I want heads!
November 24th, 2004 at 3:39 pm by David FarrarHeads should roll for this.
Dog Biting Men has posted extracts from the NCEA Economics Exam. To quote one:
“Explain why using ‘free market’ policies causes income inequality.”
This is outraegous. For a state exam to take what is a highly controversial nad politically divisive opinion and state it as a fact, is not acceptable.
Hey if this is the standard of our school system, then why not let me set some questions, such as:
“Explain how Helen Clark keeps avoiding being charged for breaking the law”
“Describe why ‘socialist’ policies are a failure throughout the world”
“Discuss why the peace movement has been wrong on almost every issue for the last 50 years”
I would not object if the question was “Discuss the effects of free market policies on income inequality”, but to have a state exam actually state an opinion as fact is almost Orwellian.
No tag for this post.
November 24th, 2004 at 3:47 pm
Get pver yourself, we had similar questions when I did seventh form economics in 2002. And my economics teacher was a member of the alliance!
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:03 pm
Possible Sample Answer:
“Income inequality is worsened by free markets. Free markets invariably lead to greater prosperity. The poor get richer but the rich get even more richerer. Because the rich get more rich than the poor the gap between rich and poor widens. Only through fair income redistributionism can true equality be achieved.”
I have to admit though, I recall similar questions when I sat 7th form Eco back in 97, if not on the exam then definitely in class. Warped my poor impressionable mind, it did. I thought I was a socialist for a little while. Scary.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:05 pm
Something is wrong, even if it has been done before.
And I presume most school teachers were members of the Alliance.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:11 pm
Actually this question is not so bad, as there is strong empirical evidence for it, in general income inequality does increase under ‘free market’ policies. However proponents of such policies tend to argue that despite greater inequality such policies result in greater overall income growth, which outweighs any potential negatives associated with an increase in income inequality. I think that this would have been a perfectly reasonable way to answer the question and that therefore this question is reasonable
I actually think the other dubious question highlighted was much worse: ‘The New Zealand government provides ‘free’ education at state secondary schools. Explain why this results in a better resource allocation than the free market.’
Now I actually agree with the premise of the question, but this is definitely not the way to phrase it, it certainly does not encourage people to think for themselves.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:15 pm
The more I see of Helen and co. the more nervous I get.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:18 pm
“Discuss why the peace movement has been wrong on almost every issue for the last 50 years”
Hmm? Almost?
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:21 pm
Hey david…
Vote:“Explain why using spellcheck causes my nads to hang out” simply outraegous outrageous outragious
November 24th, 2004 at 4:23 pm
How about: “The fall of the Soviet Union can be attributed to Soviet command economy policies” discuss.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 4:54 pm
It all depends on context (and the syllabus). It’s reasonable if you’re looking at the choice between “free market” and “Intervention to reduce inequality” which is the choice facing most 21st Century democracies. It’s far from reasonable if you look at countries (pre-liberal Europe, contemporary corrupt basket-case economies) where intervention was (or is) widely used to protect existing inequalities (hence the liberal demand to “Laissez faire”). More careful wording would be in order. My suggested question is
“Explain how the NZ free-market reforms of the late 80s to early 90s led to increased ineqality in disposable family incomes (Do NOT mention the changes in indirect tax or benefit rates)”
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 6:08 pm
Um, aren’t we confusing inequality and inequity?
Damn right there’s income inequality – we don’t want everyone to earn a state-sanctioned $35K pa. Whether my honking large salary is inequitable compared to your piddly little one is a different question altogether, and one which wasn’t asked.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 6:15 pm
Neh
Nowhere near as bad as some of the science howlers over the years. The first NCEA geology exam paper made all the professional and academic geologists I showed it to blow their tops and then inundate the NCEA with critiques and questions.
Now, rather than getting hot under the collar about how your pet topic has been impinged, how about doing something to attract higher quality teachers to the education system? Having spent a lot of time visiting schools across NZ lecturing on science topics for the University of Canterbury science outreach programme, I’m pretty certain the problems of NZ education stem from underfunding in the public schools, and censorship of topics and classes in the private schools. I think there is an endemic problem of lack of quality teachers because the whole teachers college system is set up to take the underacheivers from the universities (remember the mantra of the guidance counsellors at school “if you find uni too difficult, there’s always T-Coll”) and added to this that you cannot get much of a wage teaching – I have friends teaching who are looking at taking 50 years to pay off their student loans because they are a) female, and inexplicably paid less than men with the same qualification, and b) stuck in low paid teaching jobs – and if they move out of teaching, which they are doing because they love it, and into something more lucrative, they feel they are betraying the children they teach, so they stay, and put up with the crap conditions.
