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Academician in the University: 85% of our children lack economic culture
King Khalid University, Media Center
Assistant Professor of Child Rearing at King Khalid University, Dr. Magda Fathi Salim Mohammed revealed that approximately 85% of children in Saudi Arabia lack culture of economic education. She said "In particularly, economic education has great importance for young children, in the way that a child can participate in controlling consumption, as well as imparting facts, values, skills, and attitudes, such as the trend towards consumption rationalization. Economic Education helps also to form consumption patterns, so that the consumer's behavior will be characterized by prudence and balance: Meaning that a child would consume only quantities that meet the necessary requirements without an increase or decrease."
Magda also showed that the people have lived, in the era before the economic boom, a balanced culture between production and consumption. That culture could be termed as Adequacy Culture; the alignment between owning the means of production and consumption patterns according to the nature of the production. On the household level, we found that the Adequacy Culture has meant that there were spending patterns that were balanced with family income. However, globalization appearance in 1990, aimed at spreading the culture of consumption, and paralyzed the will of production. Arguably, globalization proceeded to achieve this along with forcing people to produce what they did not need, and consume what they did not produce. Additionally, globalization came in parallel with invading communities with material values instead of the moral values. The main purpose behind this culture could be confined to one sentence: earning and more earning is the principle even at the expense all of others. She said, "At the household level, we find some running down behind consumption, with the dissipation of funds to satisfy the urgent and non urgent desires. As a result, this leads to doubling of human needs to exceed the capacity of available resources. At the state level, it means further rise in prices, as well as creating an inappropriate environment for the local product, which may be exposed to collapse. Consequently, the concept of dependency will substitute that of self sufficiency."
She added, "Indeed, the child is a member of the family, and he or she is just like any other members in acquiring consumption culture for different kinds of food, clothing, toys, and property of the family of instruments and furniture. However, the next generation will be more consuming than the previous one. So, it is necessary to find solutions, and to prepare a good generation through the foundations and principles of the right economic education, which will root the values of satisfaction inside those children. This can be achieved through the provision of consumption example to be followed".
On the most important solutions to increase the economic culture of the child, Dr. magda explained that the important things to raise the awareness and educate the child is to change his or her attitude towards saving by providing him or her with a saving jar. It is also important to provide him or her with the good example, especially within the family, preferably by the parents. This can be achieved with the full participation of parents in the purchasing process, in addition to a complementary role of the media, which could play an active role in educating children about the importance of balanced consuming behavior. "We can conduct media programs to make children aware of the importance of rationalization, as those programs should educate children about consumer rights as well as duties and develop the spirit of citizenship".