THE TEACHING OF MONEY AND BANKING*

Abstract

It certainly cannot be the objective of a course in Money and Banking on the undergraduate level to increase the skills of prospective bank employees. Neither the future teller behind the window nor the future clerk in the accounting division, nor the future bank president will become professionally more capable if he knows that MV=.PT or what the reserve requirements of central reserve city banks were in 1948. They all may find a course in Money and Banking intellectually rewarding, but not necessarily more so than the future lawyer, physicist, or physician. To be sure, we may expect a businessman to be more interested in money matters than a research chemist or a philologist might be, but as intelligent citizens their desire to understand what goes on around them should not be too different. I see little vocationally worthwhile material in a course in Money and Banking, while there is plenty that may be of cultural value in a good course in the subject. Even when taught in business schools it should be in the nature of a liberal arts course, good for the student majoring in English or Psychology no less than for the student majoring in business. The only difference between a Money and Banking course chiefly for business students and one chiefly for liberal arts students might be that the teacher of the former must watch out for two difficulties: (1) Students in required courses are often less interested in the subject, and Money and Banking usually is required in a business curriculum. (2) The business student may have picked up in other required subjects several equivocal terms and deceptively similar concepts that may handicap him in comprehending certain principles of Money and Banking.