Zane
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 6:16 pm
Neh
Nowhere near as bad as some of the science howlers over the years. The first NCEA geology exam paper made all the professional and academic geologists I showed it to blow their tops and then inundate the NCEA with critiques and questions.
Now, rather than getting hot under the collar about how your pet topic has been impinged, how about doing something to attract higher quality teachers to the education system? Having spent a lot of time visiting schools across NZ lecturing on science topics for the University of Canterbury science outreach programme, I’m pretty certain the problems of NZ education stem from underfunding in the public schools, and censorship of topics and classes in the private schools. I think there is an endemic problem of lack of quality teachers because the whole teachers college system is set up to take the underacheivers from the universities (remember the mantra of the guidance counsellors at school “if you find uni too difficult, there’s always T-Coll”) and added to this that you cannot get much of a wage teaching – I have friends teaching who are looking at taking 50 years to pay off their student loans because they are a) female, and inexplicably paid less than men with the same qualification, and b) stuck in low paid teaching jobs – and if they move out of teaching, which they are doing because they love it, and into something more lucrative, they feel they are betraying the children they teach, so they stay, and put up with the crap conditions.
Zane
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 7:09 pm
Has anyone verified if it is true?
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 7:18 pm
Teachers know what they are getting into before they sign up – I’m sick of their whining about how they start work early and finsih late and have to mark books etc etc etc – wake up everyone has to do the extra yards to get ahead. The Teachers union today are worse than the blooody watersiders and freezing workers 20 years ago. Wish that I had a job where I get a day a week where I don’t have to do my job like 1st and 2nd years get. Crap question for an exam as well – though I can remebr similar stuff in the 87School C exam about why income disparity causes an increase in societal problems – simple answer get off your arse and get your mind to work.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 7:40 pm
Well, just remember it was an NCEA exam, and therefore inherently stupid. Poor wording is the most minor problem associated with the system.
Bitter, me? No, of course not.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 9:05 pm
urgh. These exams are getting worse. Although the question you quoted is alright. You just have to demonstrate why income inequality is a good thing, which it is.
Hard to blame on Helen though. The education department is a bureaucracy. You could have Nat in with an absolute majority and you’d still get the same ideologically loaded questions.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 9:45 pm
You should see a Waikato law exam sometime.
I became a Tory b/c of 5th form economics and never looked back! Not sure what brand the teacher was but it was fair to say that the students crushed any socialist talk before it sprang up!
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 10:22 pm
I am very supportive of paying good teachers a lot more. However the teacher unions won’t allow this.
Vote:November 24th, 2004 at 10:45 pm
The reason for why the teachers union don’t want good teachers to be paid more is that it would severly disadvantage the crap teachers. Also there is their socialist ideology which favours everybody being paid the same wage, this was tried in the USSR where highly trained and skilled surgeons were paid at the same rate as common unskilled labourers. Should New Zealanders see the light at the next election and vote a right of centre government, one of its first acts of that government should be to reform the education sector.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 8:40 am
EDH, don’t let the Nats touch education ever again. They introduced NCEA remember? I find DPF’s outrage understandable from his political point of view, but as a prominent
Nat member, he should point out it was National that introduced socialism in the education sector.
The Nationals are not centre right, they’re socialists. Except for a few individuals (Don Brash of course, DPF). I would welcome it that the Nats would finally decide what they’re going to be.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 9:13 am
I remember getting every student in New Zealand a mark in School Certificate science a few years ago.
The question – which was supposed to be a gimme – asked if you mix chemical X and chemical Y what colour will it turn? It had a coloured picture of a test tube next to it – presumably so idiots could get it.
Well, I had no idea of the science and I’m colour blind.
So I wrote into NZQA about the discrimination (ie non-colour blind people who had no idea about the science would have got it) and they gave everyone sitting a mark for the question.
Go me.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 9:38 am
“Discuss why the peace movement has been wrong on almost every issue for the last 50 years”
Intrigued as to what particular issues you were thinking about. Vietnam, Iraq? What would be even more intriguing would be for you to explain why exactly.
As to the original question you highlighted, any student with a modicum of intelligence could have taken the question and argued a strong case against it if that’s what they believed. You are getting your tits in a tangle over nothing from what I can see.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:24 am
God where do I start. The call for western unilateral disarmament would still have 200 million+ in eastern europe in dictatorships.
The anti Korean war would have South Koreans starving under North Korean rule.
Grenada would be ruled by Castro. Panama by Noreiga still. Milosevich still in charge in parts of Yugoslavia. Saddam still occupying Kuwait and possibly Saudi Arabia.
And as for the NCEA question, you miss the point. Yes students can risk failing the exam, and arguing against the question, but the problem is that educationalists are presenting partisan opinions as facts.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:33 am
I find it quite surprising that people are objecting to the implication that free markets cause inequality… normally you seem so proud of the fact, viewing it as a sign that the market is working properly.
