Abstract
The idea of endless economic growth is embedded in current economic teachings and in economic institutions. However, these teachings are being challenged by a corpus of studies which show that our economies are experiencing limits to growth. We must therefore work out how businesses can adapt to the post-growth era. This paper claims that there is an urgent need to introduce degrowth courses into the business curriculum to prepare future managers for the post-growth era. One way of doing this is to develop a specific degrowth pedagogy rooted in critical pedagogy. The author outlines the degrowth paradigm and introduces the current challenges of business education. Critical pedagogy provides the teacher with the necessary skills for questioning the relevance of the infinite growth paradigm on a finite planet. The paper reveals the transformational potential of degrowth pedagogy in business education.
Introduction
Since the 2008 financial crisis, the global economy has been experiencing a sharp slowdown in growth. Its effects have been alleviated by accommodative monetary policy in the United States and many other advanced and emerging countries. This slowdown turned into a global recession following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. In some industries such as retail, airlines, hospitality and sports, the effects of the recession have been extremely sharp. Despite government assistance, the pandemic will dramatically affect small and medium-sized companies, as well as employment and trade. Global gross domestic product (GDP) has shrunk by 3.4% according to the OECD (2021). All countries in the world have been affected by this slowdown, although to different degrees.
This trend of slowing economic growth is far from being an incidental phenomenon. There are three causes of the end of growth: the scarcity of resources, environmental damage such as climate change and pollution, and the inability of the monetary and financial system to limit itself to the level of resources available and to planetary boundaries. This is creating unsustainable levels of debt and a heavy burden on the shoulders of future generations (Heinberg, 2011). The current economic system has been designed to extract and use increasing amounts of the Earth’s natural wealth to increase GDP. There is therefore an urgent need to understand that the main challenge in training future managers in business schools is to prepare them for this post-growth world. The best way to do this is to introduce a viable alternative to the model based on infinite growth. This alternative is called ‘degrowth’.
Degrowth is ‘an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term’ (Schneider et al., 2010). Its objective is socioecological transformation towards more intra- and inter-generational equity rather than a reduction of GDP per se (which is an arbitrary indicator). Degrowth is not negative GDP growth, nor merely the dematerialization of our economies (Kallis et al., 2014; Sekulova et al., 2013) and, therefore, it should not be confused with a ‘sacrifice’ being asked of present generations. It is not about doing with ‘less’. Instead, it is an opportunity for a ‘different’ project: ‘different activities, different forms and uses of energy, different relations, different gender roles, different allocations of time between paid and non-paid work and different relations with the non-human world’ (Kallis et al., 2014).
There is a degrowth gap in pedagogical research; the degrowth literature currently lacks consideration of educational issues. A notable exception is Prádanos (2015), who calls for a ‘green critical pedagogy’ which could guide students to unlearn ‘ingrained commonplaces about economic growth, technology or progress’ before opening their minds to ‘deep critical discussions about posthuman environmental ethics and alternatives to growth that are socially desirable and environmentally sustainable’ (Prádanos, 2015: 153). Prádanos shares his own experience with the ‘pedagogy of degrowth’ in Hispanic studies and attempts to build pedagogical practices applicable to all types of curricula. This article has a different scope as it focuses on the degrowth pedagogy in business education which spearheads the education of future leaders by embodying the ideology of fierce competition for the growth of profits. By using degrowth questioning and critical pedagogy, we teachers can help our students to see that ‘economic degrowth is no longer an option, but a reality’ (Kerschner, 2015: 160). We can be path-clearers and guide them in the post-growth era.
Degrowth pedagogy has been unveiling and questioning the endless pursuit of GDP growth through the use of critical pedagogy. Based on a powerful theoretical corpus covering all areas of social and environmental criticism (Pereira, 2017: 128), critical pedagogy can be used to resist the dominant ideology of growth and contribute to the emancipation of students. It attempts to highlight conditioning and ideologies, and it questions meaning, which contributes to the degrowth philosophy.
