Tax, citizenship, and the school curriculum
Listening to British schools secretary Ed Balls on BBC's Today programme this morning prompted various thoughts about financial literacy (lack thereof) in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
Mr Balls made the perfectly sensible point that most people do not receive any useful education on how to manage their financial affairs. Not surprisingly the resulting lack of financial literacy has caused huge problems, especially during the era of cheap credit and irresponsible lending by banks and finance companies. The problem has been compounded by endless misleading and confusing advertising, and the lack of effective regulation of the retail end of the financial markets. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
But personal budgeting is only one part of a more general lack of knowledge about financial affairs. Yes, its important that young people learn about personal budgeting, including cutting back on discretionary spending to save for future needs, but its equally important that they are taught about public expenditure -- you know, boring stuff like funding education, training, health services, police, fire and other essential services, not to mention public investment in infrastructure and social protection. This is so far off the radar screen that most people scarcely give it a thought: instead they face a constant drip, drip of irresponsible reporting from the right-wing media which insists that all public expenditure is by definition bad, whilst all private expenditure (think about the billions wasted on vanity cars, gambling and alcohol abuse) is good.
This gap in the British national curriculum (and my colleagues elsewhere in Europe confirm a similar gap in most European curricula) is all the more striking when you learn, as I did recently, that public expenditure and tax are included in the citizenship curriculum for school children in Uganda. This little nugget came up during a session on tax compliance at the recent Financing for Development review conference at Doha at the end of last year, when the Ugandan Revenue Commissioner commented that this education was considered vital to building democratic accountability.
The current financial crisis has revealed a host of catastrophic failures, not least the inability of ordinary people to understand and manage debt and savings. Young people need to be educated about financial matters, both personal and public. It is time for tax to be included on the national curriculum.
Mr Balls made the perfectly sensible point that most people do not receive any useful education on how to manage their financial affairs. Not surprisingly the resulting lack of financial literacy has caused huge problems, especially during the era of cheap credit and irresponsible lending by banks and finance companies. The problem has been compounded by endless misleading and confusing advertising, and the lack of effective regulation of the retail end of the financial markets. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
But personal budgeting is only one part of a more general lack of knowledge about financial affairs. Yes, its important that young people learn about personal budgeting, including cutting back on discretionary spending to save for future needs, but its equally important that they are taught about public expenditure -- you know, boring stuff like funding education, training, health services, police, fire and other essential services, not to mention public investment in infrastructure and social protection. This is so far off the radar screen that most people scarcely give it a thought: instead they face a constant drip, drip of irresponsible reporting from the right-wing media which insists that all public expenditure is by definition bad, whilst all private expenditure (think about the billions wasted on vanity cars, gambling and alcohol abuse) is good.
This gap in the British national curriculum (and my colleagues elsewhere in Europe confirm a similar gap in most European curricula) is all the more striking when you learn, as I did recently, that public expenditure and tax are included in the citizenship curriculum for school children in Uganda. This little nugget came up during a session on tax compliance at the recent Financing for Development review conference at Doha at the end of last year, when the Ugandan Revenue Commissioner commented that this education was considered vital to building democratic accountability.
The current financial crisis has revealed a host of catastrophic failures, not least the inability of ordinary people to understand and manage debt and savings. Young people need to be educated about financial matters, both personal and public. It is time for tax to be included on the national curriculum.
posted by TJN at 8:59 am
2 Comments:
Strange that I for once find myself agreeing with you. Yes indeed, there should be a great deal more economics taught.
Where we might disagree though is in what parts of economics should be taught. I'd go for including tax incidence, public choice economics, the deadweight costs of taxation....things that you I assume would rather were not taught at all.
Why would you assume any of those things? Why on earth? Any rounded curriculum would need to include a balance of different points of view. Let's start now with the hoary old chestnut of tax incidence. Try this one
http://taxjustice.blogspot.com/2008/06/incidence-brigade.html
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