Training Decision-making Skills: The challenges of finances
On Tuesday, May 31st, NPR ran a story about including financial education in school curriculum. This reminded me of a suggestion in the Dog Trainer’s Guide to Parenting: to avoid issues with your kids in public areas, you must train them on how to behave. This is difficult to do in the supermarket when you’re rushing to make a vital milk purchase before going home for nap-time so, to train and test appropriate behavior, you need to make trial runs when the kids are rested and happy, and you aren’t buying anything crucial. That way you can focus on your kid’s behavior, rewarding and punishing as necessary without creating major issues in your own life.
It is amazing to me, in the increasing complexity of modern life, the assumptions we make about appropriate behavior. This is especially true when considering the soundness of the advice given in the Dog Trainer’s Guide: good training can be required for the most obvious and simple actions of living. Managing personal finances and debt goes well beyond proper grocery store behavior. Experience has shown that all but the most savvy consumers have managed to pile up a considerable debt. This includes people with a fair amount of life experience. The financial options and risks are not what they what they were 20 years ago, so it makes sense that a certain amount of training is mandatory to ensure that young adults have the information they need to make the correct decisions.
On the other hand, we know that the transfer of training to real life has its own challenges. Given the enticements of the consumer economy and the volume of items and services that are compulsory today – cell phone, personal computer with internet, cable – that had just been invented 20 years ago, it will be a challenge for young adults to make the right decisions, even if they score 100% on their classroom tests. In addition to the classroom teaching, we need to come up with some sort of “training wheels” that goes beyond the lessons of the weekly allowance.
It is amazing to me, in the increasing complexity of modern life, the assumptions we make about appropriate behavior. This is especially true when considering the soundness of the advice given in the Dog Trainer’s Guide: good training can be required for the most obvious and simple actions of living. Managing personal finances and debt goes well beyond proper grocery store behavior. Experience has shown that all but the most savvy consumers have managed to pile up a considerable debt. This includes people with a fair amount of life experience. The financial options and risks are not what they what they were 20 years ago, so it makes sense that a certain amount of training is mandatory to ensure that young adults have the information they need to make the correct decisions.
On the other hand, we know that the transfer of training to real life has its own challenges. Given the enticements of the consumer economy and the volume of items and services that are compulsory today – cell phone, personal computer with internet, cable – that had just been invented 20 years ago, it will be a challenge for young adults to make the right decisions, even if they score 100% on their classroom tests. In addition to the classroom teaching, we need to come up with some sort of “training wheels” that goes beyond the lessons of the weekly allowance.
posted by Varda Lobanov | 1:39 PM
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