Among the works on critical pedagogy (see Darder et al., 2017), I have chosen to focus on the contributions of the Brazilian founder Paulo Freire and the US theorist Henry Giroux. Freire’s (2006) major work, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was first published in 1970. In the United States, critical pedagogy emerged in 1983, with a book prefaced by Paulo Freire and written by Henry Giroux (1983): Theory and Resistance in Education. Giroux uses the critical theory of the Frankfurt School to denounce instrumental education, which leads students to question only the means but never the political and ethical ends of their activities. Applied to degrowth pedagogy, critical theory can make students aware that they are blind servants of the ‘growth’ machine and can prevent them from undergoing various forms of indoctrination. Giroux criticizes education’s economic growth orientation as a narrow instrumental rationality and views instrumental education as: [a] stripped-down version of education, the central goal of which was to promote economic growth and global competitiveness, which entailed a much-narrowed form of pedagogy that focused on memorization, high-stakes testing and helping students find a good fit within a wider market-oriented culture of commodification, standardization and conformity. (Giroux, 2020: 6)
The aim of a degrowth class in a business school is to raise questions and to stimulate debate and fruitful dialogue. This means questioning dominant paradigms and initiating critical thinking by exposing the limits of the growth paradigm and the risk of uncritically adhering to it. This is a problem-posing approach (which seeks to understand the causes of multiple crises) and not simply a problem-solving approach (which determines how to repair ecological damage). This important distinction is at the core of the critical pedagogy formulated by Freire and constitutes a very enlightening approach to degrowth thinking. According to Demaria et al. (2013): Degrowth as an interpretative frame diagnoses that disparate social phenomena such as the social and environmental crises are related to economic growth. Degrowth actors are thus ‘signifying agents’ engaged in the production of alternative and contentious meanings which differ from the ones defended by the mainstream (i.e. mass media, most politicians, economics professors and financial experts and industry CEOs). Pro-growth actors, for example, see economic growth as the best path to dealing with the current economic crisis and paying back debts, while degrowth actors find the economic system based on growth (fueled by debt) as the core problem. (Demaria et al., 2013: 194)
The degrowth paradigm
In the 1930s, the economist Simon Kuznets introduced GDP as a measure of economic progress. After the Great Depression, the 1930s marked the beginning of an era of increasing labour productivity through rapid mechanization. Then, after the Second World War, advertising, marketing and planned obsolescence (whereby small defects are built into consumer goods to encourage households to replace them faster) fostered increasing consumption to accompany the rise in productivity, giving birth to a ‘work and consume’ growth cycle (Nørgård, 2013). US President Eisenhower insisted, ‘It is a duty of every American to consume’ (Goudzwaard, 2004). In a commission report to US President Truman in 1952, Growth was spelled with a capital ‘G’ (Galbraith, 1958). Economic models were designed to foster growth without any consideration of its environmental effects, as resource depletion and pollution were considered revenues for GDP (Schmelzer, 2016).
Since the 1970s, there has been a gradual increase in awareness of the need to reconsider our economic model based on endless growth. In his famous book The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, the economist Georgescu-Roegen (1971) argues that our economy is a subsystem of the global ecosystem and, according to the law of entropy, the more we produce, the more we pollute and degrade the global ecosystem of planet Earth. The Report of the Club of Rome followed in 1972, arguing that as pollution increases hand in hand with industrial activities, economic growth will come to an end (The Limits to Growth), as will the world’s population and resources. Since then, many degrowth movements (Burkhart et al., 2020) have supported a socially and ecologically sustainable degrowth policy: ‘degrowth theorists and activists see degrowth as establishing secure and safe lives, fulfilling everyone’s needs in collaborative and collective ways, as celebratory and convivial’ (Liegey and Nelson, 2020: 3).
