A big thumbs up to the Girl Scouts of America, which has recently announced that they are going to offer a new suite of merit badges that reward girls who learn financial and business skills. The new badges are for:

A spokesperson for the Girl Scouts explained that the badges are meant to help fill in the gaps by providing "a program of financial literacy education that schools aren't providing." This is outstanding for any children's organization, and particularly helpful for young girls who are making their way through an "I'm too pretty to do homework" world. 

 

I'm not sure that we can blame schools for not teaching our kids financial literacy. It's a miracle that our public school system is able to teach our kids anything, much less life skills that you won't find on the statewide test or college entrance exam.

 

No, as with sex education, I feel that the ultimate responsibility for teaching kids about money lies with the parents. If your schools don't have sex ed classes you have a duty as a parent to teach it to your kids yourself. And the same goes for money.

 

Of course, both topics are equally forbidden in society, and doubtless deemed equally inappropriate for kids. Why teach kids about money? Shouldn't we let them be kids for as long as possible? Shouldn't childhood be a safe haven from the money woes that they will have the entire rest of their lives to tackle?

 

But the answer in both cases in the same: if you don't teach kids early enough, they get into trouble. They may not learn anything at all from a qualified adult. They may bow to peer pressure, which can lead to terrible decisions that can have a lifetime's worth of consequences. (Like college freshmen who get suckered into signing up for credit cards.)

 

Some people will no doubt be appalled at the idea of girls between 6 and 9 learning about credit scores, or talking to a bank's loan officer about how a home loan works. But maybe if kids actually started learning this stuff, the next generation won't mess up its credit as badly as we have messed up ours! Maybe their banks won't need bailing out, and their homes will remain un-foreclosed-upon. And isn't hope for the future what it's all about?