Economics Shouldn't Just Be for Seniors

On a chilly October night, just days before the United States presidential election, I was sitting with a fellow editor in the Scroll room discussing the upcoming election. Since I had watched the video essay “Why Economists Hate Donald Trump’s Tariff Plan” from the Wall Street Journal just a few days ago in preparation for my HUSH class, I opened our conversation by asking what he thought of Trump’s promised fiscal policy. To my surprise, he loved the policy. Praising how Trump’s tariffs would tax foreign exporters to the US, he seemed delighted that a president would actually work toward protecting US producers instead of offshoring work to foreign countries. Only, he was wrong. Tariffs tax domestic importers of foreign goods, not foreign companies. In other words, they are a tax on US companies and an indirect tax on US consumers that would financially hurt the vast majority of US citizens. 

The economy remains one of the most central concerns under the status quo. In Head of School John Austin’s A Framework for Schools, Dr. Austin speaks of the importance of advancing “the ideal of expressive freedom” in independent schools. To this end, it’s crucial that the dialogue concerning the economy finds its balance between freedom and truth. Mass media breeds an environment of misinformation, and when these claims are spread as truths, they will result in a generation of uneducated, unaware students. 

We should combat misinformation with education.Thus, Deerfield Academy should offer economics as a course to all students, not just as a senior elective. An economics course would prepare students for their future, educate them on political literacy, and fight against the rampant misinformation prevalent in today’s society.

In our mission statement, Deerfield claims to “prepare students for leadership in a rapidly changing world.” In an interview with the Dean of Academic Affairs Anne Bruder, she mentioned, “So much of building a curriculum is making a series of choices and we do that based on our hopes of who students will become in the future.” She added, “We [the Academic Affairs Office] are actually not in the business of preparing you right now for a specific career. What we should be doing is filling your brains with what you’re not gonna get every single day of your life after you’ve finished your formal education.” Essentially, Dr. Bruder argues that Deerfield should serve to provide a holistic education for students instead of specialization at such an early age. However, given the current capitalist society in which we live, I’d argue economics is just as integral to a holistic education as math or English. Even if we don’t go into finance or any field even tangentially related to economics, it is still important for us to understand basic economic theory for one simple reason: the world revolves around money. We’ll all eventually wind up in the adult world and be forced to deal with the complexities of labor markets, wage negotiation, savings accounts, and more. An economics education is not merely vocational, it aims to inform students about the fundamental problem that all humans face at all times: the problem of scarcity. Thus, limiting students' access to economics education is as detrimental as canceling our other so-called “core-curriculum classes.” 

  Additionally, an economics course would foster an educated student body that is more fluent in the economic language commonly used by politicians. Given that, according to an October 2024 Gallup poll, the economy was the number one issue for American voters in the 2024 presidential election, an economics education is essential for students to engage in contemporary politics and advance expressive freedom at the Academy. On the other hand, being unaware of economics would facilitate a generation of politically illiterate students out of touch with the national political landscape and ill-suited to participate in government.

 In his framework, Dr. Austin addressed an argument against expressive freedom being that speech is “a weapon wielded by the powerful to subjugate the oppressed.” Here, the prevalent power difference between students at high schools and colleges stems from a knowledge gap between students, as those who wield the knowledge control the power. Throughout history, education has always been the means to uplift the ignorant. Education would also mitigate one of the greatest dangers of expressive freedom, the spread of misinformation. In The Link Between Misinformation and Radicalism by Elise Ingelson and Wesley McCann, Ingelson and McCann have found “strong theoretical reasons to believe the former [misinformation] may facilitate the latter [radicalism].” Furthermore, the National Institute of Health noted that such misinformation is most easily impressed onto adolescents. By using economics education to combat misinformation, the Academy would reap benefits of expressive freedom while avoiding the negative repercussions, such as a growth of radicalism amongst students.

I firmly believe that economics should not just be relegated to a senior elective at Deerfield, but rather a course available for all students who have passed Precalculus. An economics course would promote Dr. Austin’s expressive freedom within the Academy, teach political literacy and combat misinformation, and provide students with a more holistic high school education, setting up students for future successes.