Harvard Econ Student Walk Out to Protest Propaganda Approach to Econ 101

College kids are college kids, you can't take them seriously. They are always looking for anyway to protest or rebel, or just in general look for attention.

Case in point the Paterno firing, no real good reason to protest, but hell why not.

The class they were looking for is socialism 101.

 

Yeah, cause Harvard students are known to go apes**t at the drop of a hat, right?

 

Rather than walk out in protest, shouldn't they have stayed in class and engaged in discussion pointing out where the professor's teaching was flawed?

 

Mankiw wrote my Econ books for my Macro and Micro classes. I'm not really sure how they can deem it biased. Harvard is obviously a different animal than what I had, but this was still an introductory course. The basic principles of economics apply regardless. This isn't a course that teaches trickle down economics.

 

Here's the thing about a debate.
Both sides just end up in the same view they started in, the difference is they are just pissed off now.
It wouldn't have done any good.

 

I doubt this was ironic so much as intentional.

 

I have found that the vast majority of spirited debates I have been involved in have, at the very least, been interesting and informative. In the end, my view may not have changed, but it was more clear to me as to what the other side's view was and why.

There should be nothing wrong with hearing different points of view expressed respectfully and intelligently.

 

...and this is why no one should take them seriously.

 

That's the part that rarely happens.

 

It's a good protest.

But in reality, to think that universities leanings, are fair and balanced is naive at best.

You should already know what slant your university leans toward BEFORE you apply to it.

 

Even better, you should understand that, except for a few extremes (maybe Evergreen on one side and Bob Jones U on the other, for instance), universities don't have slants. Certain professors do, yes. They often have many different slants and varieties in a single department, believe me. That's why they're professors; they don't march lock-step to anything or anyone.

 

They should actually finish the class and realize that Adam Smith is a lot more like keynes than he is like Hayek.

 

It's about time some students protested at Harvard! That bastion of conservatism needs to be broken! Force them FINALLY hire liberal minds instead of the neo-cons that plague that university!

 

You don't think universities themselves have slants that a majority of the professors hired adhere to?

Really?

 

You're assuming he's simply teaching the book, though. As noted, he's a critic of OWS and a big Mitt Romney supporter - maybe all his examples use Dem ideas to illustrate bad economics and deregulation as an example of great economics? There are all sorts of possibilities here - without being in the class, we have no idea if he was biased or not.

You assume that the professor has any interest in a discussion as opposed to just lecturing. The class has at least 70 students so facilitating a discussion may not be part of his methods.

There's simply too much we don't know here. Really, I'm not sure why this is even news at this point - a walkout by a bunch of 18 or 19 yr olds in a college intro class is just not that big a deal.

 

We are really going to need a sarcasm punctuation mark going forward, because sometimes I can't tell. Maybe three or more smiley faces

 

this may be the most whiny generation ever.

It's a freaking introductory course. If you want to further you knowledge in other economics field, feel free to do so with more classes.

Every professor has their own personal preference and teaches with some kind of favoritism.

 

Bull****! I got my degree in economics, and I can tell you all, from my experience, that the standard curriculum emphasizes the Keynesian approach of government interventionism, the incentive-based economy, and inflationary monetary policy. Granted, this approach does help the rich profit from the boom-bust cycle it creates, it is anything but a free market approach.