A look at Ontario

I decided to start my research by looking at how personal finance (financial literacy) is currently being taught both here in Canada and in other countries around the world.  I quickly realized that this is actually a topic that there is a lot of interest in and that over the last decade there have been a lot of schools (divisions/districts) that have made offering personal finance education mandatory.  From what I can tell the format varies a lot from place to place and this is what interests me the most right now.  How can the personal finance education be offered in a meaningful way? Are the ways that it is currently being taught working? What seems to be working the best?

My initial feelings toward HOW personal finance education is offered is that it needs to be a course on its own and should be a Grade 11/12 requirement for Graduation.  I think that it could be an equivalent of a Math course for graduation and make it optional, but there needs to be an emphasis on its importance.  If the topics of the course are split up and imbedded within different curricula I think you would lose the value of the content by making it an easy to teach superficially topic in already packed curricula.  Another concern I see with splitting up the personal finance topics into other courses is that it will be harder to have knowledgeable teachers with current knowledge in the field teaching the material.

This splitting up of the content is what was done in Ontario.  This article from the Globe & Mail in November of 2009 tells of the 2011 implementation date for personal finance topics required to be offered.  The article doesn’t go into detail about how it will be taught, but just tells that personal finance topics will be offered in courses that will be integrated into their existing curricula.  Casey Cosgrove, the director for the Canadian Center for Financial Literacy is quoted in the article stating that he thinks it is a good move to integrate the content in to multiple courses instead of having a course stand alone.  I am interested to know why he believes this.  I can see how putting all of the content in one course could be a problem if students aren’t required to take the course and it becomes a course that exists, but that no one takes.  But if it were a required course I still think that would be a great option.

Reading this article has made me excited to learn that there is government support in Ontario for education teaching financial management skills.  I am also glad to see that there is some funding being provided to a task force to spend time planning the implementation and seeing where the content will best fit in order for the content to be successful instead of just mandating the implementation.  I am fairly new to the education curriculum world, but in my teaching experience I have heard a lot of complaints about top-down government initiatives that seem like a good idea but fail to be properly funded and developed and instead fall on to the plates of teachers to deal with. I hope this isn’t another one of those failed initiatives based on implementation practices.

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“We were not taught financial literacy in school. It takes a lot of work and time to change your thinking and to become financially literate.” -Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad book series teaching finance skills to children

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Ready, set…….. Hold on, WHY am I doing this?

To start off my learning journey into the world personal finance and financial literacy I think it is important to answer the question of WHY? WHY did I chose financial literacy as my topic of interest? WHY am I interested in looking at how personal finance is taught?

I do not teach Personal Finance. I do not teach Economics, Math, Social Studies, or any other subjects that teach personal finance or financial literacy skills.  I am a Science teacher.  I like to blow things up, dissect things, and build things.

Why, then, have I chose to focus a large portion of my Masters degree studies to these topics?  In my 5 years of teaching (and 2 years spent on maternity leave) I have noticed that there is a lack of education provided in Saskatchewan in these topic areas.  I am the product of the Saskatchewan education system and I am not confident in my own knowledge of personal finance and do not consider myself financially literate in many ways.  It is also important to remember that I am university educated and come from a family with university educated parents.  Even with this education I still struggle to create a balanced budget, which mortgage type is right for our family, and how important investments actually work. If I, with my own education along with the knowledge passed on to me from my family, struggle to answer these questions I believe there are many others in Saskatchewan that have the same struggles.

The media constantly reminds us of how much debt is carried by the average Canadian and how these averages are increasing.  Managing personal finances is a task that is becoming increasingly complex in the modern world.  It seems logical to me that we should be providing an education to our youth about personal finances in areas such as budgeting and financial planning, how credit works, how a mortgage works, and where to find unbiased financial information (or at least consume biased information critically).  These are lessons that I have had to learn (mostly) on my own and I continuously see my peers making uneducated financial decisions that have huge impacts on their lives. I firmly believe that we live in a society where a lack of money is not the problem, but instead a lack of money management.

It is the lack of current education provided in Saskatchewan combined with my belief that there is a need for financial literacy education that lead me to choose this as an area of focus for my Masters studies.  Over the next few months I will use this blog as an opportunity to track my thoughts and what I am learning for this introductory class.

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“The number one problem in today’s generation and economy is the lack of financial literacy.” -Alan Greenspan, American Economist

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