By Melanie Loxton, School Teacher
December article 2011
As the “silly season” approaches I would like to bring up the topic of MONEY in an educational context.
Firstly, the Grade 2’s have been learning about money in the fourth term. It is quite apparent in class which children have had some experience of working with money and those who have not! It is a life skill to know how to make up R2 , or how much change one would get. If your child is 8 years or older : do they know that 100c makes R1? Can they add up a small pile of coins? (it’s one thing to do on paper in a worksheet, but open your wallet and let them count! They will love it.) Have you let them pay for the bread or the milk at the counter, and choose the right note to cover the amount? Do they know that we keep Rands and cents separate (ie. R2 + 20c is not 2+20=22).
Without this sort of practice, children battle to grasp this tricky concept if they hear about it at school for the first time. They also really battle with sums like R5 – R1,50 because numerically it is not worked out as a sum that they are familiar with (5 take away 150? 5 take away 1.5?) unless they are used to working out how to build up to R5. Then they could start with R1,50 and work their way to R5. We can teach the concept and allow time for practice and application, but there is nothing like real life practice over time for concepts to really make sense and become so ‘everyday’ that children do not even have to think hard to draw on class learning.
It is also a very interesting exercise to ask young children what they estimate the prices of grocery items to be. If they begin to have a concept of bread= roughly R10, then when the family dines out as a treat and you say that the pizza costs R50, then they can understand that it is the equivalent of 5 days worth of sandwiches!
As Christmas approaches and that looming long holiday, use the time to get the children to perform chores for cash (over and above their usual unpaid chores… they DO need to have a sense of responsibility and belonging, and realise that everyone has a job in a family). Discuss various chores or ‘services’ and price list beforehand – the harder the chore, the more you pay! And then require them to think about these (possibly unheard of) options: 1) SAVING some earnings and 2)spending earnings on gifts for others – and thus making them more meaningful than merely sticking out a hand for money from parents. If you could show children that mom would love a bunch of flowers bought from your hard-won earnings RATHER than an expensive, impersonal gift, then you would have taught them the value of money AND hard work indeed.
Our children are growing up as an “instant gratification” generation because of the way we live on credit. They do not have the same sense of the value of money that we (hopefully) had growing up, because there is not the same process of saving before one can buy. If we want it or need it, we buy it on credit. This has bred a culture of people who live above their means, live in debt and who do not save as a rule. If I think of my domestic worker, she has no idea of how to budget and make money last. Yes, domestic workers are paid very little. Yet, she had accounts in more than one clothing shop, and allowed her children to shop there monthly. Our children need to be trained in being money-smart. We give these lessons at school, but they mean nothing if not backed up AND practised in daily life at home.
