‘Womb to Tomb Financial Literacy’ Promoted

By WADE LARSON

This week, teachers from around the state are gathered at the University of Mary for the 13th annual Invest North Dakota Teachers Academy, a weeklong conference focusing on training educators on how to teach financial literacy.

In the conference’s early years, attendees were mostly high school teachers, but recently, organizers have started seeing a greater number of elementary school educators in attendance.

Susan Beacham, CEO of Money Savvy Generation and a presenter at the conference, said this is a positive step.

Beacham favors teaching “womb to tomb financial literacy,” and said it’s never too early to begin teaching kids about money.

She developed a curriculum to teach youngsters the basic ideas of money and how to manage it. It focuses on four aspects of money: save, spend, donate and invest.

Diane Kambeitz, investor education coordinator for North Dakota Securities, is a supporter of teaching kids about money early.

Kambeitz, whose office sponsors the conference, said the earlier students begin to learn the basic concepts of money, the sooner they can move on to more complex and abstract ideas, such as investing and saving.

It’s learning that can help students for the rest of their lives, but particularly during college.

Beacham said parents tend to teach their kids too late, often just before sending them off to college, where freedom and access to credit cards can result in quickly accumulated debt for unwary students.

Students entering college receive an average of eight credit card offers in their first week, and 45 percent of college students are in credit card debt.

Perhaps most startling, university administrators lose more students to credit card debt than academic failure, Kambeitz said.

It’s a trend Beacham said she hopes to reverse, and she’s optimistic.

In the 10 years she has participated in the conference, she said she’s seen more participants from a broader teaching background, and more places in classrooms for financial literacy education.

Kambeitz said financial literacy doesn’t need to be taught at the exclusion of more traditional subjects, but rather can be introduced as part of subjects such as math or social studies.

“We’re not saying it’s more important or less important than subjects such as math or science, but it is as important.”

The response from teachers has been positive, Beacham said, and the steady rise of conference registration over the years is a sign that the message is being heard.

“The teachers have been thrilled,” she said. “They keep coming back and the numbers (of registrants) keep getting bigger.”

(c) 2008 Bismarck Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.