Introduction

In France in June 2000 a group of economics students published a petition on the web protesting against:

• the lack of realism in economics teaching; • economics’ “uncontrolled use” and treatment of mathematics as “an end in

itself,” with the result that economics has become an “autistic science,” lost in “imaginary worlds”;

• the repressive domination of neoclassical theory and approaches derivative from it in the university economics curriculum; and

• the dogmatic teaching style in economics, which leaves no place for critical and reflective thought.