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In the wake of the global financial crisis, many students in economics have expressed their discontent with their education. The GCGI supports the aims presented by the International Student Initiative for Pluralist Economics (ISIPE), which now has gathered 65 student groups demanding pluralism in economics education.
Part I- Why GCGI is supporting the ISIPE?
Perhaps the best way I can demonstrate this is by quoting a passage from an Open Letter I wrote to the editor of the Financial Times. I was prompted to write this letter in a response to an editorial which was published on 13 November 2013, under the title of “The new economics: Teaching of discipline needs to rely less on abstract models”.
…“And now a note from Kamran Mofid to the Editor of Financial Times:
Sir, I have read your editorial ‘A new economics’ with much interest. You conclude your piece by asking the economics profession to substitute a little humility for pretension as the first step to a new economics: I wholeheartedly agree.
However, may I respectfully ask you to let me know if you had ever written an editorial in similar vein before the crash of September 2008? Had you ever encouraged your readers to think about economic pluralism? Have you ever encouraged a dialogue of disciplines, ideas and visions in the study and practice of economics: a dialogue between economics, ethics, philosophy, spirituality, and the common good? Have you ever encouraged the wealth-creators that read your paper to reflect on ‘Why’ and ‘How’ wealth is produced and, more importantly, when wealth is created, ‘What’ it is going to be used for?
Knowing how busy you are, may I share with you a short passage on the subject from a book I wrote in 2005, well before the crash of September 2008:
‘From 1980 onwards, for the next twenty years, I taught economics in universities, enthusiastically demonstrating how economic theories provided answers to problems of all sorts. I got quite carried away by the beauty, the sophisticated elegance, of complicated mathematical models and theories. But gradually I started to have an empty feeling.
‘I began to ask fundamental questions of myself. Why did I never talk to my students about compassion, dignity, comradeship, solidarity, happiness, spirituality – about the meaning of life? We never debated the biggest questions. Who are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going to?
‘I told them to create wealth, but I did not tell them for what reason. I told them about scarcity and competition, but not about abundance and co-operation. I told them about free trade, but not about fair trade; about GNP – Gross National Product – but not about GNH – Gross National Happiness. I told them about profit maximisation and cost minimisation, about the highest returns to the shareholders, but not about social consciousness, accountability to the community, sustainability and respect for creation and the creator. I did not tell them that, without humanity, economics is a house of cards built on shifting sands.
‘These conflicts caused me much frustration and alienation, leading to heartache and despair. I needed to rediscover myself and real-life economics. After a proud twenty-year or so academic career, I became a student all over again. I would study theology, philosophy and ethics, disciplines nobody had taught me when I was a student of economics and I did not teach my own students when I became a teacher of economics.
‘It was at this difficult time that I came to understand that I needed to bring spirituality, compassion, ethics and morality back into economics itself, to make this dismal science once again relevant to and concerned with the common good.’
I then went on to found the Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative to work towards this.”…
A comment on a Financial Times editorial (November 12, 2013)
Part II- ISIPE: Vision and Aims- An Executive Summary
The ISIPE group claims that theoretical pluralism should exist amongst the different traditions of economics; methodological pluralism between quantitative and qualitative methods as well as towards reflexive sub-disciplines of economics such as history of economic thought and economic epistemology; and, pluralism towards the other social sciences that is interdisciplinary.
GCGI supports ISIPE’s members that strongly believe that pluralism will give students in economics the tools to deal with challenges of the twenty-first century that education in economics does not currently address. Better adequacy between the education and the students’ environment, which provide interdisciplinary and transferrable skills, are core to GCGI’s fight for better quality education. GCGI encourages all values-led academics, students, business leaders and members of society to show their support to the ISIPE’s initiative by joining the movement or by signing up to it on its website http://www.isipe.net/supportus/
Students’ discontentment in economics education is not new, from the Australian 1970s movement for political economy to the French movement for a post-autistic economics in the early 2000s (In Praise of the Economic Students at the Sorbonne: The Class of 2000 ) that quickly spread in other countries such as UK, USA and Germany, economics education have always been controversial. The crisis has made such disenchantment bigger than ever and students soon realised they were not taught the right tools to understand the current economic environment and were not able to respond correctly to the economic crisis.
