But the thing is that basic accounting (what accounting is for, how profit and taxes are computed for a company, flux vs stock, not the list of legal accounting stuff :) and how money works (borrowing and lending, state borrowing and how banking work, not econ macro ideology) can easily be taught to 15 years old and it's not done.
I remember arguing that in french econ blog, and I pointed out that lots of my early-age friends that didn't go very far in school (dropping out at 16-20) do run they own small company now so they had to learn that stuff anyway in real life (sometimes through expensive mistakes), but I was laughed away (ivory economics...).
(borrowing and lending, state borrowing and how banking work, not econ macro ideology) can easily be taught to 15 years old and it's not done.
Maybe as an example of what I'm saying, I didn't understand probability theory well until I started sneaking into the race track, horses, in my late teens. I spent a couple of summers there, after I finished my shift at the factory, learning probablilities and odds. Then much later in life I learned other things in statistics when I was in a position where I had to review manufacturing and quality control data--all of a sudden sampling techniques and all that r-squared kind of stuff made sense almost immediately, because It was helping me understand something I really needed to understand. (Similar experience when I had to learn sales forecasting, and the importance of sales accuracy and inventory levels to customer service levels. You know this kind of stuff and put disciplines in place, and your customers love you,,,,because your products are there when they are needed.) But I could only vaguely get these concepts in school.
You need to relate these topics to people's lives, so they can become interested in them,,,,,and then make them fun. I have an idea for an accounting book which I may write, because i think I know how to make accounting relavant and interesting. But it just takes a long time to fit in writing. But i think I'll get this one done in the next several years. I have younger friends and younger family members that could really use it--even if I didn't get it published
For the people I have in mind, at 15 they already know they'll drop out and this means dealing with money sooner than later (I'm not talking about people that will go to university here).
There's a wikibook project on accounting, looks like it's not very far:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accounting
The context here is that Danny (10) has found a way of skiing that suits him, and isn't much inclined to work at improving his technique. I tried to explain to him that as he gets bigger and heavier, he will grow out of his technique. (Little kids float down a ski run like snowflakes. For a 200-lb adult, the math is way different.) Then his skiing would actually get worse. Me: "See, son, if you don't work on your form, you'll just go downhill." He: "Dad, it's skiing. You're supposed to go downhill."
Me: "See, son, if you don't work on your form, you'll just go downhill."
He: "Dad, it's skiing. You're supposed to go downhill."
Education, in it's true sense ,(IMHO), is mind expansion - learning to look at life through another person'seyes (and brain). Education is an extension of the brain, first within itself, then with people nearby, and finally with people you have never met.
Somehow I feel that, until you start to think of all the people that you have not met yet, you don't quite make the category of being a member of the human race. You become a person who doesn't want to meet new people. But that's just me on a slightly fascist bent, which, for the moment, for some unexplained reason, seems perfectly logical You can't be me, I'm taken
One polar extreme is about what we think we've got, and the other is about what we think we could have.
The oscillation between these two views is actually the alternating current of reality. You can't be me, I'm taken
The oscillation between these two views is actually the Alternating Current of Reality
Wilde to James Whistler: "I wish I'd said that!"
Whistler: "You will, Oscar, you will...."
Good line, Sven. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky