Does reading the Wall Street Journal as a teenager make someone more financially literate later in life? I think so, not just because I did, but because a lot of my friends’ parents had the paper at home and read it growing up as well. One challenge we have today is that many kids are graduating high school and going off to college, perhaps taking business courses or getting an MBA, and have never run a business and don’t have a clue about finance.
Are we missing the boat with our incoming college students, who walk into a university and the first thing they do is figure out personal credit and credit cards? So they pay interest the wrong way, instead of making money on your money or increasing your savings or investments. Are you starting to see the problem here?
Not long ago, I was discussing this with a local High School Economics teacher, who wanted me to come talk to his class about free-market capitalism. He was worried that he might get me into politics, something the school frowns on. I assured him that it would be easy to talk about free-market economics and capitalism while hounding the subject of politics. Then that same day I saw an interesting ad.
On June 4, 2011 there was a half-page ad in the Wall Street Journal for the “Classroom Edition” that would go to high schools across the country and was a call to advertisers who wanted to reach teens and high school students. secondary to consider advertising in that issue. The ad said;
“Catch the attention of 1 million teens, when they’re not texting, posting or chatting.”
It turns out that more than 90% of teachers said that students are interested in reading “The WSJ Classroom Edition” and that 70% of students said that they liked reading it. More than 50% of the students liked the ads and were happy to learn about new products that they like. Even better, it was awarded “newspaper of the year” by the AEP or Association of Education Publishers, and the reason was because it allowed teachers to use real-life news and events to engage their students on important issues.
Maybe this is the answer for America’s future, and engaging kids on their college journey with the latest financial news sure makes sense, doesn’t it? Surely yes. In fact, I hope you will please consider all this and think about it.