I have been travelling  so have only now seen James Ahiakpor's August 4 post.  
   
I wonder if normative issues can be kept out in the manner in which he seems to indicate.
  
He says for example: "When one appreciates that the 'poor worker' would be worse off in
the absence of such an opportunity to work, it gets one to think differently about the
employer".
  
This is the precise argument that is sometimes used to justify child labour.  
No matter how scientific, rational and unemotional we make economics   
it is ultimately about human beings. The normative issue here can of course be
reintroduced by disguising it as a choice issue about  how to raise the  capacity of the
human economy to sustain,reproduce and improve itself.
Perhaps what seems a sharp conceptual division doesnt really exist. That is why normative
issues and values can be tackled in another way: Take them head on and discuss them.
Indeed there is every justification for an entire course on these.
  
Anil Nauriya