Stock-Picking game, Japanese junior high school

[beanhead]

I saw Ben speaking about financial literacy, and he mentioned that even when personal finance is taught at schools here, it is typically by using tools such as stock-picking games.
My daughter, who is in junior high school, came home the other day with the prep for one of these lessons.
She asked me to help her pick stocks to win the game...
They were provided data up until 2020, so I guess they are supposed to choose which companies (Japanese) will perform the best after that.

As a dutiful father, I pointed her in the right direction of a few companies which prospered from the pandemic situation, and nudged her to avoid the obvious losers.

I also explained again the value of diversification and index funds. I encouraged her to challenge the whole premise of the game and tell her teacher that the focus of the lesson is wrong. I am 100% sure she will not follow my suggestion, sadly...

[fools_gold]

I saw Ben speaking about financial literacy, and he mentioned that even when personal finance is taught at schools here, it is typically by using tools such as stock-picking games.
My daughter, who is in junior high school, came home the other day with the prep for one of these lessons.
She asked me to help her pick stocks to win the game...
They were provided data up until 2020, so I guess they are supposed to choose which companies (Japanese) will perform the best after that.

As a dutiful father, I pointed her in the right direction of a few companies which prospered from the pandemic situation, and nudged her to avoid the obvious losers.

I also explained again the value of diversification and index funds. I encouraged her to challenge the whole premise of the game and tell her teacher that the focus of the lesson is wrong. I am 100% sure she will not follow my suggestion, sadly...

This is such a weird activity that I cant help wondering if the teacher doesn't have a deeper learning outcome planned (or at least I hope so). Usually with stock-picking games you'd pick some stocks now and come back and see how everyone's done in a few months' time. Asking students to pick stocks based on historical data and hindsight is inviting them to make two of the biggest mistakes in investing. Which may be the whole point of the exercise...

[RetireJapan]

This is such a weird activity that I cant help wondering if the teacher doesn't have a deeper learning outcome planned (or at least I hope so). Usually with stock-picking games you'd pick some stocks now and come back and see how everyone's done in a few months' time. Asking students to pick stocks based on historical data and hindsight is inviting them to make two of the biggest mistakes in investing. Which may be the whole point of the exercise...

At least it will reward the students with initiative who go out and Google the companies involved

Yep, stock picking games teach the opposite of what we want to teach kids: that in order to win you have to make outsize bets on long shots, and if you are lucky you will win, and if you are unlucky you don't win but it doesn't matter. Ouch!

The problem is that I presume most teachers will not have the experience/knowledge to understand/teach this material, and there's a good chance the textbook writers will screw it up too (I mean, just look at the English textbooks they use in public schools here).

I think it's great for teenagers to learn about personal finance and investing, but am worried they'll get fed the wrong messages.

[Beaglehound]

This is such a weird activity that I cant help wondering if the teacher doesn't have a deeper learning outcome planned (or at least I hope so). Usually with stock-picking games you'd pick some stocks now and come back and see how everyone's done in a few months' time. Asking students to pick stocks based on historical data and hindsight is inviting them to make two of the biggest mistakes in investing. Which may be the whole point of the exercise...

(I mean, just look at the English textbooks they use in public schools here).

This is a giant puzzle to me; there are enough decent language professionals in Japan to write something far better than the stuff they use, with saccharine topics infused with unnatural English. Do you know, Ben, if the problem is the writers or their brief? I teach a few junior high and high school students who want consolidation of their course book material, and at times it is a struggle to find anything interesting to do with it.

[RetireJapan]

I mean, just look at the English textbooks they use in public schools here).

This is a giant puzzle to me; there are enough decent language professionals in Japan to write something far better than the stuff they use, with saccharine topics infused with unnatural English. Do you know, Ben, if the problem is the writers or their brief? I teach a few junior high and high school students who want consolidation of their course book material, and at times it is a struggle to find anything interesting to do with it.

I am not an expert, but I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about this. I think there are a few issues: textbooks are written by committee (check out the 30+ authors in the back of New Horizons, some of whom I know and most of whom have little practical experience of teaching in junior high schools), teachers and students expect a certain type of textbook, and publishers are not going to take a chance creating radically different materials.

I actually wrote a course to complement JHS English here with a colleague, you can see more details here: https://fluency-course.com/

It's possibly one of the best things I have ever been a part of

[Beaglehound]

I mean, just look at the English textbooks they use in public schools here).

This is a giant puzzle to me; there are enough decent language professionals in Japan to write something far better than the stuff they use, with saccharine topics infused with unnatural English. Do you know, Ben, if the problem is the writers or their brief? I teach a few junior high and high school students who want consolidation of their course book material, and at times it is a struggle to find anything interesting to do with it.

I am not an expert, but I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about this. I think there are a few issues: textbooks are written by committee (check out the 30+ authors in the back of New Horizons, some of whom I know and most of whom have little practical experience of teaching in junior high schools), teachers and students expect a certain type of textbook, and publishers are not going to take a chance creating radically different materials.

I actually wrote a course to complement JHS English here with a colleague, you can see more details here: https://fluency-course.com/

It's possibly one of the best things I have ever been a part of

Very interesting, will have a closer look at that

[TJKansai]

I saw Ben speaking about financial literacy, and he mentioned that even when personal finance is taught at schools here, it is typically by using tools such as stock-picking games.
My daughter, who is in junior high school, came home the other day with the prep for one of these lessons.
She asked me to help her pick stocks to win the game...
They were provided data up until 2020, so I guess they are supposed to choose which companies (Japanese) will perform the best after that.

As a dutiful father, I pointed her in the right direction of a few companies which prospered from the pandemic situation, and nudged her to avoid the obvious losers.

I also explained again the value of diversification and index funds. I encouraged her to challenge the whole premise of the game and tell her teacher that the focus of the lesson is wrong. I am 100% sure she will not follow my suggestion, sadly...

This is such a weird activity that I cant help wondering if the teacher doesn't have a deeper learning outcome planned (or at least I hope so). Usually with stock-picking games you'd pick some stocks now and come back and see how everyone's done in a few months' time. Asking students to pick stocks based on historical data and hindsight is inviting them to make two of the biggest mistakes in investing. Which may be the whole point of the exercise...

A better exercise would be to look at top 10 companies in 1970/80/90/2000 etc and research what happened to them.