TEDxISL - Geoffrey Jenkins - Why We Should Teach About Money December 7, 2011

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I am a History and Business teacher of many years' experience. I have always been interested in Economic and Social rather than political and diplomatic History. I started teaching Economics in my first post in the 1970s and over the years, while maintaining my interest in History teaching have moved more and more into Business and Economics. During the global financial crisis of 2007-08, I became interested in money and banking and its apparent distance from the industrial economy. Ideas of social responsibility and ethical marketing to which most other industries seemed at least to pay lip service, and in many cases embrace, seemed to have been totally ignored by the banking sector leading to the disastrous collapse. Three years of reading and research have made me aware of a whole range of alternative solutions to the problems caused by the banks, eventually leading me to the small not for profit organisation, Positive Money. I attended their annual conference in London on October 29th this year, my participation generously financed by the school as a Professional Development. The talk I have prepared today is a very brief overview of the problems of money and banking as I see it, and an attempt to raise awareness with a view to bringing them somehow into the school curriculum as an important global issue.

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