Degrowth theorists have noted the contradiction between sustainability and economic growth (Asara et al., 2015). While the ‘a-growth’ scenario (van den Bergh and Kallis, 2012) shows complete indifference to GDP, considered to be a poor indicator of welfare and social progress, ‘degrowth’ has a more explicit commitment to the downscaling of the economy. If the world is to reach a safe level of CO2 emissions, then it must reduce these emissions by more than 95% by 2050 (Jackson, 2009) and implicitly reduce the scale of the economy by approximately 20% (van den Bergh and Kallis, 2012). In his Encyclical Laudato Si, Pope Francis (2015) called for degrowth in some parts of the world in order to share resources more equitably with poor countries.
An important pitfall is the association of degrowth with the inequitable distribution of poverty, waste, resource depletion and ecosystem degradation in the name of climate change. Another risk is the application of austerity measures as necessary sacrifices that will bring back ‘green growth’, as today’s neoliberal policies are actively trying to do. To avoid this, theorists have called for ‘socially sustainable degrowth’, which includes social justice (equal access to goods, opportunities and rights). They differentiate this concept from ‘unsustainable degrowth’, that is, economic recession and the downgrading of social conditions through poverty, unemployment, war and environmental hardships.
Our situation is tragic in the sense that the high-consumption, Western lifestyles that cause environmental damage often fail to keep their promises of a good, meaningful life. Many people, although wealthy, feel alienated from their communities, disconnected from nature, unhealthy and overworked (Hamilton and Denniss, 2005; Lane, 2000). A mindful alternative to consumerism which is worth trying is ‘voluntary simplicity’ (Alexander, 2009; Elgin, 1998), which stipulates that a ‘good life’ goes hand in hand with simplicity, moderation, sufficiency, frugality and a non-materialistic lifestyle. Voluntary simplicity is a philosophy of life that is perfectly in line with the sustainable degrowth scenario. Alexander and Garrett (2017) claim that voluntary simplicity is a robust moral and ethical position that can guide our lives and our societies. ‘Simpler-livers’ want fewer possessions and less clutter; they consume less, use mainly durable and reusable products and work less (Johnston and Burton, 2003: 22).
Business education: perspectives and challenges
The accumulated crises since 2000, which peaked with the 2008 sub-prime financial meltdown and today’s Covid-19 crisis, have put the managerial curriculum under scrutiny. A growing number of critiques by academics and students at business schools have been questioning whether the curriculum is well adapted to the reality of the contemporary economic system (Parker, 2018). The financial sphere appears to be totally disconnected from the production and consumption aggregates and from the resource-based economy which provides Western living standards. Inequality, both within developed countries and between rich and poor countries, has risen dangerously, putting the geopolitical context at risk. The elite – educated by expensive MBAs – seems to have lost ground and to live in a delusionary world.
In this context, critical approaches through critical management studies (CMS) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have gained momentum in business schools. These approaches challenge mainstream managerial pedagogy by pointing out the fallacies of corporate capitalism and showing it to be a permanent source of instability and crisis. In an interview with Noam Chomsky, Fleming and Oswick (2014) shed light on the debate about the purpose of business school education in a degraded context: an oppressive climate to avoid any kind of dissent or ‘academic misconduct’, reinforcement of technocratic norms, heavier workloads and increasing tuition fees (see also Prichard, 2012). According to Chomsky, large business schools, such as MIT and Harvard in the United States, are open to discussion and lively debate. He considers them the most open places in the university, especially when compared to economics departments.
Under the cover of ‘academic political neutrality’, the ‘reflexive impotence’ (a term coined by Fisher, 2009) has invaded educational spheres. According to Fisher, ‘reflexive impotence’ stems from the inability to consider any alternative to capitalism while simultaneously recognizing its flawed nature. Anti-capitalism is no longer the antithesis of capitalism; it reinforces it. All alternatives are automatically dismissed. Fisher calls this type of ideology ‘capitalist realism’. It maintains a ‘pervasive atmosphere’ of ‘there is no alternative’ because capitalism is the only viable economic system. According to Fisher: Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action. (Fisher, 2009: 16)
Since the 1980s, Freire and Giroux have noted the evolution of pedagogy towards a managerial approach in which resource allocation (teachers, students and materials) is meant to increase the efficiency of the education system by increasing the number of graduates per unit of time. Productivity is circumscribed to the education process and that makes teaching a coherent and predictable activity. Education is standardized towards accreditation processes in business schools, as they are the leading institutions in this commodification and performance-oriented system. Here, we find the growth commandment being applied to the higher education sector as business schools function like firms in the economy. Their strategy is competition, cost reduction, performance and profit. Their markets tend to internationalization.