Or are Hayek and Spencer suddenly out of fashion?
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:43 am
It makes me think of my Geology degree – it’s just as bad regarding opinion taught as fact, as too is an environmental science degree. Global warming and evolution are both taught as fact, when in reality one is based on crackpot theories and assumptions and I am having severe doubts about the legitimacy of the other. Science was semi-immune from socialism at secondary school (perhaps that’s why I enjoyed it more than social studies) but it’s certainly not at university. Unfortunately it devalues the education that I recieve (and pay heaps for). I’m so glad I didn’t do economics at school, I would have failed miserably with the concept of being told what to think.
Vote:It really does make you think.
November 25th, 2004 at 10:52 am
Mate, it’s you who has completely missed the point on this. If you had done Economics at school you would’ve learned that income inequality is a feature of the free market system. If we had income equality I’d become a bus driver instead of surgeon because there’s no incentive as we’re getting the same pay. For students sitting exam this would be the correct answer and so there’d be no risk of failing.
Don’t you know how capitalism works?
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 11:05 am
Interesting to see the way the juveniles who have been recently brainwashed leap to defend the system and mindset which brainwashed them. The same juveniles would confuse profit with drawings and would never recognise the evil of envy.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 12:16 pm
David, Adolf et al: are you saying that free markets do NOT produce income inequality?
Can you tease out for me where the opinion part of that question was? I feel I must be missing something here. As long as the supply and demand of different skills and abilities is unevenly distributed, there *should* be income inequality in a free market, shouldn’t there? Help me out here and point out the factual error.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 12:52 pm
Berend de Boer, there are a few Neo-Conservatives within the ranks of the national party, though there ideas such as reinstating the death penalty, bringing back corporal punishment, quadrupling the defence budget, same also for law and order, and requiring that people carry a national ID card digitally encoded with their details such as height, weight, DNA etceteri. On education this sector should be privatised totally.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:32 pm
These days even AUDITING is like modern art, anything is possible so what hope is there for ECONOMICS which has never been a hard science
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
It
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 4:56 pm
It
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 7:16 pm
“The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion of equality made vain the hope for freedom.”
Lord Acton
Of course there is nothing wrong with the question. But DPF and others are making assumptions about the marking schedule. In light of the other (much worse) question about education which explicitly endorses collectivist ideology (use of the word ‘better’), the negative assumptions are probably accurate.
The fact that DPF thinks that the inequality question is of greater concern than the education question really highlights everything which is wrong with National’s collectivist conservatism.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:09 pm
Our education system must be screwed if people still can’t get their heads around evolution.
Gaz, evolution is as real as the sun. Unless you have a belief system that’s incompatible with reality, as more than few have ( in which case the best teacher in the world would be wasting their time), your science teacher didn’t do a very good job.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:18 pm
Good God I love these mind readers who know what I think is of greater concern. And then calls me a collectivist and a conserative on the basis of this mind reading ability. Go back to horoscopes.
Vote:November 25th, 2004 at 10:31 pm
David… you are thinking of the number… 39!
Hah! Are we good or what?
I think that the point is being argued rather demonstrates that it can… well, be argued.
Hell I’ve seen creationism taught as a science in this country. Not too much suprises me.
doesn’t mean I like it though.
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
As I said to RB on PA:
“As concerns the NCEA question, I’m not too sure it is as sinister as you think. I am assuming the question was one of a range that students had to choose from. Students who did not agree with the statement could have chosen another. Of course, I have not seen the original exam, don’t know if there were alternate questions and therefore cannot be entirely confident of my position. Even if there were no alternatives, however, one could argue that students should be familiar with the supporting arguments of any mainstream dictum in their field, whether they believe that dictum or not. The only way to test such knowledge is to select one at random. It would be exactly the same if the question was “Explain how using ‘interventionist’ policies restrains economic growth.”"
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 2:27 pm
Bryce – I may be wrong but I would be willing to bet that in last ten years there has never been a question saying “Explain how using ‘interventionist’ policies restrains economic growth” while there are always questions on what is commonly perceived to be bad effects of free market policies.
Vote:November 26th, 2004 at 3:01 pm
David
That may well be, although neither of us can say for sure. In any case it doesn’t detract from the fact that students of any field should know the fundamental supporting arguments of any mainstream dictum in that field.
Vote:By the way, from a free market perspective what is WRONG with income inequality anyway? As shown by the first response to your blog, both right and left agree that income inequality is a result of the free market, it is your take on said inequality that determines your qualitative analysis of free markets. The question, as I see it, is not contentious, and if students wanted to show that free markets were not so bad, they may have been able to prove the statement while noting their position that income inequality is not necessarily a bad thing.
I don’t really see why fundamental economic questions shouldn’t be discussed in an economics exam.