It's Education Week! Hooray! Grab your back packs and juice boxes! The spotlight shines on the good, the bad and the terribly ugly of our nation's education system. In some ways, we look incredibly rich, successful and progressive. In other ways, we have failed miserably in not solving some very basic needs of our country and the education of our children. We are a nation of innovators, inventors, brilliant minds and incredibly talented people, but there we seem stuck in a cycle of poor performance and systemic breakdowns. When it comes to money and education, let's face it, we are a bit of a train wreck! Our country suffers from a lack of education both in the classroom and at home. Some of the reasons for this are:
1. Money topics are taboo. We just don't talk about it.
2. Our money history may limit our ability to ask questions and look beyond our feelings
3. We are insecure about ourselves and our ability to communicate about money issues
4. Success is defined by Madison Avenue and the media.
I witness the results of these four statements daily as I interact with others. Think about it, what did you learn in school about money and the stock market? Unless you were a finance major in college, your basic understanding is probably incomplete. As a nation, we should be teaching the basics of money to our children from childhood forward. But, if our schools are not teaching our children about money, that responsibility should fall to parents. The two things your parents don't teach you is about sex and money. It becomes trial and error and invariably you wind up ‘paying' for your experience, in one sense or another. This statement is not meant to castigate or lay blame; it is a direct response of what we, ourselves learned from our parents and the cycle continues.
Money education should be approached from the following aspects:
1. Money basics: includes a working knowledge of how the economy works, budgeting, investment basics and the use of credit.
2. Money History: What lessons did we learn from our parents? What do we value and why? The answers to these questions aid in the 'knowing' of why we do what we do and think what we think. Pretty heady stuff!
3. Individual behavior: Our decisions, from moment to moment, play, in large measure, the determining factor of our success. Are we acting according to our beliefs, values and goals? If not, why not?