Economics, Education and Youth Entrepreneurship

International Perspectives

Marian Noga, Andrzej Brzeziński

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000456875
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Business Education
• Index: Economics

The aim of this book is to justify the importance of economic knowledge for every human being in a country with an economic system based on the market mechanism, and to explain and debunk the myths and stereotypes related to economic education and its effectiveness, particularly among young people.

The book offers a comparative analysis of the economic education of young people in Poland and throughout the world. It examines the historical emergence of economies and economic thinking and decision-making as well as the different philosophies and educational systems in the EU and the USA. It thoroughly investigates the economic knowledge of Polish youth via an annual study, which the authors have conducted since 2012.

The book outlines both the formal and informal methods of economic education, from education programs in general secondary schools and economic technical schools, as well as in vocational schools, and also examines school Business Incubators. It concludes with a summary, reviewing the implementation of research goals and issues and outlining directions for future research.

The authors break down complex topics and provide readers with a base knowledge of economics at the micro and macro levels. The book will serve as a useful and practical guide for students and researchers, as well as policymakers concerned with rethinking the education system. Additionally, it will be a helpful resource for those wanting to acquire the knowledge needed to conduct a business, as the authors maintain that entrepreneurship can be learned.

1 The need to disseminate economic knowledge of young people in the modern world

DOI: 10.4324/9781003206446-1

1.1 Economic thinking

Aristotle already claimed that man is a social being, and he must live among other people and cooperate with them. Our consciousness and way of life do not develop “by themselves”, but are shaped in relationships with other people. This makes us:

• watch them
• imitate and talk to them
• learn to feel, think and react

Thus, a man is a member of various groups and communities (Aronson, 2009: 5–7).

As a member of the community, the family, the clan, he becomes a social being. Social psychology deals with all the relationships that arise on the individual-group line. We are to answer the question of how economic awareness and economic thinking were born. But to answer this question, we must first:

1. explain the concept of awareness and social awareness
2. explain the process of shaping human needs

The word “awareness” has so many meanings that it needs to be considered only from a specific point of view. In our case, we want to come from this word to economic thinking. If so, consciousness is “a mental process with two characteristics and a perspective engaging the contents currently presented in the mind, and the feeling that accompanies these mental contents” (charaktery.eu). This approach to consciousness is very interesting from the point of view of explaining the genesis of economic thinking. Namely, this “feeling that accompanies these mental contents” is nothing but the relationship of an individual with the outside world. It is a clear clash of the individual consciousness of a particular person with social consciousness (kognitywistyka.net). So what is social awareness? According to Emile Durkheim, social consciousness is clearly different from individual consciousness and is not a simple sum or average of the consciousness of individual members of society, but functions to some extent as an independent phenomenon. Durkheim states that social awareness is a sociological concept and means a set of ideas, symbols, concepts, opinions, views and prejudices common to the vast majority of a given community (mfiles.pl). Thus, it can be concluded that social awareness is a segment of culture as a model of views and ideas that are widely and generally accepted in a given community, which become norms and patterns of thought instilled and enforced. As L.J. Krzyżanowski rightly writes, thanks to signs, symbols and a common convention, and especially, the language, people form ideas, views and beliefs. These, in turn, studied, analysed and compared, create simple and complex models and theories. It is the domain of science. When we transfer these theories and models to economic and social life, what we call the application of theory to practice occurs. Only at this point does the phenomenon of social consciousness begin to take shape (Krzyżanowski, 1999: 284). Paweł Sztompka claims that social awareness may have various manifestations and may take various forms:

1. Common-sense thinking – intuitive, somehow internal conviction, often hasty or one-sided. We cannot always verify this thinking. The English use the term common sense here, and the Poles use the term “in layman’s terms” (Polish: na chłopski rozum).
2. Sacred zone, i.e. ideas and images about the supernatural world, ultimate matters, life after death. It also features magic, myths and religions.
3. Ideologies, i.e. systems of ideas that serve to support, justify and legitimise certain group interests or reinforce group identity.
4. Public opinion, i.e. all views on matters common to a given community, e.g. economic, political and social (media, press, radio, Internet).
5. Knowledge scientific, i.e. views and beliefs that can be verified, considered true or false by scientific verification or falsification.
6. Artistic creativity (art, literature, music), i.e. products that exemplify human artistic and emotional experiences created for the audience and not for oneself (Sztompka, 2002 295).

