Public schools get an F for Financial Education
We recently attended a local school board meeting and the district was introducing its students to a new lesson; financial education. The district budgeted about $10,000 to purchase 30 new textbooks on the subject of financial education.
The book was 670 pages long, and had 18 chapters that covered everything from opening up a bank account, to how to take out an auto loan. Although we admire the district for attempting to cover this important subject, something tells us, that when all is said and done, the students that take this course will use little, if any of the books financial subjects.
Why do we say this? For several reasons. Students today do not learn the way students of previous generations learn things. Ask yourself a simple question; “How many students are going to be able to grasp the concepts of financial literacy in a book of 670 pages? And think about the other subjects that they have to master like English, science, math, history.
Those are also 600 plus paged books. Here at boodle we have been in the financial markets for more than 20 years, and we think we know something about this subject and how best to approach students about it so that they can develop a keen interest in how money works. Let us leave you with an analogy.
If you need a car for travelling from point A to point B, and that is basically all you need from the car, do you really need to read the 670 page owner’s manual? Have you ever read your owner’s manual cover to cover? Do you need to read that entire manual, or do you just need to know how to start the car, turn on the lights and wipers, how to blow the horn, and how to fill it up with gas? Do you see the point we are making?
You learn how to drive a car by getting behind the wheel and driving it! The district just spent $10,000 of tax payer’s dollars on these books. We wonder if there may have been a wiser, dare we say it, a more “boodle-esque” way to spend those dollars? Time will tell. So what does that ‘F’ stand for in our headline? Foolish? Frivolous? Failure ? We’ll let you be the judge.