Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes	Part A: Growth economy
10 minutes	Part B: Degrowth economy
30 minutes	Part C: Media creation
05 minutes	Reflection

Part A: Activating prior knowledge

Step 1.

Because we're going to look at some reasonably complex economics in a moment, let's start with a simple analogy.

Ask students to imagine you had baked a cake for the class. Explain that everyone is going to get the same sized slice of cake. If there are 25 students in your class, the cake is being split into 25 pieces.

Step 2.

Discuss:

What if a new person came to our class tomorrow? What could we do to make sure they got a slice of cake? We would all have to have a smaller slice of cake.
What could we do to make sure people get more cake? We could bake more cake, and give everyone a bigger slice.
Could we reach a point where we couldn't make any more cake? Why? We might run out of ingredients like flour and eggs.
If we kept adding students to the class even after we hit our cake ceiling, what would happen to all our slices of cake? They would start to get smaller and smaller. Eventually we would probably reach a point where our slice was so small it made none of us happy.
What if you still wanted more cake? What could you do to get more? (Even if it's mean!) You could start to take other people's slices. That would leave some with a lot of cake, and some with very little cake.

Step 3.

Discuss:

You may have heard the term 'growth economy'. What do you understand this to mean? If the economy is growing it means that value is being created at some level. That might mean that new desirable goods and services are being created, or existing goods and services are being created more efficiently and therefore lowering the price to buy them. For example, someone comes up with something new that makes life better for other people - the microwave. They then trade that to other people and both parties become wealthier as a result. One person has a faster way of producing food, and one person has money from the sale. If the whole country creates more wealth, in general, the average person has more wealth, and can afford microwaves (and dishwashers and second cars and bigger houses and internet and smartphones) that they didn't have before, and the standard of living improves.
Why do people think they need 'more'? Bigger houses, newer phones etc.? Responses to this are highly individual.
Is bigger always better? Not if it’s unsustainable.
Can anyone make a connection between the cake and the real world? It's predicted that we would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future. By 2050 humans will require 70% more food, 120% more water and 42% more crop land as the world's population continues to grow. We want students to understand that the earth can't sustain us the way we're going. None of us will have enough 'cake' in the future unless we change something.
Can you think of anyone who already doesn't have enough 'cake'? Poorest nations still need some room to develop their economies and allow the poorest billions to attain a dignified level of existence. There are plenty of people in Australia living below the poverty line.

Part B: Explicit teaching

Step 1.

Discuss this image:

If we continue to grow, eventually we will outgrow our capacity as the earth runs out of resources, and this will lead us to a recession, where we start to be worse off. This will be an especially bad time for people who are already quite a bit worse off.

It's important to understand the difference between 'stationary state' and 'degrowth'.

Stationary State means we just keep doing what we're doing; using the same amount of resources, burning fossil fuels to make the same amount of energy, eating the same amount. We can do this for a while - so long as we don't grow or want more - but eventually we will still run out, since it's predicted that we would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future, and by 2050 humans will require 70% more food, 120% more water and 42% more crop land as the world's population continues to grow.

Degrowth, on the other hand, is "a phase of planned and equitable economic contraction in the richest nations, eventually reaching a steady state that operates within Earth’s biophysical limits" (Source). Some of us would have to share more of the cake with others, while overall we would have to reduce our need for lots of cake.

We simply don’t need so much stuff – certainly not if it comes at the cost of planetary health, social justice, and personal well-being.

It is about creating an economy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well, and discovering that enough is plenty.

The alternative is to consume ourselves to death.

Step 2.

Ask students to define what they think qualifies as a 'high' standard of living, as pursued by government policies of a growth economy.

Does it mean being able to buy everything we want?

Or does it mean being comfortable with the basics?

Or somewhere in between?

A 'high' standard of living according to Australians might be radically different to what people in other countries aspire for, given their current circumstances.

Step 3.

As a class, create a list of some areas where we consume or waste more than we need.

Some suggestions might include:

Food. A large amount of produce is wasted for not meeting retail cosmetic standards, ie: it looks a bit bruised or is weirdly shaped. All of the energy spent towards production, transportation, and processing of this food is also wasted. If we can reduce the amount of food waste from 33% to 10% by 2050, we can reduce our carbon emissions by 1 gigatonne per annum.
Clothing. The average consumer now buys 60% more items of clothing than in 2000, but each garment is kept for half as long. Annually, Australians acquire an average of 27 kilograms of new clothing per person, and discard around 23 kilograms of clothing to landfill each year. Only around 18% of the world's clothing is re-used or properly recycled. Do we really need to buy that new t-shirt?

