Why credits and risks in math classes?
- Autor:
- Christian Dorner
Unfortunately, in Austria adolescents or young adults can't handle money in a decent
way. Some studies state that 14% of all visitors coming firstly in contact with the debt
advice service are 25 years old or younger. Actually situations become worse by taking
a closer look, persons of not full age hardly seek advice at an official service institution.
They are used to ask their friends or parents for some financial support. A smart-phone-
contract is the most common way for indebtedness in the youth, closely followed by a car
purchase. All these mentioned forms of borrowing money, even borrowing money from
your parents, are kinds of credits (see http://orf.at/stories/2208386/2208367/).
The author concentrates in his Ph.D.-thesis on financial topics, which should be taught in
school, focus on secondary education. He creates central ideas of financial mathematics
fundamental ideas in the sense of Bruner (see [2]) respectively, via an empirical study.
Three of these central ideas are "Use of stochastics in a nance mathematical context",
"time value of money" and "handling of risk". The following modelling exercise is based
on these mentioned ideas.
The Austrian school curriculum stipulates the discussion of credits in class. Furthermore
in Austria there are some special schools, like "Handelsakademie" (commercial high-
school), which deal with credits in detail. However, all considerations in school are done
rather statically. Changes of the interest rate are rarely discussed.
In addition, in a bank consultation the assistant usually shows only one credit scenario
which is in favour of the debtor, though this is not the only possible scenario. From the
point of view of banks it is obvious, they want to realize profit. So, the credit user must
have such knowledge in such a consultation situation.
At this point we explicitly emphasize: We don't want to put the reader/resp. a pupil o
raising a credit, but he/she should be able to understand the behaviour and the dynamics
of a credit and to be aware of its risks.