Part III- ISIPE- Open Letter
An international student call for pluralism in economics
It is not only the world economy that is in crisis. The teaching of economics is in crisis too, and this crisis has consequences far beyond the university walls. What is taught shapes the minds of the next generation of policymakers, and therefore shapes the societies we live in. We, over 65 associations of economics students from over 30 different countries, believe it is time to reconsider the way economics is taught. We are dissatisfied with the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum that has taken place over the last couple of decades. This lack of intellectual diversity does not only restrain education and research. It limits our ability to contend with the multidimensional challenges of the 21st century - from financial stability, to food security and climate change. The real world should be brought back into the classroom, as well as debate and a pluralism of theories and methods. Such change will help renew the discipline and ultimately create a space in which solutions to society’s problems can be generated.
United across borders, we call for a change of course. We do not claim to have the perfect answer, but we have no doubt that economics students will profit from exposure to different perspectives and ideas. Pluralism will not only help to enrich teaching and research and reinvigorate the discipline. More than this, pluralism carries the promise of bringing economics back into the service of society. Three forms of pluralism must be at the core of curricula: theoretical, methodological and interdisciplinary.
Theoretical pluralism emphasizes the need to broaden the range of schools of thought represented in the curricula. It is not the particulars of any economic tradition we object to. Pluralism is not about choosing sides, but about encouraging intellectually rich debate and learning to critically contrast ideas. Where other disciplines embrace diversity and teach competing theories even when they are mutually incompatible, economics is often presented as a unified body of knowledge. Admittedly, the dominant tradition has internal variations. Yet, it is only one way of doing economics and of looking at the real world. Such uniformity is unheard of in other fields; nobody would take seriously a degree program in psychology that focuses only on Freudianism, or a politics program that focuses only on state socialism. An inclusive and comprehensive economics education should promote balanced exposure to a variety of theoretical perspectives, from the commonly taught neoclassically-based approaches to the largely excluded classical, post-Keynesian, institutional, ecological, feminist, Marxist and Austrian traditions - among others. Most economics students graduate without ever encountering such diverse perspectives in the classroom.
Furthermore, it is essential that core curricula include courses that provide context and foster reflexive thinking about economics and its methods per se, including philosophy of economics and the theory of knowledge. Also, because theories cannot be fully understood independently of the historical context in which they were formulated, students should be systematically exposed to the history of economic thought and to the classical literature on economics as well as to economic history. Currently, such courses are either non-existent or marginalized to the fringes of economics curricula.
Methodological pluralism stresses the need to broaden the range of tools economists employ to grapple with economic questions. It is clear that maths and statistics are crucial to our discipline. But all too often students learn to master quantitative methods without ever discussing if and why they should be used, the choice of assumptions and the applicability of results. Also, there are important aspects of economics which cannot be understood using exclusively quantitative methods: sound economic inquiry requires that quantitative methods are complemented by methods used by other social sciences. For instance, the understanding of institutions and culture could be greatly enhanced if qualitative analysis was given more attention in economics curricula. Nevertheless, most economics students never take a single class in qualitative methods.
Finally, economics education should include interdisciplinary approaches and allow students to engage with other social sciences and the humanities. Economics is a social science; complex economic phenomena can seldom be understood if presented in a vacuum, removed from their sociological, political, and historical contexts. To properly discuss economic policy, students should understand the broader social impacts and moral implications of economic decisions.
