Change Everything No 7: Making education add up

For the status quo, critical thinking about finance is a dangerous idea

Book News

Chapter 1 of my now very-soon-out book Change Everything is focused on universal basic income as a foundation for building a rights-respecting world. So I was really pleased to see author Kerry Hudson putting it top of her change list in an interview in the Guardian.

Little reminder: You can pre-order my book now and it will land in your inbox or letter box for March 21.

Making education add up

Last week the House of Lords had a debate on financial education, the one-hour slot so well subscribed that backbenchers were only allocated two minutes each for their contributions. But I couldn’t even make that, being stuck in a crucial group in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill around the “right to repair” and high carbon products.

There were lots of sensible things said on financial education - as is often the case in the House of Lords. But TikTok did not come up. That was despite the fact that a well-timed article from the Guardian - albeit from an American perspective - demonstrated how central that is as a source of information for young people, US financial education being no more comprehensive or effective than the UK’s.

Whenever I think about this issue, I recall a young woman I met a decade ago, who came from a family that had never had any access to formal financial services - unsurprising when the latest stats show 28 per cent of people now feel locked up of the system. She explained to me that the first time she borrowed money, she had not understood she would have to pay back more than she borrowed - a sign of profound failure in our education system.

That such basics could be missed is one more argument for ensuring an education system that prepares pupils for life, not just exams.

Reading the Guardian story of finance according to TikTok, I encountered plenty of terms that were new to me, after decades of mortgages, credit cards and other financial products on three continents. (Although don’t get me started on trying to actually get my money from pension schemes; I’m still a long way from cracking that one.)

You might not know what “loud budgeting” or “cash stuffing” mean as terms, although the concepts, postponing purchases you can’t afford and dividing cash into envelopes allocated for various purposes, are both sound enough and been around a long time. Ditto for longevity of the practice of “doom spending” - “self-soothing with unnecessary purchases” - perfectly understandable in our current world. (And that’s all related to a trend extending to fashion and beyond, “recession core”.)

Yet no doubt next year, or possibly next month, the terms will be different. So will be the top influencers when you search “financial advice”, although probably no better. I did not have to get far to see headlines like “EARN BIG BIG MONEY” - yes, as you might have guessed, there is no regulation of the offers being made here, and no way, without quite a bit of hunting around, to judge the veracity of the advice on offer, certainly if you haven’t had previous experience or solid pointers.

Which is why I would have gone further than others in the House of Lords debate, pointing out that facts and information are useful as a foundation, but the world changes fast. What our schools really need to be teaching is critical thinking about finance, the approach that says “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, that asks “who benefits”, “why is this person saying this?”

But that is tough to do, when as a teacher you’ve just been overseeing yet another exam practice paper, drumming in the outline of the marking schema that will ensure your top pupils write everything they need for a high mark. “Don’t think critically,” is the message there; it would be hard to so radically change direction. And pupils might smell even more of a rat, were they to see that reversal in action.

And do the powers that be want the public to look at the financial sector critically? To ask what’s really behind our financial system, how it is (failing to) meet the needs of the real economy, to wonder why there is too much finance? Or to look that hard at politicians’ own claims and promises?

When you look at it that way, the practical failure to provide financial education looks less surprising.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Picks of the week

Reading

I will not get to Michigan to see the Angkor Complex exhibition at the University Museum of Art. But I was glad to be able to read about how it "explores distinct formal strategies and artistic innovations that emerged in the face of and in response to colonialism, significant social upheavals, war, and genocide". That was on e-flux Education, an email that produces lots of pointers to explorations on the frontier of politics and creativity - something we need to link up far more.

I’ve only been to Cambodia once, some quarter-century ago, but the quivering societal anger and pain was palpable then, yet little connacted with the Disneyish pointing to historical glories of temples and carvings. Working in women’s rights in the region, I could not but be aware of the level of violence against women in the post-genocide society.

Today, very clearly, politics is not working in Cambodia to heal the wounds; art is another route.

Photo by George Bakos on Unsplash

Listening

I suspect some readers will already know the Past, Present & Future podcast series with Professor David Runciman, who is getting dangerously close to a proper public intellectual for the UK (a rare species). But if you don’t, I’d recommend the lot, and particularly this week’s exploration of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. Using art to explore life and politics seems to be a bit of a theme developing here - possibly because this week in the House of Lords I was reflecting on the importance of independent, democratic funding of the arts, and the danger of leaving it to philanthropy, delivered by definition from people who have benefitted from the status quo, so are unlikely to want to seriously challenge it.

Coriolanus, as his wife, mother and children plead with him not to attack Rome, by Hungarian artist Soma Orlai Petrich

Thinking

When I first joined the Green Party, if there was one policy area I had some doubts about, it was our opposition to the flouridation of drinking water. But I’ve come to understand that this was one of those scientific verities based on decades-old unevidenced assumptions, and that tooth decay is very much an issue of disadvantage and poverty that needs targeted interventions, rather than mass medication. And evidence of potential harm is growing, as is being aired now in a US court case, over whether the Environmental Protection Agency should ban fluoridation of drinking water to protect fetuses and children from the risk of neurodevelopmental problems.

Researching

Sometimes the coverage of scientific discoveries tells you more about today than the past. So with the mainstream approach to the discovery in Canada of a wonderful fossil example of the 350-million-year-old Sanfordiacaulis densifolia, with leaves and branches still attached, providing a far clearer than usual sense of how it looked in life. “Weird-looking” is a typical media handle, yet the structure makes perfect sense for a sub-canopy tree, seeking every speck of light it can catch.

Having fun

All too often, we have presented to us a picture of the past with everyone obediently occupying their place in the social hierarchy, following the rules. That fails to acknowledge that the rules are reasserted by authorities so often just because they are NOT being obeyed.

… as covered by the Guardian.

Next time you hear someone presenting that picture, think of a convict stonemason in the violently abusive setting of convict-colony Tasmania, chuckling to himself as he carefully, lovingly, creates a statue of much-hated Lieutenant Governor George Arthur, buttons on his wasitcoat all lined up beautifully. But the propriety ends at the waist. Below that he has penis in hand, and research shows, he formed part of a perpetually urinating fountain.

What did you think of this issue of Change Everything?

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