Economic topics are becoming increasingly important in school lessons

More and more teachers are responding to pupils’ needs to discuss economic and business ethics issues in the classroom. Teaching resources designed specifically for this purpose can be found, amongst other places, on the ethos online portal. The demand for topics relating to economics and business ethics in school lessons is on the rise. At least, that is the conclusion reached in an article in the *Handelsblatt* dated 16 March 2010. The initiative is driven far more by teachers than by the curricula. More and more teachers are responding to pupils’ needs to address issues of business ethics in the classroom. However, the political priority given to economic education in the curricula has changed very little since the financial crisis. According to Prof. Dr Thomas Retzmann, an expert in economics education at the University of Duisburg-Essen, it is primarily companies and trade associations that are attempting to fill the gaps in education policy regarding economic education.

School textbooks, too, only partially meet this need. A textbook analysis by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW), based on a study of 43 secondary school textbooks for Lower and Upper Secondary Levels in North Rhine-Westphalia, concludes that these textbooks do indeed succeed in addressing topics such as unemployment and globalisation. By contrast, other relevant economic education topics, such as the social market economy and corporate responsibility, are scarcely covered.

Hans Kaminski, a professor at the Institute for Economic Education in Oldenburg, points out that teachers often tend to view issues of business ethics from an individual ethical perspective, whilst regulatory issues affecting the economic system are pushed into the background.

Teachers interested in teaching materials on business ethics can find support and ready-made resources to download on the subject-specific online portal ethos, which provides modular teaching units for economic and political education. The portal has been in use by many teachers for a year now and has been funded, amongst others, by the ‘Wertevolle Zukunft’ Foundation.