Our country truly needs to receive teaching in economics.

Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 7, page 380 (in French)
Octobre 1847

In this second letter to Horace Say, Frédéric Bastiat is distressed by the ignorance of all, including politicians, when it comes to economics. He notes that newspapers like the Journal des Economistes or Libre-Echange are seldom read, including by those who have contracted a subscription (such a hypothesis is a bit mysterious). He believes that it would be necessary, on top of distributing writings about economics, to increase public speeches that would allow to awake the curiosity of more people who would then study the topic more systematically.

In France, enormous progress has been made when we consider that economics is now taught in senior high school. However, we can note that nowadays, such teachings are biased and that the understanding of liberal theses is minimal when constructivism, in particular the Keynesian school and some aspects of Marxism constitute the orthodoxy in France. It is a pity and keeps today’s quote as valid now as then.