But they often talk in a jargon-filled specialized language of their own and sometimes seem more concerned with impressing each other on talk shows, at legislative hearings or in public forums, than with enlightening the public. Rather than simplifying the decisions, the chatter of the talking heads often seems to make issues seem even more complex and hard to get a handle on than they really are. The combination of overwhelming quantities of information, the increasing complexity of the issues and the tech-speak of the policy wonks constitutes the fundamental challenge to economic education. Without a basic understanding of how the economy works, what the essential terms and concepts are, the average citizen is likely to feel completely left out of any conversation, whether in the media or around the water cooler, about what is happening in the economy and what to do about it. Feeling left out is frustrating and alienating.
Economic literacy is akin to having a working knowledge of a foreign language.
If you are with a group of foreigners and don't speak their language at all, especially if its sounds and intonations are strange and unfamiliar to your ears, you tune out. You feel excluded, perhaps uneasy. If you have a rudimentary working knowledge of the language, you can at least follow the drift of the conversation, ask a few questions and feel that, even if you are not getting the fine points, you are not totally left out and you have a basis for acquiring more knowledge. That discipline, I am afraid, has become so abstract, so obsessed with mathematical modeling of an unreal world where economic actors have perfect knowledge and unambiguous profit-seeking motives, that it frequently does not have obvious relevance to what average citizens need to understand about economic activity and economic policy choices. The teaching of economic literacy does not mean teaching a dumbed-down version of a graduate economic theory course.