Financial literacy teaching “outdated”

<h4>With the use of cash declining and cashless&comma; contactless payments on the rise&comma; it makes no sense that our children are still using toy coins and notes to practice maths in school&comma; according to Wellington-based financial educator Dean Blair&period;<&sol;h4>&NewLine;<p>The Ministry of Education’s math website <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;nzmaths&period;co&period;nz&sol;" target&equals;"&lowbar;blank">nzmaths&period;co&period;nz<&sol;a> for teachers and students has a collection of resources to teach math using play money&comma; and homework that uses money based exercises to practice math are commonplace&comma; but Mr Blair says coins and notes aren’t a representation of the real world&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Real world scenarios are a great way to practice how to work with numbers&comma; and it can be the first time our kids interact with the idea of spending&comma; but the problem is when they grow up its eftpos and credit&comma; not coins and bills&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Mr Blair says the outdated real world scenarios for math exercises is a missed opportunity from a very early age to ingrain the same &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;sensation of loss” you get when spending cash that you get when spending with an eftpos or credit card&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;There’s a lot of research that shows we spend more money when using plastic than we ever would with actual cash because we don’t have the sensation of loss of money&comma; and I’ve learnt that this dissociation is starting at the primary school age&comma; but I can’t help but wonder if it’s because kids aren’t practising money based math problems related to the use of eftpos and credit cards&period;” <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Mr Blair runs financial literacy boot camps in schools to teach kids about saving and spending&comma; and said the response when asking the children if a &dollar;20 note or an eftpos card buys you more in the store was worrying&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;I asked the children if they bought ten things for &dollar;2 each whether they could afford it with the cash&comma; and separately could they afford it with the card&quest; When asked if they could go further and buy another item&comma; they knew they couldn’t afford it with the cash&comma; but most assumed they could with the card&period; There’s an attitude that plastic is a bottomless pit of money from a very early age&period;” <&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;It wouldn’t be difficult to create math resources where scenarios included pretend credit cards and eftpos&comma; where calculating and accumulating interest to understand debt was a factor in the exercise&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;