School Studies Of Social Sciences

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31828, 5 November 1968, Page 16

School Studies Of Social Sciences

The Minister of Education (Mr Kinsella) will be asked by the Kelliher Economics Foundation to admit economics and economic history as University Entrance subjects. The teaching of these subjects, said a spokesman for the foundation, could be very useful “in increasing public understanding of the “monetary and economic events which so closely “ affect people’s lives ”. The Minister could well ask the foundation why economics is more important, to people other than economists, than any of the other social sciences: sociology and political science might, indeed, have superior claims. Strictly speaking, all the social sciences are taught in New Zealand schools, usually as a by-product of other disciplines. History is meaningless unless the student understands how different forms of government evolved (political science), the conflict of classes (sociology), and the commercial interests at stake (economics). Geography, science, and literature—foreign, as well as English—all provide material for the social scientist.

“The proper study of mankind is man”; but modern man lives in such a sophisticated environment that he can be studied intensively only by those who have first acquired a good knowledge of this environment. “A little learning is a dangerous thing”; and in no field is it more dangerous than in the social sciences. By all means let children see the wider purposes which instruction in the traditional school subjects serves: but is it wise to encourage the study of further subjects which they have neither the experience nor the tools to master?

At least one modern definition of economics suggests that the answer to this question should be “No”. Economics is “the study of the allocation of scarce means among competing ends”. The “scarce “ means ” are the the time and talents of teachers and pupils: the “ means of production ” in the education process. The “ competing ends ” are the more or less arbitrary divisions of knowledge into school “ subjects ”. The addition of one more subject can only be at the expense of some other or others. Educationists deplore the proliferation of school subjects as much as social scientists fret over the exclusion of their subjects from school curricula. The next experiment in educational theory might perhaps attempt to reconcile the two by reducing the number of subjects and simultaneously injecting more social science into them.