Piggy bank lessons at school
Just when you thought the State had already taken over parents’ roles completely…
Children as young as five will receive lessons on managing their piggy banks as a means of improving financial responsibility among the public.
From what I remember of my childhood, the whole savings thing involved the entire family. Receiving money, putting it in a piggy bank, then spending it once enough had been raised. And counting it every week or two!
The proposals come as part of a frantic set of policy announcements from both the government and the opposition today, as the general election campaigns begin with a vengeance.
If this is what frantic produces, I recommend some calm, clear thinking.
Ed Balls also promised a £50 million fund for early interventions where six or seven-year-olds are falling behind in maths or English.
Strange how they started falling behind just before an election.
A new personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) curriculum will begin in September 2011 under the government plans, and would focus on teaching children how to manage their current and savings account.
Sponsored by Barclays, probably. Judging by the failed sex ‘education’, money education will tell the children they can have all the things they want on credit and worry about the consequences later.
We didn’t heed the call to spend, spend, spend our way out of the recession when Mr Brown asked us, so the next generation must be taught better manners.
Between five and seven, children would be taught how to identify different coins and notes, and how to save money, while seven to eleven-year-olds would be taught how to manage their bank accounts.
Eleven to 14 year-olds would be taught about credit cards, mortgages and basic household finance.
Sixteen-year-olds would be given classes on the effect of money and debt.
I got into quite serious debt and finally paid it off in 2005, so I am not against educating older children to prepare them for the real world, but I smell a rat, and when you smell a New Labour rat, there’s probably a sewer full of them.
Will the government be sending out teams of bedtime storytellers next? I wouldn’t bet against it.
How very dare they!
A Government that has unprecedented levels of peace-time debt, massive (I mean HUMUNGOUS) off balance-sheet exposure to other’s debt (possibly close to a trillion, no really), a plethora of MP’s which seem totally unable to fill out an expense claim without either arithmetical errors, spelling mistakes or downright lies, is suggesting that it knows best how to educate 6 year olds in money management!
Allow me to suggest that the average 6 year old has more know-how about money than, for example, Jack Straw, the dhimmi Justice Minister who claims that ‘Accountancy was never my strong point’ just after being found out for fiddling expenses, or our glorious leader, who claims for the same things twice.
Interesting to note that not a single one of these claims contained mistakes which entailed an over-payment. Coincidence?
Decency (and the mod-machine) prevents me from really letting rip.
I wish I’d co-written this post with you, English.