Descriptive economics

Most teachers of economics would endorse the view that there is no one proper and generally accepted way of approach which should be adopted for all types of student. Some favour an immediate immersion into economic analysis, others a more gradual advance into theory tempered with an understanding of the economic problems of the modern world, but probably nearly all would agree that the approach needs to be varied for different levels of student. There are, for instance, certain classes of student whose background knowledge of the main facts of economic life is so rudimentary that the significance of economic theory is lost on them. Notable among these are pupils in grammar and secondary schools, whose difficulty in understanding even the meaning of the abstract concepts which are the tools of economic analysis is an additional obstacle now generally recognized; the syllabuses of most of the Examining Bodies at the Ordinary level of the General Certificate of Education now require little more than a knowledge of the main features of the structure and activity of the British economy. Experience has shown that it is too much to expect a boy or girl to appreciate, for example, the marginal productivity theory of distribution when he or she is barely aware of the occupational distribution of the employed population and of the activities of trade unions, or to understand the theory of the incidence of taxation unless he or she has previously learned what the principal kinds of taxes are.