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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;kevin McGonigal, post: 2487886, member: 72790&quot;]As a retired history teacher I can tell you that, indeed, my teaching colleagues, including those who had majored in history, knew virtually nothing about money except for what might be in their pockets. Even my professors, and this is going back some time, knew little about coins or currency, so it is no wonder their charges, future teachers, would know so little. Had I not started collecting as a youngster I probably would have been one of those ignorant ones. Even most learned and published historians frequently make egregious errors in their writings when it comes to coins and currency. When it came to my own students I would often bring in the money of the period I was teaching, explain what it was (and they ALWAYS asked &quot;how much was this in our money&quot;. Most were quite interested, especially when they realized the value came not from government decree but the intrinsic metallic worth, except when government debased or printed its way with fiat money. What was most captivating was when I told them that the Athenian Owl they were handling (I passed the coins around the room) might have been spent by Socrates, the denarius by Julius Caesar, the English Long Cross silver penny by Edward Long Shanks or the British gold Guinea by Ben Franklin. By the time my students hit the 20th century they knew what &quot;free silver&quot; and a Cross of Gold meant for the US economy and when FDR took the US off the gold standard they knew why and what that meant for the depression Era economy. I think there are a few adults out there who do have a fair idea of what underlies economic policy and if they do, it is more likely to come from numismatics than business schools. By the way, I did the passing around of the coins for over forty years in my high school classes and never once had any missing at the end of the day.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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