I have a lot of friends who are teachers. The thing I notice about the ones who are great leaders is that they look for gaps in curriculum and try to fill it with relevant learning.
Our education system is still a throwback to the rise of the industrial revolution – and our school system is very good at producing employees and public servants (and teachers) but maybe not so good at educating kids about the things they need to become financially literate adults.
One of the opportunities I have had over the past couple of years (an opportunity made available by some of these leaders) is to talk to senior school students about understanding some fundamental aspects of finances that they should learn before they hit the big wide world, but they don’t – because it’s just not in the curriculum in most cases.
Some of the things I can cover off in these talks can be:
- Saving
- Budgeting
- Owning a car
- Buying a house
- Insurance
- Tax returns
- Investing
- Money genetics
I recently spoke to a Year 12 group at one of our local schools, and I was greatly encouraged by the questions these young people asked – detailed stuff that told me that they understood enough to be inquisitive, and to ask questions to know more. They’d asked me to cover three specific areas – so I did that, and that was perfect.
Some of this stuff is covered in General Maths or Commerce, but if you’re a higher-level maths student or you don’t study commerce, you might not find out what you need to find out – and these are pretty fundamental financial building blocks. Calculus and differentiation are all well and good (I reckon I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to use that since I finished university), but being able to be an effective financial citizen is key to building a sound foundation for your future.
If you know of a school that might need some resources to help in this area, please let me know and we’ll see what we can do. In the meantime, maybe I’ll start a YouTube Channel for this stuff!