After years of endless negative press about teachers, it was refreshing to pick up the New York Times and read a story about Brian Page, who teaches high school students about economics and personal finance. He teaches them through life experience and field trips what economics means in their own lives.
Page took his students to a pawn shops where they learned about what it means to borrow, about interest, and about their credit scores.
“Stop 1 was at LoanMax, which allows people who own their cars free and clear to use them as collateral for loans. “Take charge of your life,” said business cards sitting on a counter. A half-dozen students entered the store with Mr. Page, who asked about interest rates. The person at the counter said that the annual interest rate would be 24.99 percent and that one missed payment could lead to repossession of the vehicle, a fact that shocked the rest of the students on the bus when Mr. Page debriefed them on the visit.”
At another shop, they learned how interest rates increased the cost of appliances.
“By the time the group was breaking up, the day’s lessons seem to have sunk in for Ciara Meinking, 18. “It’s just crazy how expensive all of this is and how they con you into stuff, and you don’t ever get a lot of the money,” she said.”
What a great day of life lessons!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a great real life lesson…”If it is to good to be true. it probably is.” We need more real life experiences like this to prepare them for what is out there.
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Great story, great curriculum. I’d like to add that schools and districts need to keep money for field trips in their budgets. Would the students have been as attentive to a lecture given by their teacher about lending and interest rates? It’s important for kids to really experience connections between school learning and the outside world.
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awesome
more of this
less boring Coring
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Page is a good man with boundless energy and an abundance of genuine concern for others that is manifest in his actions. He treats people as ends in themselves.
He taught me a tiny little bit of what he knows about soccer when I became a youth coach and I saw how well he coached and taught kids of all ages–as well as this middle-aged citizen–in my years involved with the Cincinnati United Soccer organization where he has also been a dynamic presence.
He utterly defeats all stereotypes of teachers and there are plenty more like him out there. Perhaps the no-longer-so-venerable NY Times might consider more such coverage of people like Page who do the heavy lifting. We get the Dealbook and the regular genuflection toward people who move money around without creating value, so why not a similar regular presence for people like Page who are actually doing things for both the individual and the public good? That is news that’s fit to print, much more so than the frequent encomia to the “elite” engaging in educational missionary work “for awhile” and the data chasers who treat data as ends to themselves.
Good work, BP and Reading HS!
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🙂
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All adolescents ought to have this class–our youth today would not be so easily bought by shiny, pretty things and instead, there might be an attitude of community and family that permeates the young. A lot of kids learn these lessons the hard way–once they are no longer in the bosom of mom and dad’s care. It might not be too late by then, but perhaps this knowledge would drive them to make more informed choices as adolescents.
Yes, teaching is imparting life lessons.
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That is really what teaching math, science, history, ELA, world language, et al is about. Know the world, ask questions, be skeptical, look for reason, and make your own decision.
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Well without purpose why is anything worthwhile? I find that I can get my students on board with just about any lesson as long as they understand the purpose of the learning. Sometimes it’s difficult to understand a deeper meaning for the primary students, but there are so many life lessons in our skills and content that it isn’t difficult to make some kind of connection. I once had a philosophy of music education professor who claimed that the purpose of learning is to achieve and maintain happiness. If we find that each new skill or piece of knowledge leads to a more fulfilled life, we are better off for having learned it.
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Great story, great curriculum. Also note the importance of the field trip. Would the students have been as engaged by a teacher’s lecture on lending and interest rates? The content might have been the same, but the experience would have been very different. Schools are rushing to spend $ on “personalized” learning via canned test-prep software — I worry about the sacrifice of actual personal connections between students and subject matter, if experiences like meaningful real-world field trips are lost.
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Diane say six students entered the pawn shop with their teacher. Just wondering if the class was larger.in any case, John Dewey smiled.
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Learn more about student-centered/applied learning (using matrices to structure such — “essential” — experiences!
My works are published @ http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/kennethfetterman
Sample/Purchase “The Dichotomy of Instructional Design” — Yea! Educational Reform is actually that simple.
“No Entity can control the mind of knowledge individuals”.
Best wishes, Ken
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This was a great class! I would love to see part two where the teacher addresses the school budget and follows “where the money goes” and takes students on a ride through the “official books” on how much is spent on common core through testing, prep materials etc and where all the money really goes! The student conversation afterward might go something like this, “Really, school is so lame and makes us feel like failures all the time just so some businessmen can get rich off of public education”??? A little social justice issue waiting for students to react to perhaps.
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I am puzzled.
Brian Page won an award from the Milken Foundation, and took the money. As most know, Michael Milken was one of those who pioneered junk bonds on Wall Street (that were part of the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s), was indicted for 98 counts of insider trading and securities fraud, pled guilty to and was convicted on a half-dozen securities violations, and was barred from working again as a securities trader. Milken is also the founder of Knowledge Universe, a for-profit company “which earned $1.6 billion in revenue last year” and “has a stake” in “K-12, online and post-secondary education.”
K12, Inc. is a for-profit, private company that “specializes” in virtual schools. There is no evidence that virtual schools are worth the investment and research shows that private for-profit schools have very poor achievement records. As the New York Times reported, K-12 is a company that “ tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.” As one education researcher reported, ““What we’re talking about here is the financialization of public education. These folks are fundamentally trying to do to public education what the banks did with home mortgages.”
On his website, Brian Page posts a video titled “Did You Know – American Personal Finances.” In that video we get statements from people like Catherine Hutton Markwell, the CEO of BizWorld (Page sits on BizWorld’s advisory board) who said in an interview that “Kids are born with an entrepreneurial spirit.”Perhaps that kind of thinking is standard fare for someone who was a “financial advisor for PaineWebber then Smith Barney” and “an investment banker at Fortrend International in San Francisco.” BizWorld is an organization “ built around simulated teaching of entrepreneurship and business to children.” It was funded by venture capitalist Tim Draper, who was an avid George W. Bush supporter and fund raiser, and who is a “proponent of limited government, free markets, and libertarian concepts like school vouchers.”
But these are precisely the kind of people that Brian Page likes, and supports. As he noted in the NY Times article, “he’s never voted for a Democrat in a federal election.” And as Stephanie SImon noted a few months ago at Politico, the Republican Party is all-in on “more charter schools, vouchers and tax credits to help parents pay private school tuition…” Moreover, Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein recently wrote, that “On financial stabilization and economic recovery, on deficits and debt…Republicans have been the force behind the widening ideological gaps and the strategic use of partisanship.”
In the “Did You Know” video on Page’s website, Hutton Markwell makes this outrageous, and false, statement: “Finance and business are the backbone of America. Giving our children the tools to compete in a global economy ensures our nation’s future. “
This is the “economic competitiveness” argument. It is the oft-cited goal of corporate-style education “reform.” But it holds no water. The U.S. already IS internationally competitive. The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt. In short, financialization caused a drop in American economic competitiveness (and was directly responsible for the Great Recession).
Students should be financial literate on both personal and national levels. It makes little sense to cart kids to pawn shops and avoid the larger issue of the huge opportunity cost imposed on citizens from the Iraq and Afghan wars., and from failed supply-side economic policies.
Perhaps a goal of financial literacy should be equity, helping students understand why it is in their own interests and the national interest to even out social inequality and “promote the general welfare.” In the United States, top-down “market-driven” publicly-subsidized policies have made the rich much richer, increased poverty (especially child poverty), squeezed the middle class, and caused income stratification that leads the developed world.
AI’ not so sure a teacher with a “landlord habit” is the model for teaching economics and financial literacy.
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oops…..I’m no so sure…..
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