'Is today the beginning of the end of the UK debt illiteracy?' blog discussion

sunnyd47

dzug1 wrote: »

Well - maybe the parents of which you write are a lost cause.

Sorting out the current generation of students will produce better parents in future?

Again part of the problem, simply stating that the parents are a lost cause and only the children deserve help. The whole families should be getting advice and help, not that they would want it when they do not have to do much get paid by the state. Who can really blame them, they are not financially the fools, the tax paying workers are in all honesty under the current giveaway benefits regime.

The only PILL that would work is one that causes hardship if not taken, one that does not follow the "human rights" bandwagon which in many cases has caused the problem of deserving money without any real endeavour (except producing offspring). Otherwise, nothing will change. People are not flocking to this country for the weather are they!

adaadat

I don't think Martin is aware that it is only a few weeks from a General Election and the appalling Ed Balls is using him for his political ends.

The last thing children need is more school time devoted to 'life lessons': how to manage your personal finances; how to read between the lines of advertising; what "A.E.R." means; '"no" means "no"'; etc. Children should be taught how to read and write, not 'parented' by teachers; parents should be in charge of that.

It's funny that most of us don't need to be taught 'right' from 'wrong' or how not to fritter our money away, despite not being specifically taught these and the 1001 other things we, as adults, should know. I wonder how that could be?

Under Labour's stewardship, Britain's state education has virtually collapsed. It's a catastrophe. From 2000 to 2006, state education slumped from:

- 4th to 14th, in secondary school 'science'; now little more than a single GCSE, combining, somehow, all three sciences (Independent schools still study biology, chemistry and physics, separately);
- 3rd to 19th: 10-year-olds' reading ability;
- 7th (2000) to 17th (2006): 15-year-olds' reading ability and;
- 8th (2001) to 24th (2006): 15-year-olds' maths ability.

Unsurprisingly, in one year, the government failed to put forward any children for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.) examinations to determine 'national' rankings.

Ed Balls has been 'on watch' for most of this time and has overseen a disaster.

Martin Lewis is an intelligent man, so shouldn't prop-up a man like this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/dec/04/schools.uk2
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/bored-bored-bored-why-british-teenagers-feel-lessons-are-all-too-often-a-waste-of-time-608450.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1571444/Britain-nosedives-in-education-league-tables.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article3001335.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-497516/British-schools-slide-world-league-sciences-4th-14th.html

Gorgeous_George

My point exactly.

Poverty is defined as having fewer resources or less income than others within a society or country, or compared to worldwide averages (wiki).

We don't know when we got it good. If the Tories win the forthcoming election we may well look back on the good old days of the credit crunch.

GG

HalfaSixpence_2

Nobody yet seems to have wondered how long it will be before the 'private sector' generously offers to help with this important task, and nice shiney resources are produced by Mastercard and Lloyds, to be delivered by teachers whose own experience of money management may never have taken them past the expectation that debt is normal.

I have been through the experience of being told I what I could or couldn't put in my children's lunchboxes by people who believed very different things from me about food - I have no confidence that I could rely on the government to teach straight about money.

HalfaSixpence_2

Whoops! Just realised how old this thread is, sorry.