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Margie Deabay is a teacher at Hermon High School. She teaches accounting, computer applications, career exploration, workplace readiness, and personal finance.
As a high school educator entrusted with teaching students about personal finance, I have a message: We’re not doing enough to prepare our youth for their financial futures.
The need to bring financial empowerment to every K-12 classroom is the driving force behind me joining more than 130 teachers nationwide in signing up to participate in the nonprofit Jump$tart Coalition’s Teen Teach-In this April. We are bringing together high school students, elementary students, teachers and parents to raise awareness about the serious knowledge gap that endangers this generation’s future.
Generation Z, which includes all high school students across America, has the lowest level of financial literacy among the five generations of American adults, according to the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index.
Students recognize this deficit and are themselves asking for instruction in finance; a 2021 survey of Gen Z teenagers found that 74 percent of teens didn’t feel confident about finances, and 73 percent of them wanted more personal finance education. It’s no wonder. Many young people are interacting with complex finances from an early age thanks to gaming, peer-to-peer payments, digital currencies and online purchasing.
And research shows that classroom-based financial education works, finding that K-12 personal finance mandates result in higher credit scores, smarter borrowing decisions, lower default rates and reduced use of payday lending, among many other positive outcomes.
Moreover, financial education can be a great way to contextualize math and reading in real-world situations. Even students that struggle with math can get excited about compound interest. And I’ve seen how the empowerment of learning how to handle finances can change young lives, and sometimes those of their families. Starting early and being consistent in the instruction of personal finance will yield even more comprehensive and deep-seated financial savvy.
This urgent need to expand our state’s financial education has led me to join fellow teachers nationwide in taking my students to a local elementary school as a part of the Jump$tart Teen Teach-In. We are harnessing the power of peer-to-peer learning by empowering my high school students to teach financial lessons to their younger counterparts. This benefits everyone involved: my students thoroughly master the topic as they rehearse and plan their lesson; elementary school students are introduced to financial concepts (perhaps for the first time) via an engaging lesson from “the big kids”; elementary school teachers get inspired by the way their students react to the lesson, hopefully sparking an interest in further incorporating financial education into their lessons; and perhaps most importantly, parents and the public learn about the need for financial education starting in elementary school.
It’s been my privilege to help educate hundreds of young people about how they can take charge of their finances and their futures, avoiding the expensive mistakes so many of us adults have made. I hope you’ll join me in calling on the educational system to incorporate this critical information earlier, so that future generations can benefit from a thorough grounding in personal finance.
