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Financial literacy parallels bit literacy
Enthusiasts of Bit Literacy often tell me that I need to spread the message into schools, since kids can and should form good information-management habits while they're young. I always answer that I don't know how to get the word out. How do you teach a generation a new kind of literacy?
Then I saw this Economist article about "financial literacy" and various efforts, public and private, to teach it to schoolkids.
One of the main challenges of teaching financial literacy is, unfortunately, familiar...
At present only three American states require that students take a course in personal finance. Another 15 insist that it be incorporated in other courses. Beyond that, it is a case of persuading schools one at a time. “Personal-finance education is not a hard sell conceptually,” says Ms Levine, “but only when it comes to getting it prioritised.” School principals will usually agree that financial literacy is worth teaching, but they are reluctant to give it time and resources.
I've occasionally seen the same issue when taking bit literacy into corporations. People are enthusiastic for the concept, but when it comes down to it - investing an hour or two to solve their information overload - some people say, "I can't make the meeting - I'm too busy."
Also interesting is the suggestion to decrease the complexity of financial products...
Instead, policymakers should “focus on making the world easier”, he argues in a new book, “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness”, written with Cass Sunstein, a law professor (and an adviser to Barack Obama). By this he means defining more carefully and simply the financial choices that people have to make, and building “sensible default options” into the design of financial products, so that the do-nothing option is “financially literate”. Today, the best choice typically requires some working out and an active decision.
Sound familiar? Bit Literacy also argues for simpler tools and better default settings for the majority of users. I never thought money management and information management would be similarly hard to teach!
(And if anyone has suggestions for how to get bit literacy into schools, drop a line...)