Through a series of standardized procedures and globalized curricula, teaching becomes a routine. Teachers are performers of a production process which leaves no room for reflection: ‘teachers are increasingly reduced to the status of technicians, removed from having any control over their classrooms or school governance structures’ (Giroux, 2010: 715). Skills must be transmitted quickly, efficiently and in an entertaining way. Many pedagogical innovations are based on entertaining students to make them more efficient in learning techniques. These include serious games, video games, problem-based learning, animation, coaching and role play, etc. These new pedagogies tend to turn tedious learning processes into attractive, amusing pastimes, and education into a commodity.
Techniques and technology appear to be interwoven in managerial pedagogy. Being growth-oriented itself, this pedagogy is based on pragmatism rather than on reflexivity. Problem-solving plays a central role in ‘learning to learn’, which is a set of technology-assisted learning techniques focused on improving mental performance. ‘Learning to learn’ technology is market-oriented and focuses on the development of new skills in line with business development.
Degrowth pedagogy
Degrowth pedagogy is rooted in Freire’s critical pedagogy. For Freire, education is an ongoing process in the search for completeness. Total awareness of this state of human incompleteness is the source of two important qualities: directness and honesty in the expression of the teacher’s opinions and values, and the limits. Teaching implies respect for the learners’ autonomy. Both teachers and learners are incomplete, unfinished beings, but they express different views linked to their backgrounds. Teachers see themselves and learners as subjects rather than simply as objects. Their aim is not just to understand their environment in order to adapt or to act in accordance with what is required to survive. Their main goal is to be an actor of change, an agent of social transformation. Critical pedagogy is the way to achieve this goal; it is a praxis for this transforming endeavour.
In this section, I attempt to investigate the way in which degrowth is a problematization of the growth dogma. There are four axes to practise degrowth pedagogy in business education: authenticity, ethics, curiosity and research, and unveiling ideologies.
Authenticity
Authenticity is at the core of Paulo Freire’s (2000) critical pedagogy. As well as delivering information and knowledge to the students, the teacher raises awareness through witnessing values and political choices. Freire’s view is that teachers cannot be neutral as education engages the whole person and their position among thoughts, words and actions. The teacher and the student evolve continuously in the educative process. Teaching is a ‘work in progress’ because it addresses human material. According to Freire, we are unfinished beings as subjects of history. Deconditioning, decolonizing mental processes are continuous, as are reconditioning and recolonizing alternative visions and imaginaries. The role of the teacher as a critical pedagogue is to encourage the autonomy of students as subjects of history through dialogue. In a constructive manner, the subjects – student and teacher – make history when they reconsider the different options for progress. In class, we begin to reconceptualize, restructure and revalue our social and economic system. This endeavour combines the ‘decolonizing imaginaries’ approaches of Castoriadis (1997) and Latouche (2011) with the praxis of critical pedagogy envisioned by Freire and Giroux. According to Giroux (1985), teachers act as transformative intellectuals when their goal is to educate young people to become active and reflexive citizens.
Ethics
According to Freire, teachers’ ethics are not the minor and narrow business ethics taught in the business school curriculum, which serve the corporate ideology. In contrast, critical pedagogy must be greater than the ‘business as usual’ philosophy which can lead to cynicism among students. It should cover the whole spectrum of discrimination and perversion in the current economic system. In this respect, degrowth pedagogy questions the relevance and sustainability of corporate capitalism when planetary boundaries are being crossed. The teacher speaks out in favour of the deprived, of the harmed and silent minorities, thus revealing the ecological debt burden that the growth-based economic system is putting on the shoulders of the weak and future generations. Critical pedagogues encourage learners to become ethical subjects by endorsing an overtly ethical position (speaking out) and by acting ethically in class through having a respectful, loyal, open attitude to learners. Teachers share with students their own choices, values and acts in everyday life. Transparency and free dialogue about the different options, motivations and acts can trigger changes because learners can easily detect any misalignment between their teacher’s words and acts; honesty is a catalyst for transformation. As students do not feel judged, they can dare to express their own aspirations and misalignments.
