The welfare-state outlook of John Maynard Keynes still dominates economic textbooks, analysts say, but free enterprise ideas are increasingly being included. Concepts such as private property, reduced regulation and the benefits of limiting government's role in the economy are showing up in texts.

Here are the observations of a few scholars:

• Burton Folsum Jr., of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, says new high school textbooks "are moving away from Keynes," but are still "bad on antitrust, taxes and the Great Depression."

• He reports that in a review of high school textbooks, three earned A's, six got D's and two rated F's.

• Hillsdale College economist Richard Ebeling points out that some college texts now cite Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek -- but their thoughts "are explained in terms of a general Keynesian model or theory."

• The experts note that students are still being taught that laissez-faire capitalism caused the Great Depression and government spending cured it.

Texts are rarely fair to supply-side economics, failing to explain that tax cuts have historically produced more federal revenue. Antitrust activists are still being credited with breaking up monopolies -- with the role of competition in the process largely ignored.

The Austrian school of economics -- exemplified by Hayek and Ludwig von Mises -- rarely gets a mention, even though those two economists were the only ones to clearly predict the stock market crash of 1929 and the depression which followed. George Mason University economist Walter Williams points out that Milton Friedman later confirmed that the Federal Reserve and the Smoot-Hawley tariff caused those calamitous events.

Michael Chapman, "Textbooks Take Free-Market Tack," Investor's Business Daily, October 22, 1998.