US Secretary of Education stresses the importance of financial literacy
by. Fatemeh Fakhraie
U.S. Secretary of State Arne Duncan is speaking our language. At a keynote speech he gave to a Pensions & Investments conference last month, he said all the right things about financial literacy and youth: “If our young people aren’t financially literate, we are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”
Duncan also stressed that financial literacy isn’t just for kids. Their teachers need help providing a financial literacy education and managing their own finances.
The best part is that Secretary Duncan encourages corporate sponsorship to help make financial literacy a widespread reality. It’s easy to forget that what seems basic to you in your daily corporate or financial institution isn’t basic for students and teachers.
“We need the corporate community to step in and be part of the solution. You guys have the knowledge. The facts that are so basic to many of you, folks in the education world don’t know this stuff. It’s a different world,” he said.
This is something that we’ve been doing since the beginning by partnering up with financial institutions and other companies to distribute brass magazine or sponsor our Student Program. Bringing financial education into schools is the kind of real-world application that students care about. Money becomes a great platform to teach skills such as math, and make a subject that many students struggle with engaging and interesting.
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