Reading, Writing, and Interest Rates

Posted Monday, April 26, 2010

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This financial collapse has shown that plenty of Americans aren't as financially literate as, perhaps, they ought to be. A relatively new law might change that. Starting this fall, incoming high school freshmen will have to study personal finance before they can graduate. So, what should kids know about credit and debt? And what's the best way to teach teenagers skills that elude plenty of adults? Monday morning at 9 join Plain Dealer Consumer Columnist Sheryl Harris and guests for a conversation answering those questions.

Guests

John Morris Chief Operations Officer / Associate Professor, Economics Center for Education and Research, University of Cincinnati
Jennifer Rodgers Business Development Representative, Third Federal Savings and Loan; 2nd Vice President and Membership Chairman, Akron Realtist Association

Please follow our community discussion rules when composing your comments.

Esther Holtwick, Director of Financial Education, 9:26 AM 4/26/10

If someone wants a resource for highschool students, they should contact Beverly Davis at the WECO/Keybank Financial Education Center at 216-370-5632

Kathy 11:45 AM 4/26/10

I’m trying to find the board game Awesome Island that was mentioned on the show. Can you please let me know where I can purchase it?
Thank you

J. Travis Rolko 2:08 PM 4/26/10

People need to know the language of finance in order to navigate themselves through our current system, which is so fundamentally based on finance. People also need to know how Wall Street works, because of the central role it plays in our economy. So I’m all for teaching the language and nature of finance in schools. However, your guest was talking about forcing children to participate in an individualistic culture, such as giving students their own currency and forcing them to participate in market activities. I think many people would be outraged if children were forced to participate in collectivist activities (you probably remember the controversy over Obama merely speaking to children in school, with many in the media comparing it to North Korean communist indoctrination). If people have no problem with indoctrinating children to be upstanding citizens within our current system, then OK, we could discuss that, but let’s at least be clear on what it is. If we’re going to teach our children about our current state-capitalist system by introducing them to a microcosm of it, we might consider being fair by introducing them to microcosms of other political economies. Somehow I don’t think the mainstream media would take that very well, so maybe we should consider avoiding xenophobia by abandoning the idea altogether.

One of the callers brought up the issue of teaching politics as well as finance. Some political science is taught in high school, but not much, and the curriculum is pretty awful. I got an ‘A’ in my civics class, but I still learned nothing about civic engagement and how to go about it, which is another language people need to properly navigate themselves through our current system.