The frugal life and why we should educate for it

Abstract

The article begins with a fictional example of a life that has been spent frugally in several different ways and for different reasons over time: in wartime, through many decades of simple living, through a period marked by anxiety over the threat to future generations from the depletion of global resources and the climate crisis, to the COVID-19 emergency. The mini-biography serves as an introduction to a more systematic account of these various perspectives on frugality and reasons for adopting a frugal way of living. This provides the framework for a discussion of different aspects of education for frugality in the main body of the article. There are two brief sections at the end dealing, first, with a caveat about the climate change argument for education in frugality and, second, with wider issues that the topic raises.