Excerpt from Accounting for Property, and Its Uses: Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720

This presentation of elementary accounting attempts to divide the subject into two parts. The first part presents principles and procedures used to account for assets and for the uses made of these assets. While some reference to liabilities and other equities is necessary, this is placed in background. The second part presents principles and procedures used to account for liabilities and other equities. Liabilities and ownership claims are presented primarily as sources of assets. It is believed that if a complete balance sheet approach is emphasized that there may be failure to place proper emphasis on other problems and procedures which the student will find more immediately useful. Although this scheme of presentation has not had the widest use, it has had the approval of some of the foremost accounting teachers.

The teaching of accounting in some of the economically less developed countries makes it more necessary than ever to inquire into the fundamental nature of the subject. The teaching of any subject undergoes a long development during which there is a tendency to conventionalize principles to the point that they become accepted uncritically as fundamental when often they are no more than local conventions. When an appreciation of the origin and usefulness of accounting principles is neglected, the principles no longer challenge the user in industry. The principles may become only academic exercises whose chief claims to usefulness is a place in the college curriculum. The presentation in this book hopefully is designed to preserve the challenge that is inherent in principles and procedures which may be employed in a culture not conventionalized in the pattern of the Western World.

It may not be supposed generally that the students of these countries will have been exposed to the educational methods to which the instructor is accustomed. Nor can it be assumed that the student upon graduation from school will be employed in a public accounting office. He will begin work in a single industrial enterprise operated by the government or a private agent. Or he might be employed in a department of the government. He should, with also some preparation in law, be able to begin work in a government department such as taxation.

A further consideration in this book is the nature of accounting problems to be solved in a socialistic state, or one in which there is little private enterprise. While there has been considerable development of governmental and other fund types of accounting for this purpose, it is the accounting for the privately owned enterprise that has been used almost exclusively in the Western World when presenting elementary accounting to students. There is need for an approach which, if possible, lends itself well as an introduction to both situations. It appears that such an approach can be found.

A search through the most widely used American textbooks will show that the conventional approach does not differ as much from the approach attempted here as at first it might seem.

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