Some people might remember the scene in the movie Mary Poppins, where Mr. Banks took his children to the bank to open an account for each of them and try to teach them how to be responsible with their money. It is never too early to start teaching children how to be responsible when it comes to money. Sadly in today’s age with all of the electronic gadgets and the prices of everything being so high, some teenagers no longer value the dollar and before you know it, you have spent all of your money on the extra’s and the toys and you have forgot to budget in for the necessary bills that you need to be responsible for.
Some schools in a sense are still, “segregated”. Some people may remember from their own personal experiences, or reading in text books about the days where white people were segregated from black people, and black people were segregated from white people. Some people may be questioning what this has to do with the title of the article at this point. In a way, segregation still exists in some school settings to this day, but in a different way than by a person’s skin color. For those of you, who attended, “public school”, you may remember that those with, “disabilities”, were often times segregated in that they had their own classrooms, their own activities, etc. Some schools have classes that work specifically with students with disabilities in teaching them the daily life skills that they will need to know in order to survive in the world. One of the topics that come up in these classes is paying your bills. Bill paying may be harder for some than it is for others.
Some students, and even parents, might question the purpose of some classes that are offered in the public school system. Other students and parents might question why some life skills are not offered in the public school system. Some people might feel that certain things should be taught in the public school system versus the home setting and vice versa. Some people feel that the public school system is teaching their children about the monetary value of money, but not common sense shopping and budgeting. Some parents sadly feel that this is the school’s responsibility and not the parents’ responsibility because the school has them for a certain amount of time every day while the parents are out working to put food on the table and clothes on their backs.
Teaching future generations is a team effort that should not be done alone. We need to be teaching our future generations about responsibility and priorities. We need to be teaching our children that paying necessary bills needs to be priority over the extras and the toys that a person may feel that they want or need for one reason or another. If you have paid all of your necessary bills for the month and have money left over, nice job!