WHO'S TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT MONEY?

 

 

 

 

Tricia Smith Vaughan
May 25, 2006
NewsWithViews.com

We’ve all heard about the massive drug propaganda course in our government schools called D.A.R.E. Sweeping the country in the 70s and 80s, its aim was to make snitches out of all of us, to report those whom we thought might be using drugs that aren’t Big-Pharma approved. This program worked so well that it was extended to other government intrusion agencies, such as social services and so-called child protection agencies. Now, we can snitch on our neighbors anonymously and have a social worker visit. If our neighbors are lucky, the social worker will approve of happy homes and families, and parents can keep their progeny. Lucky us!

But what’s the latest fad in the government propaganda mills? Why, it’s teaching children about money! How better to teach children to be school-to-work slaves than to start them early on practicing making pizzas and “stocking shelves at the supermarket.”

According to “Teaching How to Save, Invest at a Tender Age,” in the May 14, 2006 business section of the Los Angeles Times, your children may soon not be left behind in learning these skills. The article describes a new money education program that may be coming to a government elementary school near you.

I’ll just say that money education is as private for our family as sex education is. And I don’t want the government or a corporation teaching my children a thing about either one.

Ah, but thanks to the private gift of A.G. Edwards’ “Nest Egg Knowledge for Kids,” children all over the country may soon be learning how to handle their money the way that the government and A. G. Edwards would like for them to learn.

And what would A.G. Edwards, a “national full-service brokerage firm” whose goal is not necessarily to make the most money for their clients, but rather to “develop a diverse, multicultural work force made up of individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives,” do for children as young as four years old? Well, it sounds like a good plan:

“With America's negative personal savings rate and soaring debt levels, we believe teaching kids about money and providing them a solid financial education early in life is critical for their future. That's why we're teaming with children's museums nationwide to enhance financial literacy among America's youth.”

The article states--and quite correctly--that working through a budget is a process that “flummoxes many 40-year-olds.” And quite frankly, if you want to hire out the teaching of money and finances to your children, this plan may be as good as any, although I can’t help but wonder how geared it would be toward making sure that children one day trust their A.G. Edwards financial advisor, instead of themselves, to handle their finances.

What happens, however, when this now private plan, currently scheduled to be in 17 children’s museums across the country, goes into the government schools? That’s exactly what has happened in St. Louis, where “Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees,” first taught in the St. Louis children’s museum, is now “part of the math and social studies curriculum in many of the local public schools.”

Math and Social Studies? Now, that’s an interesting combination, isn’t it? I can’t help but wonder if it’s the kind of math that asks students in Part A to “Count how many trees are in this picture,” then asks the students in Part B how they’ll feel when all the rain forests are gone.

What was once a St. Louis’s children’s museum program is now taught by governmental change agents, from whom “children are told about various careers and invited to apply for jobs” in third grade! Although I realize that the world was, in many ways, a much better place when children actually went to work for their parents, either farming or learning a trade, at around the age of eight or nine years, don’t the government schools tout education in lieu of work? Isn’t child labor illegal? Why are children playing at such jobs without pay? Why are schools taking this financial program and using it to teach children how to work in a grocery store? Why not teach children in third grade how to read and write a foreign language, or better yet, English, instead of teaching young children how to budget and prepare for the work world?

And what a world it will be! Through this school-to-work program, “teachers serve as interviewers and eventually ‘hire’ a staff of 8-year-old mail carriers, television producers, shop clerks and the like.” Well, we all know how much the world needs more television producers, don’t we? Anyway, I can imagine what those interviews are like:

--No ma’am, I want to be a veterinarian. My dad says that I need to work hard to go to vet school. I’d rather practice multiplication tables.

--But pizza makers are so much in demand these days.

--But I want to help sick animals!

--You can do that in your free time, Johnny. Volunteer at the zoo, if you like, but you can make money and make people happy if you make pizzas.

--But I really want . . .

--Come on, Johnny, stop thinking of just yourself and be a team player!

After the interviews, the children “go to the Magic House, where they walk into their own town—Children’s Village—and are put to work, making loans at the bank and meals at the pizzeria and stocking shelves at the supermarket.” Yes, this kind of thing is exactly what I want in a world-class education for my children.

“At the end of their workday, they’re sent home with a paycheck and are charged with setting up a budget, encompassing housing, transportation, food, clothing, vacations and savings.” Oh, by the way, I couldn’t help but wonder: Where are the entrepreneurs? The business owners? The private property owners? The independent people whom our country was founded to encourage?!? It seems as though there's no room for them in the Children’s School-to-Work Village.

How much of this money management information will include talking about how unfair it is to rob people of money via forced income taxation? And how much time will be given to discussing that the 16th amendment to our Constitution, which allowed taxes on our income, may not have been legally ratified? How much time will the A.G. Edwards’ representatives devote to showing that the Federal Reserve is not the benevolent entity that mainstream media teaches us it is?

Oh, never mind!

A museum “representative, called a financial advisor, will visit their classrooms as part of the exercise to check their math and talk about their long-term goals.” As with the D.A.R.E. program and its snooping, you can hardly find a better way to figure out a family than to figure out its finances. And you can hardly figure out a better way to find out about finances than by snooping into the desires and knowledge of the family’s children via allowing so-called financial advisors to “check” their math and to talk about how the children plan to meet the school-to-work goals.

If you haven’t started homeschooling yet and teaching your own children the truth about drugs, sex, money, and other important issues, what are you waiting for? The government schools may soon be taking time out of your children’s day to teach them about money and to make sure that they learn how to be a brave new slave in tomorrow’s world. Wouldn’t you rather teach your children about these important life lessons yourself?

© 2006 Tricia S. Vaughan - All Rights Reserved