Friday, November 13, 1998

Educating Fool
by ([email protected])

I'm a high school history teacher and I'm now on a Foolish mission. I want to teach my students about money: how to understand it, how to manipulate it, and how to make as much of it as they can. Part of the reason for my passion for this mission is that throughout my life, whether it was with my family and friends or in school, money was rarely discussed as anything other than a consumer function. I want that to change.

With the help of various sources, including The Motley Fool, I'm giving my students a first rate look at money and especially the stock market. We're doing all the usual things you might do: track the prices of a few chosen companies, discuss the history of Wall Street, and we even have a Wise man in a suit from one of the esteemed local brokerage houses to help us with some of the technical blah blah.

A funny thing happened on the way to the exchange, though. One school day while pontificating on the risks and returns of the wily Big Board, CNBC video ticker humming behind me on the old Zenith, I asked my students if they actually owned any stock. More than half the class raised their hands. I was dumbfounded. I had assumed differently and was pleasantly surprised. I was further surprised to find several students had substantial positions in such companies as King World Productions, BroadCom, Disney, and others.

Although my students still have plenty to learn about the stock market and the various Foolish Investment Philosophies, it's good to know that there are plenty of future Fools in training and that more and more young Fools are investing for tomorrow.

[For more budgeting tips, head over to the Living Below Your Means message board.]

[Hey Fools, why not pen a Fribble, yourself? We welcome submissions from readers. Just click here and read the "What's a Fribble?" item, pen a short masterpiece, and send it off to TMF [email protected].]

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