Peter Lynch, a successful and well-known investor, alluded to the fact that no doubt, you can’t get a high school diploma without having been taught and tested on what a cosine is. But, the tragedy of our day is that the junior high and high schools of America have forgotten to teach the difference between a stock and a bond.
It isn’t any surprise then, that many of our bright minds graduating from high school (and sometimes even college) are financially illiterate. This is because financial literacy is essentially untaught.
A good friend of mine has a daughter who’s going to be entering her junior year in high school. He is in the financial industry and the other day, she actually asked him about what he does and expressed interest in learning more. (Something about a teenager asking their dad what he does for a living was impressive!)
He brainstormed the best way to educate his daughter and came up with a makeshift curriculum which will take her from a novice to at least an advanced beginner. He thought doing a campfire and smores before the educational session would be fun. She liked the idea so much, she shared this idea with a few of her friends, and Wa-Lah, my friend has himself a classroom of young minds that will graduate with not only a faint idea of what a cosine is, but also a crash course in the difference between a stock and a bond.
I’m confident the latter will serve them much more in their young lives than the cosine thing…whatever that is…
