By Mark Skousen
Monday, June 30, 2014
Bengali-American educator Salman Khan is a brilliant
reformer who wants to bring a free education to everyone in the world. With
degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University,
and a background in the financial world, he decided to create a “free,
world-class education for anyone, anywhere” through his Khan Academy.
His story is a classic example of democratic capitalism
and the growing equality in the world. Rich or poor, you can now have access to
a first-rate education. Thomas Piketty should take note! Inequality is
shrinking, not growing, when it comes to useful goods and services.
Khan has been wildly successful and was recently named
one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.
He has produced 4,800 video lessons teaching a wide
spectrum of academic subjects in mathematics and the sciences.
And now he is adding economics. But there’s the rub. As a
professor who has taught economics, finance and business at Columbia Business
School and now Chapman University, I was surprised how one-sided (teaching
primarily Keynesian economics) his macroeconomics course is at the Khan
Academy… with students reading and discussing only one book (Piketty’s
“neo-Marxist” work, “Capital in the 21st Century”).
I just finished preparing a video course in “Modern
Political Economy: Who’s Winning the Battle of Ideas?” for the Teaching Co.,
and I go to great pains presenting the entire spectrum of economic philosophy
and schools of thought, whether Keynesian, Marxist, Austrian, Chicago, supply
side, etc. I divide them into the Big Three in Economics (title of my book):
Adam Smith, Marx and Keynes. Students love this balanced approach to learning
economics. Salman Khan is doing his students a disservice by focusing on
primarily one viewpoint.
No comments:
Post a Comment