ABSTRACT

The task of accounting is to provide reliable knowledge. The standard textbooks and curricula give no analytical attention to what this means. They perpetuate processes that had their origins in the desire to conceal rather than to disclose. Recurrent criticism of the products of practice may only be averted if the educational establishment gives greater attention to the nature of money and prices, the conditions of valid measurement, the logic of choice, the regulation of complex processes, and the consequences of misdirected thought and misleading practices.