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Post-Autistic Economics Network
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Student Essays on Post-Autistic Economicsposted April 2003 Economics Education in Countries Having
Different Conditions from the Developed World Mustafa Erdem Sakinç (Undergraduate in economics,
Middle East Technical University, Turkey) The PAE debate started with the
criticism of mainstream economics and its part in university education.
However as the debate spread through the world and expanded to consider the
practical areas of economics education, there occurrd
some differences because of the different conditions of countries in which
the debate was taking place. People
participating in the debate, should pay attention to these points because
these differences can enhance the debate and assist us in finding solutions
to the problems identified. Such a point of view should be the takeoff subject of the
debate in a country like Turkey. It is important to talk about the
subjectivity of economics education, which should be formed by not only
universal but also domestic economic thought and the current issues of the
country itself. Topics like interdisciplinary education and interactions
between different schools of economics would also be considered in the
context of this subjectivity theme.
Complaints about curriculums, the
deficiencies of education with regard to explaining the current economic
problems, and the distance between theory and the reality should all be
considered within the context of the particular country. Before exploring this topic, a short trip into history may
help to understand the importance of these remarks for the debate in Turkey.
In an article about the education of economics in Darülfünun
(today's İstanbul University) before the
reforms, in the journal named Kadro (an etatist, progressive journal which was very important for
the intellectual life in 1930s ) said that: "Subjects
have been explained with cosmopolitan views but not with national, domestic
economic process. Even this cosmopolitan way of thinking was not more than
repeating the thoughts of French professors and French manuals" What kind of economics education should have been followed
int those times according to this journal need not
concern us. However it is important for the current debate to realize that
the expression of this complaint is not new for Turkey (the article of Eyüp Özveren which has the
quotation above, shows that there was a much more dynamic atmosphere for the
debate in those times) and apart from the theoretical deficiencies and incapabilities, the problem also depends on some
structural reasons. And today, in a world dominated by globalization concepts
there is a sameness process in education of economics like any other topics.
It is necessary to develop a dynamic and highly perceptionalized
education which considers new structures, institutions, etc important. Aside
from the main topics of the debate, the geopolitical condition of Turkey and
its position in the world economy together with the cloudy ambience of the
time surely necessitates today an academic atmosphere having not an abstract
theoretical framework but rather one focused on concrete processes and
changes. This is a starting point like seventy years ago. It is required to expand the positional and locational difference of countries like Turkey introduced
above. Developing, under-developed, periphery, third world, however they are
named, countries in these categories have differences from the centre of the
system as a whole. They have low production per capita, low rates of
literacy, low daily calorie consumption, low average lifetime, low energy
consumption per capita, etc. and they do not have the basis for a strong
economy and they have weak connections between different sectors in the
economy. In brief, they can be named "low" and this is a datum for
our topic and forms the positional difference. Economics education which takes shape by considering this
basic difference, can only be successful if it has a dynamic understanding
especially in our era. Our era is important because there are tremendous
structural changes in it (like collapse of the social and entrepreneur state)
and economists which have the capability of research and creativity are
necessary. For example, the crisis of Turkey today is hard to understand with
current macro data and other theoretical tools, and as it deepens and
diffuses non economic areas it is impossible to realize. Therefore, we are
facing a three-legged problem, first one is the theoretical framework itself,
second is the mistakes appearing with its application due to the different
conditions in Turkey, and the third is it incapability to define changing
conditions. A frozen education, ending in itself, is a big contrast in
such a sample like Turkey. For a small example; the chronic inflation in
Turkey affects Turkish economy to its deepest roots, but its analysis has not
been reflected into the curriculum.
Likewise for other problems that Turkey has faced for many years.
Another important example is the distribution of income (which is a basic
principle for economics as a discipline), this topic which is excluded by
neo-classical economics or reduced to a market relation, has great importance
being as a main determinant of Turkish economic structure. All non-market
institutions, which economically are so important, are also left out of the
curriculum. Also an interdisciplinary
perspective is much more important for us due to these reasons. In a country
like ours, in which the state has a main role in the economy, excluding
political science is inconvenient but the current situation is this. It is impossible to mention all the examples here but the
main framework of the critique acn be understood.
And now another important result of this kind of an education is the
alienation of economists to their countrys conditions. Education of
economics will still be far from being responsible in character, even if it
pays attention to the low conditions mentioned above, because it will still
lack the appropriate tools for helping a country like ours. A diversion here may help to understand this topic better.
After the Second World War, with the application of Keynesian economics both
in theory and practice, reconstruction of Europe with the Marshall plan, rise
of welfare state concept, and success of socialist state economy, there
occurred a development rhetoric in the underdeveloped and newly independent
world. According to the rhetoric, underdeveloped countries should be separated
from the developed world due to a series of specific economic feature and
traditional economic analysis in the developed world should be changed if
underdeveloped countries were being considered (Hirschman, 1981). As Başkaya says: "It
is very limited to be successful in conventional economic theory and its
practice in underdeveloped world, which were even unsuccessful in developed
countries". Parallel to the Keynesian revolution, development
economics appeared. Themes at the beginning were; industrialization, fast
capital accumulation, activating idle human capital and state intervention
and planning in order to realize all. However, these theories also produced
by the Western scholars and accepted as absolute truths in a broader sense at
the beginning. Problems were similar to those of the present time. Yet, there
was a dynamic debate in many topics and assertions were deeply criticized by
wide fields. Academicians and scholars from underdeveloped world were also
integrated into the debate. This should be stressed because, other than the
topic, the side, from where they were looking is also important. The
successes and failures of development economics is not our subject here,
today the traditional prescriptions should be interrogated again. Incapabilities,
imperceptions conceptual deficiencies, human definition and the role in the
system (as a topic of another article) of mainstream economics must be
discussed continuously. However the differences should also be stressed. Finally, economists from the low world have an advantage
of transforming economics into a dynamic, humanitarian discipline, because
all the basic questions of economics exist deeply in our countries. If the
theories, textbooks, curriculums continue to be
received abroad without adjusting and if we cannot talk about a Shangay school or Buenos Ariesians
in economic thought, this debate will continue forever like any other topic
having the same raison dêtre. References Özveren, Eyüp (1999). A foray into Turkish debates concerning
university and economics education: The |