entirely in “How to Really be a Millionaire” and in Lesson Six of  Financial Fitness for Life, “Why some jobs pay more than others.”

Other NCEE materials repeatedly teach about the benefits of markets, and the problems associated with government intervention. Debates usually feature situations in which students and non-economist teachers are already likely to favor government intervention such as pollution abatement and reducing male-female wage differences. In these activities, students read an eloquent argument for free-market solutions that is likely to challenge their pro-government interventionist predilections. Equally strong arguments critical of market outcomes would not only make the lessons less one-sided, but would also prepare students to understand current policy debates about discrimination, environmental regulation, and workers' rights.

STANDARDS TAKE OVER

In 1994, Congress mandated development of national economic standards, and the U.S. Department of Education designated the NCEE to lead the effort. In 1997, with assistance from the FTE, AT&T, and others, the NCEE produced the Voluntary National Content Standards, a list of 20 standards and accompanying teaching strategies for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The economics standards were published with little fanfare, a remarkable non-event in comparison with other disciplines in which standards evoked furious debate. The standards reflect the free-market bias shared by most economists, tempered with a nod toward occasional federal government intervention to prevent unemployment or inflation. Consider Standard #13: “Income for most people is determined by the market value of the productive resources they sell. What workers earn depends primarily on the market value of what they produce and how productive they are.” The standard reflects the majority viewpoint among economists but is contradicted by historical facts. The standard's narrow focus on paid work leaves out wealth, a major source of U.S. economic inequality, and focuses on market transactions, which devalue unpaid household labor. The standard also attributes people's incomes to productivity, whereas real-world studies show that incomes are affected by racism, sexism, and workers' bargaining power. Practically the only published criticism of this bias came from the journal Feminist Economics, where economists outside the mainstream of the AEA pointed out that the standards' focus on free-market principles causes the curriculum to overlook issues of gender, race, class, the environment, and unequal development between rich and poor countries. Although the standards are voluntary, they affect most published classroom materials.

Junior Achievement keys all publications and website activities to the standards. The content of future textbooks is also likely to be influenced by the standards, because textbooks must meet requirements in populous states where most sales will occur. One best-selling author reports rewriting his high-school economics textbook when Texas requested a more 'balanced' (read: less favorable) approach to labor unions.

As a result of mergers, there are now only four dominant publishers of pre-college economics textbooks; McGraw-Hill alone publishes four of the top 11 books. In 1999, BusinessWeek, a McGraw-Hill subsidiary and major contributor to the NCEE, published a 20-page supplement on NCEE's programs in its 70th anniversary issue. The NCEE is careful not to promote any one publisher's book, but as more schools require economics courses and textbooks, McGraw-Hill's support for the NCEE will clearly benefit the publisher's bottom line.

TESTING ON THE WAY

The existence of national standards makes it easier to include economics in future nationwide testing. Over half the states already include some economics content in their required social studies tests. Economics is also one of the fastest growing Advanced Placement (AP) test subjects. And, in 2005, the congressionally mandated National Assessment of Education Progress will begin testing 12th graders in economics, giving extensive media attention to the subject in the “Nation's Report Card” already distributed for reading, writing, math, science, and history. Under debate is whether the test's content should focus on the economics curriculum as reflected in the NCEE standards or on practical consumer finance topics taught in some states and favored by some teachers as more appropriate for pre-college students. Most likely, the NCEE standards-and their pro-market bias-will win out because they are already the basis for some state tests, and because the NCEE curriculum is used so widely, even in states like California that have not adopted the standards.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR ECONOMICS EDUCATION? 

Most economists and many (although certainly not all) historians and other social studies teachers differ in their approaches to economic education. Standard #5, for example, states that “When individuals, regions, and nations specialize in what they can produce at the lowest cost and then trade with others, both production and consumption increase.” As Pomona College economist Cecilia Conrad points out, “A historian is likely to ask, 'Whose production and whose consumption?' The economics standard suggests that everyone always gains from trade, but there are historical examples where the distribution of benefits from trade is unequal.” For example, suppose a high-school teacher wanted to analyze the World Trade Organization (WTO) in class. The national standards begin with a theoretical argument favoring free trade. But a teacher with a history or social studies background would be likely to ask why WTO rules protect patents, but not the environment or workers' rights. Although national testing may push instructors toward the NCEE's ideologically driven standards, teachers can challenge students to reflect critically on the choices they will face in the real world. Corporate-sponsored resources provide a wide range of attractive, ready-to-go classroom handouts, so teachers strapped for course materials may want to use them as a starting point. The one-sided materials in Financial Fitness for Life might be used in combination with sources recommended by the PBS program Affluenza (www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/). Also, students might be asked to assess the authors' biases in Junior Achievement and FTE materials.

Moreover, teachers can adopt alternatives to the “free market” curriculum. Unfortunately, only a few left-of-center organizations are producing curriculum materials for high-school economics courses, and none receive the kind of funding available to the NCEE, FTE, or Junior Achievement. Nonetheless, teachers can obtain many thoughtful lesson ideas for little or no cost. United for a Fair Economy (www.ufenet.org) sells books and workshop kits; Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org) offers classroom activities, including some for lower grades; the Center for Economic Conversion (www.conversion.org) offers a full curriculum on sustainable economics; and other materials are available from the Human Rights Resource Center (www.hrusa.org).

However, the corporations and foundations that support course materials from Junior Achievement, the FTE, and the NCEE have deep pockets. High-school economics courses already follow a largely-unrecognized conservative ideology, and without careful attention from teachers, economists, and interested citizens, students are likely to receive increasingly one-sided indoctrination in the "free market" point of view.

Mark Maier teaches economics at Glendale Community College in Glendale, California. He can be reached at mmaier@glendale.edu .

This article has been edited and reprinted by permission of Dollars & Sense, a progressive economics magazine based in Cambridge, MA. For subscriptions call 877-869-5762. For other inquiries, call 617-876-2434, or visit www.dollarsandsense.org.

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