Have I stumbled upon the ultimate strategy for wealth empowerment?  You tell me. 

In January, my job title changes: from high school English teacher to high school personal finance teacher.

I’m not going to use dull textbooks to teach academically mundane content.

This course is going to be real.

I’m going to build it from scratch, and I’m going to use a Socratic system of teaching.

The best teaching comes, I believe, when you don’t tell the students what you know.  The best teaching, in my view, occurs when students teach themselves, with a guide in the room who continues to ask them questions that will challenge their assumptions.

I won’t tell my students that actively managed mutual funds are generally a bad deal.

I won’t tell them that they should pay their credit cards off every month.

I won’t tell them that they need to start investing early.

But they’ll learn all that…and much more.

Great teaching, I believe, involves guidance and a nurturing of curiosities.  It doesn’t come from giving people “the answers.”

We only remember what we truly learn.  We don’t always remember what we’re told.

I’ll be discussing this personal finance course in my Globe and Mail column over the next month or so.

My first article, Two lessons on the road to becoming wealthy,  is online now, and will appear in tomorrow’s newspaper.

Let me know what you think!