In the aftermath of the economic crisis, economists acknowledged not only the failure of their profession to foresee the big crash, but most importantly its roots in economic theory and the way it is being taught: too much math, too little society. Yet, as debate about the “lack of economic knowledge” in Germany evolves, this lesson seems forgotten. Economic education, traditionally part of social science and political education curriculum in German secondary education, is now favored to be separated as an own subject while deriving its framework, content, and educational aims from standard economics textbooks that had been scolded only a few years earlier.
How is this development to be explained? By turning towards new sociological pragmatism to analyze elements of the debate, this paper attempts to go beyond traditional discourse and policy analysis approaches to offer new analytical insight into this matter of concern.
