http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2010/03/freakonomics-does-hayek-oh-my-how.html

Do we need economics at all in high school?

Having not read Constitution of Liberty, I will take your word for it. But one thing I do know is that right through High School Civics/History/Social Studies/Commerce/Economics/Business syllabuses, there is never any presentation, let alone discussion, of liberalism. Everything is about Aborigines and refugees.

I have been shown many examples of historical documents and works of literature studied in both high school and university, where the main question posed by the teacher is

why do you think there is no mention of Indigenous Australians in this ‘text’?

Jeesus.

That standard adopted by Wolfers is a real worry. It is quite common for academics to have had dozens of papers published in the thousands of academic journals that now exist, without any of those papers saying anything particularly interesting at all, let alone profound. And then we have our JD Salingers. Most of the stuff filling up JSTOR nowadays is at best noise, and more likely pure junk.

Wolfers’ premise that something like how important a thinker is can only be settled by citations and that any more considered qualitative assessment is mere opinion is part of the problem I have with the Freakonomics pocket calculator poindexters. They are data fetishist. It’s also why they end up settling on such uninteresting questions as whether football referees racially discriminate and crap like that.

Tim R – Not that I can recall. Very much compliments and not substitutes.

Just hearsay, but I was under the impression Freakanomics was quite superficial.

As a lay-person non economist who reads economics from time to time I was interested in reading something deeper like Mises’ Human Action although I’ve heard it’s heavy going.

Just out of interest has there ever been a discussion on this blog as to who’s better/more important, Mises or Hayek?

While you are no doubt correct that Hayek’s work would be too subtle for high school kids – though it would have been a welcome addition to the syllabus back when the HSC offered the Advanced 3 Unit Economics – surely Road To Serfdom would be a godsend to Modern History students, especially when studying Weimar and Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, the welfare state and subsequent liberalizations.