Teenagers find taxation fascinating
John Duston made a surprise sale of the textbook he wrote to help teachers educate teenage students about money.
He was in the dentist’s chair getting a check-up, but by the time he walked out the door, the dentist was clutching a copy, and Duston had had the price knocked off his bill.
‘‘The appeal has been wider than I thought,’’ said Duston, a former EY accountant, but now commerce teacher at St Cuthbert’s College in Epsom, Auckland.
‘‘I thought it would be used for commerce classes, but it turns out maths teachers are interested, and so are a lot of adults like my dentist.’’
He was particularly chuffed that the dean of the University of Auckland accounting school bought copies for each of his three children.
Duston wrote the book in his holidays and weekends to support his teaching, but also because he’d like every Kiwi teenager to be financially capable before they left school, whether heading to university, or into the world of work.
His learning workbook is on sale online through Edify, but Duston didn’t write the book to make his fortune.
‘‘If I work out the hourly rate, it wouldn’t be worth it, but I didn’t do it for the money,’’ he said.
Instead, he wrote it to fulfil a sense of mission.
High house prices left young adults with little room to learn their money management skills through trial and error.
‘‘You can’t afford to learn from mistakes any more,’’ Duston said.
His work has given him insights into what it was teenagers most wanted, and needed, to learn about money, some of which may surprise parents.
For example, most teenagers didn’t know what people in different occupations earned.
And they could be interested in things adults might assume would be deadly boring to them.
‘‘The surprising thing is, you think tax is going to be boring, but it’s not to them,’’ he said.
Coming fresh to the subject, teenagers often found progressive tax rates (higher rates of tax for people on higher incomes) fascinating and challenging.
Help to recognise and avoid scams was also welcome to students.
‘‘They are getting emails all the time, and they have got to identify what’s a scam, and what’s real. That’s quite difficult for young people,’’ Duston said.
There was also a thirst to know about KiwiSaver, and how it could be used to help buy a first home.
Duston was convinced teachers were uniquely positioned to help lift the country’s money smarts. ‘‘I think we can make a massive difference.’’
Now, he’d just love for a moneyed commercial organisation, like a bank, to sponsor him to get his books into schools all around the country.