Curiosity and research
There is no clear line between the respective roles of the teacher and the students. Teaching is not a simple transfer of knowledge. The big challenge of degrowth pedagogy is how to deal with the dominant banking model of education, i.e. putting information into students’ minds about how money is deposited in a bank. As Freire states, ‘The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness’ (Freire, 2006: 73). As teachers, we can educate ourselves to become critical pedagogues and avoid the pitfalls of the commodified education that we see in our students’ behaviour. We can be reflective about our teaching and research practices and engage in authentic exchanges with our students. The learning materials give us the opportunity to challenge the dominant growth paradigm, to unveil its multiple tentacles.
The degrowth pedagogy is a territory of discoveries, conceptual creativity and the building of new research bodies. The critical pedagogue can arouse the epistemological curiosity of the students by enriching class discussions with readings from degrowth thinkers. Learning and research are complementary processes. According to Freire, curiosity is the origin of creativity because, patiently, we become impatient to give life to our dreamed world. By expanding our aspirations, we move from having a sense of fatality to embracing new possibilities. In the degrowth teachings, students confront many challenging approaches and engage in an archaeology of critical theories. They are unaware of these critiques and may feel somewhat thrown off balance to begin with. They usually come to class to ‘absorb’ knowledge to get good grades and are uncomfortable when they have to express their opinions and act as reflexive subjects of knowledge creation. They are used to problem-solving, which is the dominant pedagogy in business education with its many case studies, but not to problematizing the future by questioning the big picture. Moreover, for those with an economics background, the degrowth class is destabilizing because it deconstructs the theoretical building of mainstream economics and other heterodox economic theories that share the growth paradigm. The degrowth pedagogy is interdisciplinary: knowledge from physics, biology, philosophy and political sciences is essential for grasping the current challenges of crossing planetary boundaries. This brings fresh air into the traditionally narrow and closed economic field.
Unveiling ideologies
The aim of critical pedagogues is to escape the ‘myopia’ created by manipulative strategies and propaganda. The unveiling of the ideology of progress induced by the dominant growth dogma helps students to become subjects through a reflexive process. By instilling the idea of neutral education, leaving aside all political considerations, the ruling ideology turns education into a commodity. According to Freire, pedagogy is not neutral; it is political in nature. The critical pedagogue is a subject facing another subject – the student. They are both in a reciprocal relationship. One learns by teaching, while the other teaches by learning. There is a false neutrality which is implicitly defended by the neoliberal education curriculum. However, critical educators cannot hide their opinions and accept that students will eventually reject them. In degrowth pedagogy, the teacher unveils the growth dogma underlying the mainstream ideologies and problematizes the current situation. This approach acts as a way to deconstruct the economics curriculum. The problem of continuous growth cannot be detached from its effects on permanent cuts in social spending; the sharing of costs but the privatization of benefits, as in the case of banking bailouts; and the endless race to higher productivity, efficiency, layoffs and insecurity. All these policies are implemented under the banner of progress. The discussion starts with the business education sector, where higher efficiency rhymes with higher effectiveness, crowded classes, higher tuition fees and the precarious employment of teachers. Efficiency may seem ‘neutral’ to students. However, when asked ‘why should we be more efficient?’, students start to see the effects of the growth dogma and, eventually, the false neutrality falls apart. If progress means growth, then it leads to more production, more consumption, more waste, more technology, more weaponry and more damage to our environment.
When degrowth pedagogy meets critical pedagogy
My argument is that degrowth pedagogy makes a double contribution to the critical pedagogy field: it questions the ideology of progress and its technological dimension.
