Student: I want to have a credit card.
Me: Why?
Student: So I can buy toys.
Me: Okay, do you know how a credit card works?
Student: Ya, I think. I think every time I use it, they take my money from the bank and shred it.
Of course, at the end of this conversation, I explained to third-grade Ryan how a credit card really works. It almost blew his mind as much as it made my best friend laugh out loud when I told her this conversation at the end of the day.
Financial math is integrated well into the Ontario Grade 11 mathematics curriculum. Students learn to calculate mortgages, loans, accumulating interest in an account, etc. This conversation with Ryan just reinforces that financial literacy needs to start to a much younger age.
When interviewed by Globe and Mail in June, 2015, personal finance columnist, Rob Carrick stated that “[students] don’t go to personal finance class after geography, instead they’ve inserted content into math class, economics class…I think its great, but what I think is it needs more though…measures such as retirement readiness and indebtedness suggest that we are not thinking clearly enough about personal finance. We need to teach our kids, so that they would avoid the mistakes we’ve already made”
Some resources that are helpful to integrate financial literacy and make it accessible for learning for K-12 students:
Written by Mandy Lam
Comments