Step 4.

Remind students that it is hard to reimagine the good life if we are constantly bombarded with advertisements insisting that “nice stuff” is the key to happiness.

Part C: Independent activity

Step 1.

Ask students to think about how they could minimise in their lives, or the excess consumption of their household.

How many clothes are in their closets that aren't being worn? Project 333 challenges people to dress with 33 items or less for 3 months. That is, a pair of earrings or shoes, a t-shirt, a pair of pants, all count as 1 thing towards your 33 item limit. Students could try this challenge for themselves as a way of identifying what they absolutely need, and what is excessive.
How much food gets thrown away in their household? Is their family eating everything they buy? Is there a way to address this, by creating a more focused shopping list where everything gets used, and vowing to eat all the leftovers before they go off?
Is there a way to digitise some of your purchases? For example, an e-book device and downloading books would save a lot of paper on printing paperbacks. The same thing applies to digital movies (not that many kids buy DVDs these days, probably!)
Alternatively, are there ways of recycling or reusing things, instead of buying new? Instead of throwing a pair of socks away when they get a hole in them, could students learn to darn them? Instead of buying a brand new bike, could students find and repair an old one from a garage sale?

Step 2.

Remind students that minimalism isn't about harshly limiting ourselves. It's more about making conscious decisions about what and how much we decide to consume. If you really like to read books and get a lot of joy from these items, it's all right to invest in these items. We just want to avoid mindlessly consuming things. We can also seek more sustainable alternatives, such as commonable libraries.

On the other hand, do we need to be updating our phone every few years to the latest model, even if we really treasure it?

Step 3.

Independently, students conduct an audit of their belongings.

What do they really love and think they could never live without? Can they narrow this down into a list of 10 items? For the sake of this thought experiment, a single book would count as one item. Any games for a gaming machine would count as one item each. Depending on how harsh you want to be, you could even make students count their bed and their desk as an item.
What possessions do they own that they have a lot of, or that they hardly ever use? Clothing is probably a big one on this list.
What do they spend a lot of money on but really could they do without, if they were forced to?

Extension:

Challenge students to try 1 month with only these ten items, and/or 33 pieces of clothing, including shoes and accessories. They're also not to buy anything new, if they can avoid it.

Then revisit the audit. A month is probably enough time to assess what they are using a lot of, and what is just taking up space in their room, and might force them to reevaluate how much 'stuff' they really need to be happy.

Students may find themselves wanting to get rid of things they thought they couldn’t live without. Or, they might discover some really important and frequently used things that they weren't initially valuing.

Step 4.

Now ask students to expand their view of a 'high' standard of living to the rest of the world. What does this future world look like?

Independently, students will create two artworks that illustrate an unsustainable growth economy and a sustainable minimalist economy, and compare the differences between the two.

Step 5.

Direct students to imagine a future where humans have scaled their consumption right back. We are living on renewable energy sources. Nature is flourishing. We are reusing at a huge rate, and producing very little 'new' stuff. What we do produce, is 100% recyclable. We all have less personal belongings, but what we do have, we treasure, and there is a lot more sharing of resources around the world and in our local communities - things such as community pantries and libraries.

Step 6.

Contrast this with a future where countries around the world continue to grow unsustainably. We have used up all of the earth's natural resources, mining the earth bare and deforesting all of our natural flora. We are now struggling to feed the population, and have hunted many species to extinction, especially fish. There is not enough housing for everyone, and people are living on the streets. Students can probably think of many more consequences on their own.

Reflection

Ask students to reflect on something they are grateful for.

As they're thinking, explain that we often get caught up aspiring for what we don't have. However, we're probably a lot better off than a lot of people. We might be grateful for having a roof over our heads and enough to eat, compared to people living on the streets. We could be grateful for the fact that we're able to afford to buy a new t-shirt or video game, rather than complaining about the fact that we can't afford ten of these things, or more expensive ones.

And that might lead us to realise that we don't really need a lot of what we think is necessary in order to be happy.

Students could share what they're grateful for if they feel comfortable.

Teacher reflection

Take this opportunity to reflect on your own teaching:

What did you learn about your teaching practice today?
What worked well?
What didn't work so well?
What would you share?
Where to next?
How are you going to get there?

IPCC - Degrowth and minimalism to combat climate change

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