While approaches to implementing such forms of pluralism will vary from place to place, general ideas for implementation might include:
· * Hiring instructors and researchers who can bring theoretical and methodological diversity to economics programs;
· *Creating texts and other pedagogical tools needed to support pluralist course offerings;
· *Formalizing collaborations between social sciences and humanities departments or establishing special departments that could oversee interdisciplinary programs blending economics and other fields.
Change will be difficult - it always is. But it is already happening. Indeed, students across the world have already started creating change step by step. We have filled lecture theatres in weekly lectures by invited speakers on topics not included in the curriculum; we have organised reading groups, workshops, conferences; we have analysed current syllabuses and drafted alternative programs; we have started teaching ourselves and others the new courses we would like to be taught. We have founded university groups and built networks both nationally and internationally. Change must come from many places. So now we invite you - students, economists, and non-economists - to join us and create the critical mass needed for change. See Support us to show your support and connect with our growing networks. Ultimately, pluralism in economics education is essential for healthy public debate. It is a matter of democracy.
Open Letter — International Student Initiative for Pluralism in Economics
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First: Elements of Happiness:
§ Purpose: liking what you do each day and being motivated to achieve your goals
§ Social: having supportive relationships and love in your life
§ Financial: managing your economic life to reduce stress and increase security
§ Community: liking where you live, feeling safe, and having pride in your community
§ Physical: having good health and enough energy to get things done daily
World’s happiest country? Where and Why?
Positive people: Panama's population has plenty to smile about. Photo:theguardian.com
For years we have been told it is the dark, cold, but seriously egalitarian Scandinavia – with Denmark heading the majority of lists of our most contented countries. But suddenly there is a new leader in the satisfaction stakes: Panama.
A poll by Gallup and Healthways Global reports that the Central American country now has the most positive population, after 133,000 people from 135 countries were asked to rate their wellbeing in five categories: purpose, social, financial, community and physical.
The Central American country topped four of the categories, with neighbour Costa Rica closely following as the second happiest country. Denmark, for once, came a mournful third. So what makes people in Panama so cheery?
Cultural attache for Panama, Laura Montenegro, thinks it is down to the fact the country has a thriving economy and has maintained its traditional values. “Family bonds are very strong here, and on Sundays everyone still gets together,” she says. “So even when people are struggling they don’t feel alone. We have a very beautiful landscape too and even in Panama city you never feel too far from nature. We have a booming economy and financial stability. When the global financial crisis hit, Panama came out of it even better than before, because our banks had been very cautious.”
But what of the Danes? We have heard much about their society’s strengths – from state-subsidised childcare to having one of the smallest wealth gaps in the world. Yet despite this, younger Danes are less likely than their older countrymen to report themselves as “thriving”.
Guardian journalist and author of How to be Danish Patrick Kingsley thinks an increased sense of individuality among the young might be why the country is losing its happy crown.
“The Danes aren’t exactly all grinning from ear to ear ... but they’re more contented than most. When Danes leave home in the morning, they don’t see many people who are markedly better off than themselves – and this breeds a sense of social solidarity, and by extension, contentedness.
“But the reason why so many Danish brands – from The Killing to Noma to the architect Bjarke Ingels – have recently made it big outside Denmark is because a younger generation of Danes are doing things differently. Perhaps this increased individuality, coupled with uncertainty about the future of Denmark’s welfare state, has threatened the traditional Danish formula for contentedness.”
Of course, they are still ahead of glum Great Britain, which is 76th on the list – mostly because we don’t like our jobs. “Though Britons are strong in financial wellbeing, they are much weaker in purpose wellbeing, suggesting that many workers do not enjoy what they do each day,” the report says.
But the situation is not hopeless. Now the UK’s economy is improving, employers might be more inclined to ensure staff are happy at work. Phew!”
