Teaching High School Students to Be Responsible Investors

We believe that investment skills are as important as the basic academic skills students learn in school. We hold this view because of the vast changes in the American economy in the past few decades.

For one thing, stability in the workforce has disappeared. There are no more job guarantees, and this means that as adults, your students may face financial droughts unless they know how to save and invest. In addition, consider these possibilities: young people face the prospects of receiving less financial aid for their education, diminished social safety nets (such as reduced Social Security benefits and welfare), managing more of their retirement funds on their own than their parents do now, and shouldering more of their own medical expenses.

These realities make it imperative that young people learn more than how to read, write, and do calculus. They also have to know about growing whatever amount of money they have.

Richard Fairbank, Chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial Corporation, sums it up nicely in the Council for Economic Education’s Survey of the States report cited earlier:

Recent economic challenges have highlighted the importance of teaching our kids to understand personal finance. The day-to-day relevance of economic concepts and financial responsibility will only continue to increase as the world is rapidly transformed by science and technology. Providing students with the practical tools they need to apply that knowledge will help them succeed financially by creating businesses, driving innovation, and achieving personal dreams. Working together, we can infuse our classrooms with the necessary foundational capabilities and make financial education a centerpiece of our public and private agenda.

Richard Fairbank, Chairman and CEO of Capital One Financial Corporation

The Role of Schools

Parents that enroll their kids in our stock investment course often complain that schools don’t teach the basics of money management and investing — skills they feel their kids need in today’s economic environment.

It is indeed a fact (and understandable) that economic education is not a priority for most school systems. A report by the Council for Economic Education, titled Survey of the States: Economic and Personal Finance Education in Our Nation’s States, showed that only 19 states required a personal finance course to be offered to students from K-12, and only 24 states required an economics class in high school. An article by Money.com about the report had this to say about the lack of comprehensive economic education in our school system:

Young adults have been shown to have particularly low levels of financial acumen; they are most prone to expensive credit behaviors like payday loans and paying interest and late fees on credit card balances. This behavior, combined with soaring student debt, often puts them in a financial bind before they earn their first paycheck. A little financial education, the evidence now shows, may go a long way.

Money Magazine

To Be Fair, Schools Don’t Have the Resources

In all fairness, schools don’t have the resources to take on additional responsibilities beyond teaching basic educational subjects. Teachers are already stressed in dealing with standard academic subjects as well as dealing with some of the difficult social issues that surround today’s students. We are also sympathetic to the fact that government cutbacks further constrain the menu of subjects that can be taught by teachers in school systems.

For this reason, teachers need to partner with organizations that have expertise in teaching young people about money or investing.

TeenVestor.com has the FREE resources you need to help your students learn about investing — especially investing in the stock market.

Our Suggestions for Helping Your Students

Your students can certainly use the free resources on this website or use the material on our twitter accounts: @teenvestor, @teenmogul, & @girlceos. However, if you want your students to learn about stock investing in a more structured manner, please look into the TeenVestor Stock Certification Course.

The TeenVestor Stock Certification Course is designed to help teens learn investment basics and ultimately to take control of their financial future. The course consists of videos, text, and quizzes in modules that are easy to understand. journey into the investment world.

If you have an interest in including this course in your school’s curriculum, please contact Emmanuel Modu at: eumodu@teenbusiness,com.