Literacy vs. Wisdom
Posted May 17, 2010
So I had an interesting evening last week. I’ve been doing a series of community keynotes in the state of Minnesota on behalf of the Minnesota Alliance With Youth. In each community I’ve been speaking with community leaders about the critical importance of organizational and adult wellness as it pertains to the wellness of youth. If WE’RE not doing well, THEY’RE not doing well.
But last week I went to Marshall, MN and was placed into content far outside my comfort zone: their evening conference was for teens and about financial literacy.
Hmm… financial literacy. Search has a new site called BankIt which is a collaborative effort between Search and CapitolOne around financial literacy. So it’s not that we don’t know something about the topic. It’s just that I don’t know much.
So I needed to think creatively. The conference was called “Money Wise,” so I decided to take my lead from that and talk about the difference between “literacy” and “wisdom.“By definition, “literacy” means “a knowledge or competency in a particular area.” So there was little doubt that the young people and their parents were going to leave the event more literate in finances because of the panel of experts the hosts had assembled. But does that mean they’d leave any wiser?
For example, I asked the audience to raise their hands if they know smoking is bad for our health. Everyone’s hand went up. Then I asked if they knew someone who smoked. Everyone’s hand went up. So there was no lack of literacy in the dangers of smoking. But there was a lack of wisdom.
I attempted to create a clear distinction: literacy means very little unless we have the wisdom to do something with the knowledge we have.
I also took two main points of financial literacy and used them metaphorically for our own life experience:
1. Don’t spend more than you have.
2. Don’t buy what you want until you have what you need.These aren’t just sound financial strategies, these are germane to how we live our lives. I was hopeful that the young people had a chance to reflect on how they use their time, talents, relationships, and goals in these broader principles.
Truth be told, the speech was probably the most fun I’ve had speaking in recent memory. Something about being forced to stretch outside of one’s comfort zone and to think creatively is really compelling. Probably another good life lesson.
By the way, a local reporter in Marshall wrote a brief piece about the evening: http://www.marshallindependent.com/page/content.detail/id/516746.html?na...