Walter Block Retracts Comments Made About the Intelligence and Scholarly Motivation of High School Students

Following my post ( At What Age Should Students Start Studying Austrian School Economics?) , comments by T Trosko (This is What I Use to Teach My High School Students About Economics and Liberty)  and this comment by Dr. Michael Edelstein:

Walter,

You neglect the context within which numbers and words are taught in the early grades. For example, consider this elementary subtraction example: “The fair price of an apple is $1. If John charges $3 per apple, how much above the fair price is John charging?” The Austrian context: “John is asking for $3 per apple. Fred hopes to pay $1, yet since he believe the apple will satisfy his hunger, he agrees to pay $3. How much more is Fred paying above his initial hope?”

Similarly reading lessons teach good or bad economics. Any ideas, no matter how complex, can be taught in a rudimentary form to young children. Even pre-school children imbibe misinformation about money, profit, and capitalism.

Warm regards,

Michael Edelstein

Dr. Walter Block writes the following:

 I fear I lead my readers astray with underestimates I made about the intelligence and scholarly motivation of high school students in this post of mine.

Dear ME, BW TT and other readers: Thanks for your criticisms. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I misspoke. I was wrong. You and numerous others have to 180 degrees changed my mind on this matter. I think I was having a Gary Johnson Aleppo moment, or a brain cramp. Or something. I was extrapolating way too much from when I myself was in high school. My thoughts were then 99% on sports and girls. My grade point average in high school was something like 87%, and you needed to get a 90% to get in Arista, our scholastic honor society. Thanks for correcting me on this assessment of mine on the intellectual capacity of high school kids, and at least that of some of those even younger.