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

Summary

Papaschase Cree scholar Dwayne Donald argues that schooling trains children to become ‘homo economicus’, through myths of individualism, progress and anthropocentrism. They’re hard to see because “people do not think about their mythologies; they think with them.” Forgetting “deep human ties to sacred ecology”, such curricula close down children’s chances “to imagine other ways to live their lives.”

Rationale

Thinking with our myths, not about them, is one of the clearest descriptions of deep disposition we found. Our glossary entry on the Cree teaching of wahkohtowin comes from here.