Progress ideology
Degrowth pedagogy questions the very ideology of progress. The inequalities, discriminations and all other harms of neoliberal ideology can coexist with unquestioning of the growth dogma. Ideologies of the left and right may admit the necessity of economic growth, even if they diverge on how to achieve it. They share a common belief: the ideology of progress. Nothing can stop the techno-scientific revolution that will transform our lives for the better. The problem of the progress-based agenda is the sharing of the benefits, not the relevance of pursuing growth indefinitely.
Henry Giroux also challenges the positivist approach which emphasizes the economic – material and technical – dimensions of progress. According to him: ‘progress in the twentieth century was stripped of its concern with ameliorating the human condition and became applicable only to the realm of material and technical growth’ (Giroux, 2020: 24).
Degrowth thinkers have revealed and challenged this ideology of progress. I found the philosopher Gunther Anders’ argument that we should think of conserving our planet before considering its transformation to be very pertinent. He declares himself to be an ontological conservative in this respect. In an appropriate wordplay, he argues that the famous Marxist praxis of changing the world is now obsolete because the more urgent task today is preservation. Only when we have saved our planet will we be able to transform it in a revolutionary manner. First, we must be conservative in the sense of preservative; that is, in a sense that no one who appears conservative would accept (Anders, 2001).
Another challenge pertaining to the current ideology of progress was formulated by the French ecologist, journalist and NGO activist Jean-Paul Besset (2005) in his book entitled How Can One No Longer Be Progressive Without Becoming Reactionary. Besset notes the mutation of progressivism (understood as the pursuit of growth, development and new technologies) into an ideology of reaction. He argues that today’s progressivist thinking calls for a clear break from harmful economic growth based on productivism, consumerism and extractivism. Inspired by Besset, Latouche (2011), among others, also challenges the development agenda of the neoliberal ideology.
‘Unlearning’ progress means changing direction when the road of progress leads to ruin: environmental damage, increasing health problems, resource depletion, inequalities, insecurity, terrorism, etc. By challenging the traditional concepts and ideologies, we question the soundness of our options in a reflexive manner. The virtue of this deconstructing exercise is to free learners from their fears of regression and decline associated with degrowth. Unlearning reveals the risk associated with embracing an ideology to death.
Technology
There is another interesting unlearning approach. How can we unlearn technology and technological assistance and, instead, learn how to survive? This is one of the most sensitive topics of dialogue in degrowth classes. The ‘digital natives’ (Prensky, 2010) wholeheartedly embrace Rifkin’s ‘digital empathy’ (Rifkin, 2009) and ‘the third industrial revolution’ (Rifkin, 2013) based on digital technologies. The argument in favour of the evolutionary virtues of the internet originates in Vernadsky (2014), as well as in Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘noösphere’ theory (Teilhard de Chardin, 1966). According to this theory, human cognition will create a global field of consciousness through the mediation of the internet and other digital technologies. This global field will be an inspiration for many and will drive humanity to a higher consciousness of its responsibility for protecting the Earth.
Freire takes a balanced view and recommends dialogue without imposing any dogmatic position. As he notes in Education for Critical Consciousness: ‘The answer does not lie in the rejection of the machine but in the humanization of man’ (Freire,2013 [1974]: 35). He recognizes the dangers of the ‘relegation of education to a mere exercise of technology’ (Freire, 2014: 75).
However, as Boyd (2016) rightly notes, Freirean concepts were formulated in the pre-internet era and, therefore, were unable to foresee the development of online teaching. Kahn (2009) argues that critical pedagogy is ‘quintessentially promethean’: ‘Prometheus is also representative of the industrial strivings of modernity to produce technical solutions to what are perceived to be given problems of natural scarcity and worldly imperfection through the ideology of progress’ (Kahn, 2009: 40). Freire was concerned with digital literacy and the critical use of advanced technological innovations to create new emancipatory opportunities for students. However, as Boyd (2016) asserts, there is a risk of banking education in the development of online courses, as the education technology industry supports the for-profit, market-driven business education.
