There
is a book I’d love to write but probably won’t. In reality, I don’t have the
time, patience, or willingness to put it ahead of my other writing commitments.
Unfortunately, I think it’s a book that many people need to read because it
could be so relevant in today’s social, business and economic climate.
The
idea behind the book came from my recent readings about the economic, political,
and social upheavals that occurred in the past and are still going on today,
not only in this country but worldwide.
The
intertwinement and entanglements of business and political interests has been
going on since the late sixties and early seventies. It’s an open secret that
lobbyists weld an enormous power in Washington for the vested good of special
interests and the moneyed elite. Generally speaking, it’s the middle class who
gets the short end of the dollar stick in most of these transactions,
arrangements and agreements made into law.
Even
Norman Lear’s autobiography ‘This Too I Get to Experience’ touched on the same
subject matter……short-sighted vision instead of long term perspective. Lear
talks about a conversation he had with a Harvard professor who lamented ‘the
most rapacious societal disease of our time: short-term thinking’.
The
professor explained: “There will be a time very shortly when young people-very
young people- will be looking into computer screens. They will be looking
directly into screens, not to the side, so there will be no peripheral vision;
they won’t be looking over the top, so they won’t see what’s ahead; they’ll be
staring straight ahead into those screens, blind to everything ahead and around
them.”
Money
managers and financial product traders will be selling, buying, and swapping
financial products around the world. With that narrow focus, like a horse with
blinders, they will have more control and hold more power in those split
seconds than we can today imagine. And all of it entirely focused on short-term
gains.”
Back
in 2008, the near collapse of our world-wide financial system, and Wall Street
in particular, should have been a wakeup call for all Americans to pay more
attention to their wallets and events happening around them. Unfortunately, not
much seems to have changed over the ensuing years. Every day there are new
financially-coated products, events, angles, schemes, and ‘can’t lose’ facades
presented to the general public.
To
that end, financial literacy and media literacy are two topics of interest that
every American should acquaint themselves with. One of the best descriptions of
financial literacy came from an internet site of the World Bank.
It
reads as follows:
‘What is financial literacy all about,
you may ask? Essentially, it is the ability to use one’s knowledge and skills
to effectively manage financial resources, ideally for a lifetime of financial
well-being. Indeed, financial literacy is something we all have to work on each
day—it’s part of our ongoing education.
Despite being a relatively new field
of study, financial literacy has become increasingly important for governments
and citizens – without it there can be broad implications for the economic
health and stability of countries.
Here in Russia, the authorities are
highly cognizant of this and thus partnered with the World Bank in 2011 to
start implementation a project on financial literacy and education. Promoting
responsible and rational financial behavior is one of the main goals of the
project, along with establishing financial education infrastructure at federal and
regional levels, increasing the accountability of financial services providers,
designing a national strategy, raising awareness and strengthening
institutional capacity and underlying business practices between consumers and
financial services providers.
This project focuses primarily on
improving the financial literacy of school-age children and college student.
The idea being that they gain the modern required financial knowledge and
awareness of financial instruments, which then they can bring home to their
families, including seniors, and to the wider community.
Thanks to the project, financial
literacy courses have been introduced in schools and universities, with
training provided to teachers and tutors across the education system. By June
2018, over 20,000 university students and teachers from almost two-thirds of
Russia’s regions had completed training courses in financial literacy offered
by the project.
Organized with support from the project, the
National Savings Week for Adults and the National Week of Financial Literacy
for Children and Youth have gained significant traction in 2018 – the latter
engaging over 2.5 million children and teenagers who participated in around
25,400 events across Russia.
To support these goals, Russia’s
Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank approved in 2017 the National Strategy
for Financial Literacy for 2017-2023, and launched its Implementation Road
Map.’ *
Media
literacy, on the other hand, is using common sense instead of letting some
so-called journalist do it for you. A good definition can be found at
Medialit.org.
It reads as follows:
‘What is important to understand is that media literacy is
not about "protecting" kids from unwanted messages. Although some
groups urge families to just turn the TV off, the fact is, media are so
ingrained in our cultural milieu that even if you turn off the set, you still
cannot escape today's media culture. Media no longer just influence our
culture. They ARE our culture.
Media literacy, therefore, is about
helping students become competent, critical, and literate in all media forms so
that they control the interpretation of what they see or hear rather than
letting the interpretation control them.
To become media literate is not to
memorize facts or statistics about the media, but rather to learn to raise
the right questions about what you are watching, reading, or listening to.
Len Masterman, the acclaimed author of Teaching the Media, calls it
"critical autonomy" or the ability to think for oneself.
Without this fundamental ability, an
individual cannot have full dignity as a human person or exercise citizenship
in a democratic society where to be a citizen is to both understand and contribute
to the debates of the time.
from Literacy in a Media Age:
An Overview and Orientation Guide to Media LIteracy Education
It simply comes down to that old,
worn, yet so true cliché: Let the buyer beware. We all have the responsibility
to listen and learn for ourselves instead of letting someone else do it for us.
To use common sense instead of group-think and to forge our own path to
enlightenment instead of following the crowd.
I
recently touched on a similar subject matter in a blog entitled: ‘Don’t Touch
my Avatar’. Today’s financial and media worlds are full of tall tales of quick
riches and absolutes in the area of truth. We have to dig through the everyday
floss and moss to find the reality behind many of those facades masquerading as
the truth.
· *Definition of
financial literacy – World Bank web site
· *Medialit.org