When analysing the category of social consciousness, one cannot ignore the phenomenon of pathologies of social consciousness, which occur especially in large communities. We distinguish here:

• stereotypes – that is, simplified and one-sided and generally exaggerated areas of a given phenomenon, person or community, treating the subject in the same, undifferentiated manner
• superstitions – negative, marked stereotypes, formulated towards foreign communities
• group chauvinism – opposing views about the community accompanying stereotypes and prejudices, in which the person formulating the judgement participates, excessively positive (Krzyżanowski, 1999: 291–292)

Social awareness can also be mythologised. How should this be understood? A “myth” comes from the Greek word mythos, which means a legend or a story. Most often, it means a certain story, a real or unreal event, but imagined and rooted in the historical memory of a group, community, nation. So, the story told contains both an element of historical truth and fantastic elements. Thanks to this, mythology, i.e. collections of myths, allow historians to learn about the world view, beliefs, rituals and customs of peoples such as the ancient Greeks, Romans, Aztecs, Incas and Mayans. The myths served primarily religious purposes and also tried to explain some:

• natural phenomena
• random events
• history cases (Klp.pl)

Myths refer to experiences, emotions, ideas and superstitions rather than to rational knowledge.

We can also talk about the pathology of social awareness in smaller groups, where group thinking can be seen. As a result of the frequent isolation of such a small group, it is closed “in itself”, often called the “surrounded fortress” syndrome. This group then loses the sense of objective reality, and their behaviour becomes irrational. There is a distortion of the external environment, inadequate assessment of oneself and one’s own abilities, causing:

• disregard for potential and real threats
• a sense of strength and impunity
• belief in own superiority
• devaluing foreign groups and their leaders
• emphasis on loyalty within the group
• the development of full unanimity as a result of the lack of different opinions than the current one (Sztompka, 2002: 305)

Such group thinking is the most common cause of failure for this group.

Consciousness – from the point of view of medicine and natural sciences – is part of the human psyche that is under his control, it is the ability of a person to know reality and himself, it is the state of mind of a person who is able to receive all information coming from the outside world and it is possessing knowledge about something. The human brain shapes consciousness and uses it for human life. The Great Dictionary of the Polish Language quotes the following statements:

“‘consciousness’ receives impulses – information from the environment – and must properly process them so that they become understandable”.

“There is no world independent of awareness of a human. There is no objectively existing matter or energy” (wsjp.pl)

We have analysed the processes of awareness and social awareness. The social awareness of a human being – a social being is always directed both inwards and outwards towards the environment. It can be determined by the movement of consciousness. The neurobiologist Antonio Damasio describes this consciousness movement as a process of thinking (Damasio, 2013: 103–129). Thinking is a continuous cognitive process of association and inference, operating with memory elements such as symbols, concepts, phrases, images and sounds. Human thinking is realised by cognitive mental processes, based on a system of concepts of varying degrees of specificity, combined in the brain in a more or less conscious way. Thinking is therefore also a brain process that carries symbolic operations, such as:

• associations
• inference
• supporting by subconscious memory search operations (Damasio, 2013: 103–129)

There are many models of general thinking, the most important of which are the models of:

• rational thinking
• irrational emotional thinking
• context-dependent thinking (encyklopedia.pwn.pl)

Thinking can be considered as a conscious mental process of a human being in the broad sense, leading to indirect and generalised cognition and understanding of the surrounding reality. On the other hand, in a narrower sense, thinking is an active mental activity, thanks to which the general characteristics of various things, events and phenomena as well as the relations between them are reflected (encyklopedia.pwn.pl).

Thinking is, according to biologists, neuroscientists, psychologists and psychiatrists, the process of generating new information that serves either cognition or making decisions.

This is how we came to the phenomenon of economic thinking. What was the genesis of economic thinking? The primitive man behaved in the primitive community in such a way that he had to satisfy his biological needs. The behaviour of the Neanderthal man (24,500 years ago) was related to the instinct of self-preservation and the satisfaction of biological needs. Hence, it can be concluded that despite the fact that the Neanderthal did not have sophisticated needs, he noticed that nature did not provide him with “free o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Introduction
• 1 The need to disseminate economic knowledge of young people in the modern world
• 2 Formal and informal methods of economic education of young people in Poland and in the world
• 3 Economic knowledge of students in Poland - an empirical study
• Summary
• References
• Annex no. 1
• Index