Dartboard was delighted to cautiously expose sun-deprived skin this week after months of brisk New England weather. Unfortunately, while tempting the melanoma gods, Dartboard was also subjected to the perennial bellyaching of pale Harvard youth: If only we were in Southern California right now—it would be like this every day.
It seems like every year folks from East and West alike have to sing L.A.’s praises. East coasters point to the beaches, waves, temperatures that rarely drop into the 60s and wide-open spaces. And native Southern Californians often fanatically defend their home, usually relying on arguments that have something to do with how L.A. is so “laid back” or how living there is a “way of life, dude.”
But, unlike most native Los Angelinos (who act as though they’re exiled on the East), Dartboard does not stick up for the ray-soaked wasteland and wishes eastcoasters and westcoasters would just get over it. Southern California doesn’t deserve such reverence. It more than makes up for its brilliant weather with disgusting urban sprawl, choking traffic, pollution, aesthetic debauchery and an intellectually stifling “laid back” atmosphere. The city is a huge expanse of strip malls, crumbling homes and apartment buildings that were in bad taste to begin with, crammed freeways and unbelievably crowded public schools. Sure, rich Los Angelinos maintain some nice areas (and these are the parts of L.A. that most visitors see and care to remember), but charming or culturally enhancing bits of Los Angeles are few and far between. Boston may be cold, but it’s got it where it counts.
—STEPHEN W. STROMBERG
Downsize Marty
On April 10, the Committee on Undergraduate Education wisely voted down Professor Stephen A. Marglin’s proposal to offer an alternative course to Martin Feldstein’s Ec 10. The idea of an alternative Ec 10 is well-intentioned but a cop-out; Feldstein has to go. When the Economics Department makes its final decision on April 22, they should bypass Marglin’s proposal and resolve to choose a new professor to teach Ec 10.
Everyone but the most devoted readers of the Salient know that Feldstein teaches a distorted introduction to economics, passing off his personal beliefs as economic law. A substantial proportion of the articles in the Ec 10 sourcebook were penned by Feldstein himself and on many topics, only one side of the debate is included (such as his famous privatizing social security lecture). The course is so rife with bias that even The New York Times couldn’t resist a little Feldstein bashing: “Thousands of Harvard undergraduates have received a decidedly anti-tax, free-market-leaning introduction to economics” from Feldstein’s class.
A proper introduction to economics requires teaching the basic theories that economists agree on while briefly mentioning those views which are more contentious and noting them as such. And it should foster some interest in studying economics further—or at least not brutally crush that interest while it is young and fragile. Feldstein has proven himself less than able on all these counts since he began teaching Ec 10 in 1984.
A professor who distorts the subject he is meant to introduce to students is simply not fit to teach an introductory course. We don’t need a well-taught Ec 10 and a Feldstein-taught Ec 10. We need a well-taught Ec 10, period.
—EOGHAN W. STAFFORD
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