Neoliberal foundations packaged property-rights doctrine into high school teaching materials

Evidence

In 2004 the foundation published on its website a complete teaching unit with ready-made lectures for use in high school classrooms, entitled “Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?” (Foundation for Teaching Economics 2004). The lectures were written by academic economists and reviewed for publication by two of the foundation’s advisers, Douglas North and Milton Friedman. After an introductory lecture on concepts and terms, the first substantive lecture is entitled “Property Rights and the Rule of Law.” The lecture begins by proposing that in developing countries the most significant obstacle to improving the lives of the poor is the absence of clear property rights. The rest of the lecture supports this claim by making three arguments: that property rights create incentives to invest, that they create the means of investing by providing collateral for loans, and that they further promote development by freeing people from protective activities so that they can engage in productive activities. As evidence for the first two points, it cites the work of Hernando de Soto, and for the third point the paper on urban property titling in Peru by Field. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1982

Categorization

• SEED: The fact that the Mont Pèlerin network built ready-made high school lectures (‘Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?’) with Friedman and North as reviewers is a strong angle for an article on how neoliberal ideas were institutionalized through K-12 education.
• XREF: Connects to Timothy Mitchell’s broader argument that economic ideas are propagated through material projects and curricular infrastructure, and to the reader’s prior material on how neoliberal policy knowledge travels through think tanks. — connects to: American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352; Ill-founded reasoning chains let the Right alter education policy before gaining office; US schooling founders aimed at social control amid capitalist inequality, not equality — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 363

Broader Connections

• Ill-founded reasoning chains let the Right alter education policy before gaining office #expands (0.82)
• American school curricula systematically erased imperialist, genocidal, and capitalist dimensions of national history #expands (0.78) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 352