Homo Economicus and Forgetful Curriculum - Remembering Other Ways to Be a Human Being

A reflection on how education maintains deluded ideologies that support ‘homo economicus’, and keep us separated from sacred ecology in unsustainable systems. He calls for a new story to guide metarelational curricula.

Abstract

“The central focus of this chapter concerns the contested space that becomes apparent when we consider the intimate linkages between curriculum thought and particular notions of human being-ness.

These linkages are examined by means of a review of the main mythologies that have guided formal schooling and curriculum thought since the Enlightenment as well as through a consideration of recent Alberta Education curriculum policy initiatives that promote market-informed notions of citizenship largely predicated on the value of entrepreneurship.

These ideologies, both historic and current, are tied together in their promotion of the development of a particular version of human being—homo economicus—who lives according to a faith in and worship of the market. In following this line of inquiry, the specific space under contestation concerns the assumptions made by educators and curricularists regarding the forms of knowledge and knowing considered most valuable in creating the kinds of citizens they have in mind.

I argue that such curricular initiatives promote ways of being that are unsustainable and forgetful of deep human ties to sacred ecology. I share one story as an example of curriculum sensibilities that could help us remember other ways to be more fully human.”

“the real work of reimagining curriculum and honouring other ways to be a human being involves the articulation of a new story that guides us to live on more ethically relational terms with humans as well as our more-than-human relations”

“The model of a real human being that wahkohtowin provides is one who acknowledges those relationships daily and strives to live in ways that sustains them. To do otherwise is to act against life and the survival of those relational networks.”