Economic education is socio-economic education: foundations of a reflexive business and economic education

Abstract

Even though we live in an economised society, attitudes towards business and economics span from hostility to glorification. Several responses are discussed: the idea of an economised society can be denied, it can be accepted as a social phenomenon without consequences for economic education, or instrumental rational economisation maximising self-interest can be the objective of economic education. Alternatively, the didactical concept of reflexive business and economic education treats human beings as individuals and - indivisibly - social creatures embedded in culture and society. The crux of economic education lies in the distinction between lifeworld economy and scientific economics. Mainstream economics follows a pleonastic economic rationality, its modelling abstracted from institutions, structures, power, and contingencies. A pedagogically acceptable approach cannot place instrumental rationality maximising self-interest at the core of the lifeworld. The contribution describes the wheel of socio-economic education, which connects the economic dimensions of the lifeworld with the social, political and ethical dimensions.