*The above article was first published in the Guardian on 17 September 2014:
World’s happiest country: how did Panama overtake Denmark? | World news | The Guardian
Read more:
Country Well-Being Varies Greatly Worldwide | Healthways Blog
Adam Smith and the Pursuit of Happiness
Ten Virtues to Lead a Good Life
In Search of Meaning in Life: Happiness Revealed
Implications of Gallup and Healthways’ findings:
“Objective measures including GDP, life expectancy, and employment statistics are important and useful in assessing a country’s “success,” as are historical trends over time. However, the concept of subjective well-being encompasses the broader aspects of a life well-lived.
Gallup and Healthways research has shown that people with higher well-being are healthier, more productive, and more resilient in the face of challenges such as unemployment. People with higher well-being bounce back faster, are better able to take care of their own basic needs, and feel better able to contribute to and support the success of their organizations, communities, or countries.
Subjective well-being does not necessarily correlate with GDP, the presence of conflict, or other absolute indicators. Residents in poor countries may report that they have high well-being in certain well-being elements while those in wealthy countries may report that they have low well-being in particular elements. War-torn populations such as those in Syria may have extremely low well-being, but low levels are also found in countries that are relatively stable, such as Croatia and Italy.
There are policy implications for country leadership, development organizations, employers, health insurers (private and governmental), and others in the well-being status of their constituents. For example, Mexico has relatively high physical well-being scores. However, the country overtook the U.S. in 2013 as the most obese country in the Western Hemisphere and grapples with a high rate of diabetes. Diabetes and heart disease are the two most common causes of death in Mexico. While the physical well-being element captures more than just obesity, the high scores on this element in Mexico reveal areas where education is needed to help the population become more aware of health and healthy behaviors, and make better choices.
Because subjective well-being can correlate with outcomes such as healthcare costs, productivity, and business performance, world leaders should consider well-being, in addition to objective measures such as GDP, to provide a better picture of progress toward specific policy and development goals.”
Source:
Country Well-Being Varies Greatly Worldwide | Healthways Blog
“5 Lessons in happiness I learned from travel”*
Photo: wordpress.com
Gratitude
The nearest place to get food to me right now is 30 meters away, I have access to clean water, i’m educated, I have a car, somewhere to live, a shower, healthcare and all my limbs. Be grateful for what you have, there are millions of people around the world who would give almost anything to be where you are now. Its nothing more than a lucky roll of the cosmic dice that you ended up where you are, so stop taking things for granted and be grateful for everything you have.
Humility
If you buy $400 jeans are you a bad person? Yes, yes you are. You don’t need $400 jeans. Don’t ever confuse needs with wants. Look up at the stars and always remember you are an infinitely small speck of dust, flickering into existence for a fraction of an instant on a pale blue dot and then treat everyone around you with respect and never act like a dickhead, we’re all in this together and no one’s getting out alive!
Community and Relationships
The most important things in your life are the relationships you share, friends, family, partners and the wider community. These relationships are what really make you happy and enrich your life more than anything else. Some of the poorest people on the plant have a better sense of community than most of us in the 1st world, they share, integrate and look after each other in a way that some people in The West would never understand. Travel has taught me to treasure these relationships and always be open to new friends and connections with new people.
An open mind
New ideas are the lifeblood of innovation and change, travel will broaden your mind in a way that nothing else can, new ideas keep you fresh and an open mind will make you more accepting of change, different opinions and generally a better more well rounded person. Change is inevitable, those who can’t change will be left behind, accept it and move on, travel will help you do that.
The Unimportance of Material Things
When you live out of a bag the key is simplicity and minimalism, the philosophy of less is more applies here. Treasure relationships and experiences not things, things can be fun but they don’t matter, how does a shinier watch make you a better person? Don’t waste time or money on the unimportant, ignore the Joneses and remember to always question why you ‘want’ something you probably don’t need.
The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that you are always pursuing it. Like Wylie Coyote after the Roadrunner or a donkey following a carrot into infinity, we’re always going to be chasing it but never actually catching anything. We don’t need a Tony Robbins seminar or some other dodgy self help ‘guru’ to show us the way, we already have all the answers. Embrace your relationships, look at the stars and be grateful for your lucky roll of the cosmic dice and just be happy, most people never have the chances we do and travel is the best way I know to remember that.