Regarding technology, degrowth pedagogy can contribute to critical pedagogy by endorsing the critical theory of technology (Feenberg, 2009), the convivial pedagogy of Ivan Illich (1995, 1973) and the critique of the technological society by Jacques Ellul (1967).
Feenberg (2009) rejects ‘techno-utopianism’ by claiming that technology is not neutral; it creates a cyberculture which redefines human relations and shapes future society. A technocratic, control-focused and commerce-based vision of modernity can be debated with students. This critical approach unveils the conditioning of their generation and helps to decolonize their imaginary.
Illich (1995) criticizes the Techno-Moloch and wants to make education a convivial tool by promoting ‘autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with their environment’ (Illich, 1973). Kahn (2009) argues for a reconsideration of Illich’s contribution to the critical pedagogy through his focus on autonomy, conviviality and subsistence.
Introducing Jacques Ellul’s (1967) critique of technological ideology and technological terrorism is a great challenge. The technical totalitarianism denounced by Ellul can be illustrated today by smartphones, whose social, cultural, psychological and environmental impacts have not been measured. Moreover, people are forced to acquire this tool in order to have access to services, to pay taxes or to make purchases (Liegey and Nelson, 2020). In an innovation- and technology-friendly business school, it will be important to analyse the opposite assertion of a harmful, energy-depleting and propagandist technology. Rapid technological progress may lead to social chaos (Huxley, 1932). We are currently facing such a large digital colonization of our imaginaries that we can easily understand Freire’s more-balanced opinion while welcoming Ellul’s (1967) visionary approach. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalization and has created an unprecedented shift towards online teaching. Degrowth pedagogy helps to introduce students to Ellul’s critique of technological society.
Conclusion
Economic degrowth is a critical issue, but it is currently absent from most of the economics curricula in business schools. Degrowth pedagogy raises key questions about the future of the world’s socioeconomic and environmental systems, and it enables students to understand the interrelated issues of growth, resource depletion, pollution, climate change and inequalities. As future managers, they need to get a wide perspective of the possible alternatives to the growth paradigm, as businesses will play a crucial role in the transition to a post-growth economy.
This article focused on the role played by degrowth pedagogy in a business school. My main argument is that degrowth pedagogy introduces critical pedagogy in the sense of Freire and Giroux, that is by ‘telling the truth’ about our economic system and by investigating how the system can be changed.
One of the article’s important ideas is that the introduction of degrowth pedagogy contributes to critical pedagogy by questioning the ideology of progress. It takes inspiration from ecopedagogy (Kahn, 2010) and involves the instructor’s ability to move from problem-solving to problem-posing. In this respect, telling the truth is not enough. Degrowth thinkers, as critical pedagogues, must overcome cynicism by stimulating creativity through alternative-oriented debate. Both older and recent developments in human, social and physical sciences provide plenty of ideas and encourage interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.
This pedagogical endeavour is strongly supported by the curiosity of learners and by the contributions of critical pedagogy in educating active and reflexive citizens by cultivating ethics, joy and hope. It unveils dominant ideologies and invites questioning. Degrowth pedagogy echoes the critical and interdisciplinary nature of degrowth.
In these pandemic times, when the global economy has severely slowed down, I hope this article will be a catalyst for critical educators to adopt degrowth pedagogy. It also provides an opportunity to discuss the human and environmental impact of the invasive digital technologies for online teaching. In the age of digital literacy, an important question for practitioners of degrowth pedagogy is ‘how can online instructors help their students recognize how online teaching and learning occurs within a cyberculture, which itself implies certain values, beliefs and life principles?’ (Boyd, 2016: 181).
This article establishes a close link between degrowth theories and critical pedagogy. It invites the reader to rethink the concept of progress by situating human aspirations beyond the materialism and consumerism which dominate the imaginary of developed societies today and which serve as a universal model of development. It encourages self-reflection and autonomy, along with freedom of choice beyond the well-established routes of productivist–consumerist culture.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
