About
Working group formed for the International Conference on Degrowth 2014.
What are goals of education for degrowth beyond individual life-style changes?
How can people be effectively engaged in degrowth discussions and actions?
Is education an effective strategy for degrowth transformation, and if so how?
Who is included in our debates about a degrowth society and who is not? How can we change this in the field of degrowth education?
Participants
Space administrators
Results from Leipzig 2014
Contents – What to learn for Degrowth?
Learning should be more focused on skills an competences and less on theoretical knowledge.
Important skills to be strengthened in education are: critical thinking, creativity, self-consciousness, (non-violent) communication, empathy and sensitivity, mindfulness, dealing with complexity, practical survival skills (subsistence and sufficiency)
We can achieve this by a better mix of experiences and cognitive understanding → check of deficiencies in the current educational system (evaluation)
The question of Mental Infrastructures (Harald Welzer), meaning the cultural roots of our beliefs, habits and norms (e.g. self-optimization, the economic man/ homo oeconomicus, knowledge society) should be strengthened. In educational settings, this could be done by:
Reflecting our relationships to nature and other human beings
Exchanging with radically different views of and relations to the world
Reflection on the good life and the goals of society
By slowing down (life, education etc.) instead of promoting the notion of the ever fulfilled life
By consuming as many world views as possible
Methods – How to learn for Degrowth?
We should focus more on experience based learning (head, hand, heart).
Learning settings should be based more on the values of degrowth (open source, sharing...).
Learning for degrowth should accept paradoxes, controversies and alternative perspectives.
We need more accessible role models for sustainable living (“kids don't learn what you teach them, but what you do”).
The big picture – in which system do we learn for Degrowth?
Promote critical pedagogy: critical thinking for emancipatory purposes allows non-instrumental learning.
Promote democratic pedagogy: allow democratic participation and decision-making in learning contexts as well as co-determination (= non hierarchical teacher-student relations).
Promote anti-exclusionary pedagogical practices, tackle patriarchy and gender relations, mix different age groups.
This implies a (radical) transformation of school.
All these issues should be strengthened in teachers education.
Controversial/ undecided questions:
Do we need to focus mainly on processes instead of results?
What's the role of mentors/ of support in your learning process?
Should we abolish schools?
Results from Barcelona 2010
Here you can find the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group. More.