As both a teacher and an investor, I am well aware of my own shortcomings in terms of business knowledge. In fact, until the current situation, any knowledge of business I managed to ingest has been through my own small business school of hard knocks and last minute financial decisions thrust upon me in the 11th hour. Is it because business and finance are such inexact sciences that we shy away from dealing with or reporting on them?
Lecky suggests that we have chosen to ignore the inherent given of business and finance: risk. No business action or financial investment can be taken without it. Indeed, as we look back to the crash of 1929, banks and individuals chose to ignore the insane over-speculation which is plain to us in hindsight. And we continued to underreport or report poorly until this day.
What the financial meltdown makes clear is that every aspect of our lives entails financial considerations. We no longer have the luxury of thinking of the financial world as something that drones on in the background as we sip our morning coffee. And, actually, we should not forget that many children are by nature entrepreneurs: it’s the American way to at least have a lemonade stand once in your life, if not an actual small business, or at least the dream of one. I find that in my own classes there are many students with inherent business savvy, although they perhaps don’t have the jargon and tools to express that knowledge. Lecky suggests that we ignore this at our own, and our students’, peril. I wholeheartedly agree!
Joanne Drapiewski
Frederick Douglass Academy II
New York, N.Y.
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I think that the use of business journalism in the classroom would help students. Students do not understand what is going on in the economic world and I think this instills in them a certain amount of fear and as Master Yoda said, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering,"
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