Financial Literacy

A few years ago, a second grade teacher told me how she stumbled onto teaching about the stock market to her students. It was pure serendipity, and prompted by a conversation that she overheard by group of students talking about a new guinea pig. The owner of the guinea pig had named it “NASDAQ,” and the other students wanted to know where the name had come from – what the heck kind of name was NASDAQ?

As April arrives and I think about my own taxes, I realize how little I understand about how income taxes work. Benjamin Franklin believed “… in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Americans have long had strong opinions about taxes. Occasionally in our history there have been tax revolts, such as the Boston Tea Party, the Whiskey Rebellion, and more recently, California’s Proposition 13 in the late 1970s. Once a year – every April 15 – an elderly man in my neighborhood flies the Jolly Roger from his flag pole in protest. On the flip side, Oliver Wendell Holmes said that taxes are the price that we pay for civilization, and many concur. Taxes pay for our roads, our schools, social services, national security, and many other things. Due to hearing dissenting opinions about taxes, students often have many questions about them, and the role that taxes play in our society.

There is an amazing variety of educators on The Gateway to 21st Century Skills. We are linked together by the common goal of making a difference in the lives of our students while still having time to maintain a life of our own outside the classroom. We teach a wide range of grade levels and subjects, and we all want to equip our students with the right skills to succeed in the 21st century. When we cook a meal, we need a full set of spices to create just the right flavor. In teaching, we need to use a full range of tools and types of activities to complement the variety of students and teachers working together to become productive members of 21st century society.