Reaching a Broad Public Audience with an Educational Program in Political Economy

Harry Pollard, Ed Dodson and Dave Wetzel

[An exchange of views, 18-20 February 2012]

Harry Pollard (18 February 2012

The long discussion about Community Land Trusts and the rest seemed to show that LVT will not survive unless the reason for it is known to the populace.

Education of opinion leaders is absolutely necessary to the fulfillment of a Georgist economy.

Unfortunately, that doesn't mean a ten week course in P&P. It means an involvement in the basic 3 courses the Henry George School provides plus additional discussion - at the very least.

Until we build up an army of Georgist educated opinion leaders, all our political efforts to get LVT are doomed to failure. We will either get a reflection of the real thing such as two-rate taxation, or a mockery that is declared to be LVT but is larded with exceptions and special deals that dilute its economic effects and make it useless.

There is no quick way. We just have to take time to produce the knowledgeable people who can get us to the goal and keep us there.

Ed Dodson (18 February 2012)

You were on the right track, Harry, by developing a course or courses on political economy that could be taught to high school students. Unfortunately, without repetition (e.g., courses taught with gradually increasing sophistication every year from grade 7 through 12) retention into adult life is not likely to occur, except for the rare and intellectually curious young person. Few within the community of "Georgist educators" embraced what you started and, so, the effort was marginalized and never appropriately funded.

As for the approach taken by the Henry George Schools over its relatively long history, the assumptions on which the school's program was designed were never realistic. The number of people who continued to embrace Henry George's analysis and ideals had declined to such an extent by the early 1930s that the establishment of an educational arm of the movement was a rational survival decision. However, the idea that a not-for-credit institution could rebuild the movement by turning everyday adults into activists by turning them into teachers never blossomed as hoped. As the "old-timers" died off they were not replaced at anything even approaching a one-to-one ratio of dedicated "Georgists" coming out of the schools. People completed the school's courses, became active for a short period, then mostly disappeared back into their former activities. The exceptions cannot even be counted in the hundreds.

Had funds been raised and allocated to establishment of a degree-granting institution the story might have been different. Then, generations of degree-holding individuals would have moved into teaching positions -- in the high schools, or with advanced degrees in hand, into the colleges and universities. Whatever opportunities there might have been to take this course were ignored. The absence of significant funding was certainly an issue, although we the prestige of a John Dewey or a John R. Commons or a Frederic C. Howe or a Louis F. Brandeis involved this might have been possible during the early part of the last century.

It is my view, after being in the classroom teaching political economy for over three decades, that classroom education -- even a full year of study by students willing to make such a commitment -- will not achieve much, if anything. The law of small numbers is against us. The New York school attracts the largest number of persons to courses and seminars but has not been able to develop a speakers' bureau or an alumni organization. A Common Ground chapter now exists; however, its membership ought to be in the hundreds or thousands given the number of people who have come through the school over just the last few decades.

What is the answer? My answer I repeat often these days: a well-designed, adequately funded and staffed self-directed distance learning program. This cannot be achieved without a strong commitment of time and resources, but I believe this has the best change of reaching and attracting a global core to our fundamental ideals. And, in the process, of rebuilding the movement began by Henry George into something that the beneficiaries of entrenched privilege would have to be concerned over.

Dave Wetzel (20 February 2012)

I agree totally with Ed and Alanna.But what's the next step?

I like the idea of a simple introductory online course with each lesson ending with a test of 5 or 6 questions with each one offering carefully selected multi-choice answers. a) b) c) d) & e). Only one answer would be correct but the "wrong" answers would be carefully selected in order to probe where the erroneous thinking of the student lies and then automatically offering a paragraph or two perhaps encouraging the student to rethink their assumptions, referring to the part of the original text which has been misunderstood and then inviting the student to take a further multi-choice test on that particular aspect of the lesson probing the student's understanding more deeply. Only when this question has been correctly answered would the student then move onto the next question. And only when all the questions have been successfully answered would the student be able to move onto the next lesson (with an override button for impatient students who want to skip-read the whole course in a short period of time).

At the end of this introductory course the student should be invited to attend local classes, continue studying with Alanna's or some other online course, and/or join (or even start) a Georgist organisation or land value tax lobbying group.