Teaching degrowth through practice

A/ Why using the practice to teach degrowth?

* After several centuries of rationalism, while we believed too much that pure theories can solve every problems we face, it seems important to give more place to practice and experimentation. Also many people mistrust theories, such people prefer to see or even better to do.
* We want to think and to act at different levels, then we need both an accurate global vision AND to enter the practice at the local or personal level. Also voluntary simplicity encourage us to be closer to the earth.
* Degrowth brings also to confront the belief in technological progress. If we are confident into more manual and time-consuming ecological agriculture instead of industrialized agriculture... then we have to restore value to the manual activities such as cultivating. Indeed today only 3% of the western Europe population is farmworker. Many manual skills are getting lost disappearing with the oldest generations. We want a degrowth future where everyone would eat ecological des-industrialized food. Thus, we need millions of people coming back to the fields and rediscovering skills.
*Perhaps the most important argument is that today we know that we have to change our way of life. But we can not even imagine how could be a sustainable life in Europe. How can we reduce our ecological impacts by a factor 10, as it seems to be required? We have to reinvent a new culture. mIsn't it time to experiment, try and show what could be possible? Also, many people are searching ecological and collectives way of life. We have to show how it is possible beyond theories. We have to show how a happy life is possible using 10 time less energy and materials.

B/ How to teach degrowth through the practice.

Once we are convinced to do it, everything becomes easy. We can just build on our intuitive desires, to deepen in degrowth practices. Any element is pedagogical.
As example, many people feel they want to go out of the « consumer society », so we can progressively learn and show how to live with simplicity. Also how to pick directly from the environment and nature with moderation and without intermediaries.
Many people would like to stop being an employee which production lake of sense: we can learn skills and show it is possible to live becoming a self-managed producer with an ethical vision.
Some people are attracted by collective life. We can explore and elaborate tools for a collective life. Inviting people to share our collective life is a very important experience for people entering in alternative ways of life.

A variety of  specific tools are well-known since decades:
* It is very interesting to relate generations. Older people sometimes still hold skills that have be discredited during decades, and that nowadays could be useful for new generations. It is a very beautiful action to reconnect between generations through workshops mixing younger and older generations (for more information, please contact Jorge).
* youth work camps or « popular education » are also important tools.
* volontary services, wwoofing are often chosen by young people.

C/ Difficulties and results

*Teaching through practice is generally slow. This should not be seen as a few hours (or a few days) seminar. Learning skills or even changing habits requires months or years living differently. We should propose to people opportunities for experiencing over several weeks or month.
*Teaching through practice implies to spend time with each people one by one. It could appear less effective than teaching theory since theory can be written and wider broadcast. Nevertheless when one person teaches to two, and those two teach to four, we enter in an exponential transmission of the knowledge which start slowly but increases explosively!
* In Can Decreix we are very satisfied to observe that both us and invited people feel very happy to live and work without fridge, cars, machines work, etc. Also to live and organize collectively and experiment a simple live needing few monetary exchanges. We noticed that we impact locally even conventional people. People highlight that « we are thinking differently ». There is also a regional impact on people searching for alternatives. Practising gives weight to our proposals. It helps to gather people around the degrowth perspective.
* One large difficulty is that we have a lot of skills to rediscover for cultivating, building, for collective stage-management, etc. This is not a work for a few people. In this world transformation, we need the participation of the whole new generations.

D/ A 40minutes practical teaching experience

As an example about how to teach degrowth through practice, we proposed a walk through Can Decreix around the idea of closing the cycle of our food.
* We picked and tasted some wild comestible plants. We also show a botanic book for recognizing the plants. Also participants with knowledge are asked to add informations about properties of the plants they know.
* We carried the pee container to enrich the vine soil making small local straw-and-pee composts.
* A new and an old compost is shown, touch and smelt. The equilibrium for a good composting is described.
* Some participants are asked to draw the « mapping » around this cycle of food.

Other ideas could have been:

*To build or improve something “up-cycling”.
*see the bees.
*see to use the solar cooker or the rocket stove.
*collect wood for the rocket stove or straw for the compost.

E/ Some principles for a practical TTT

For improving the impact of the practical training, we could try to:
*create an exchange of practices between participants and « trainers ».
*ask for and build on the knowledge of participants.
*show and learn about the resources around. We are to often closed from our environment.
*up-cycling (what to do with garbage).
* walking picking, learning by doing.
*ask to people what they are interested on. This enhance the motivation.
* Ask for feedback: « what did you find more interesting? »
*show an ecological cycle for the pedagogical aspect.
*adapt to seasons. Take awareness for the year season.
*explain economics, to show that ecology and life is different than classical economy.
*explicit the connection to degrowth. Compare larger cycles.
*Encourage the Do it yourself.
*numbers description?
*connect with other teaching strategies (academic, etc).
*come up to critical questions: which changes with degrowth around time, work, pleasure...

( Sylvain, Can Decreix, May 2014)