*See the original source:
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Western delusions triggered this conflict and Russians will not yield*
"The Soviet Union’s sunset years hardly felt like an innocent age to those who lived through them, but to recall the hopes and aspirations of that era is to rue the naiveties of those days. “A common European house” was how President Mikhail Gorbachev pictured the continent’s future; “a Europe whole and free”, in the words of George HW Bush, his American counterpart. But, as the tussle over Ukraine has shown, Russia and the west are rivals once again. The ceasefire signed on September 5 gives both sides a chance to overcome their own illusions. They should take it, lest the conflict become a direct military confrontation.
Western leaders seem to believe their own propaganda. A failed Ukraine, they suggest, could be cradled into western Europe and become democratic and prosperous – and maybe it could, if they waited 20 years and could count on energetic support from Russia. But Moscow, they are convinced, is hell-bent on grabbing land, a hunger from which it can be distracted only through the infliction of pain. Hence the sanctions, the war of disinformation and the reinvigoration of Nato as a military force.
It is a strategy that rests on misunderstanding and miscalculation. The misunderstanding is that this is, at root, a stand-off over Ukraine. To Russians, it is something far more important: a struggle to stop others expanding their sphere of control into territories they believe are vital to Russia’s survival.
It is a miscalculation because Russia is far stronger, and the west far weaker, than many imagine. The west that Russia now faces is not the self-confident alliance that proclaimed itself victor of the cold war. It is a directionless gaggle, beset with economic insecurities and losing sight of its moral convictions. America and its allies once held the future in their hands, but at the beginning of this Asian century they have let it slip through their fingers. Their crowning accomplishment was globalisation – and they are destroying it, with economic sanctions they incoherently describe as instruments of self-defence.
These sanctions will hurt ordinary Russians, but they are helping to rouse our country from its slumber. True, Russia is smaller than the Soviet Union was, and a romantic belief in the free market has led it to take some wrong turns. The country’s elite, enjoying the consumerist pleasures afforded by new wealth, had long been at rest. But President Vladimir Putin has studied the lessons of history and harbours no illusions about the west. Russian citizens, unlike the disillusioned Soviets who were never far from hunger, know what they are ready to struggle for. Our country is finding its place. Compare the Soviet armed forces, lumbering and expensive, with the nimble military of modern Russia.
A small minority of my compatriots oppose Moscow’s hard line. Twenty years ago it was the reverse: a minority opposed rapprochement with the west. But that was before the west rediscovered the politics of Versailles and decided Russia had to be stopped at all costs. With encouragement, these foreign powers imagined, the new bourgeoisie would revolt against Mr Putin. Instead, they are rallying around him.
State propaganda plays a role, but Russians have access to western media via the internet and the more of it they see the more they unite around the Kremlin. This is no time for denial: westerners need to understand how their governments made a potential foe out of what was once an aspiring ally. Russia will not yield. This has become a matter of our nation’s life and death.
A lasting peace in Europe is a noble aim. It can be achieved only through mutual respect and an accommodation of legitimate interests. Even for a europhile such as me, it will be hard to argue for political union with a Europe that is abandoning, one hopes temporarily, Christianity and traditional norms. But our goal must be to create a common space in which people, capital and energy can move freely between Europe, with its old ties to the US, and a Russia that is embracing Asia.
Meanwhile, we must avoid visiting the horrors of war on the people of Ukraine. If we fail to do that, we will have abandoned another European value: reason."
The writer is a dean at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow
*The above article was first published in Financial Times on 14 September 2014:
Western delusions triggered this conflict and Russians will not yield - FT.com
See more about Sergey Karaganov:
Staff - Sergey A. Karaganov : National Research University Higher School of Economics
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- International Day of Peace: A Day of Global Ceasefire and Non-Violence