May 30, 2024
By Jennifer Brandsberg-Engelmann and Michelle Blanchet

In 2023, an open letter was sent out to secondary teachers and schools to support the creation of learning materials for Regenerative Economics. The positive response was overwhelming, sparking a global movement to teach the knowledge and skills we all need to build economies that meet human needs within planetary boundaries.

Regenerative Economics for secondary schools is a comprehensive, two-year, flexible set of learning materials to help students aged 14-19 answer the question: How can our community be home to a thriving people, in a thriving place, while respecting the wellbeing of people worldwide and the health of the whole planet? The teaching and learning materials, including a syllabus, detailed specification, and full textbook and activities are available online, free in the creative commons.

Teachers and students around the world are taking up the materials, seeding their state-mandated economics courses with information and activities that challenge mainstream economics’ extractive assumptions. Our economies are a social construct, and economics is a social science. Humans have designed our economies and economics courses, and we can redesign them to do a better job meeting the needs of all within planetary boundaries. This grassroots movement is working to put pressure on curriculum authorities for more systemic economic curriculum change. It’s exciting, it’s energising, and it’s very needed. But system shift isn’t easy!

Those of us alive today who have taken economics in school or university have been taught the same economic models and assumptions that neglect our values, our planet, and our societies, with little room for questioning. The increased reliance on mathematics and models obscures the dynamic complexity of the human systems we use to meet human needs. In contrast, the Regenerative Economics materials help students understand that our economies are embedded in and part of society, and that both society and the economy are embedded in and dependent on Earth’s systems. Our dependence on each other and the rest of the living world demands economies that strengthen human relationships and ecological systems. In all the Regenerative Economics topics, the North Star is human and ecological thriving, with care at the centre of our economic activities.

As Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economics, puts it: “Economics is the mother tongue of public policy, the language of public life, and the mindset that shapes society.” It’s time we get the narrative right. Economists around the world are questioning our current economic understandings and are exploring how to redesign our economies to serve life in all its forms. With movements like Regenerative Economists for secondary schools, students and teachers can now finally be a part of the dialogue, too.

You can learn more about the initiative as well as check out learning materials by visiting www.regenerativeeconomics.earth.