America is educating a nation of investors

“HOW IS THE stockmarket looking today?” asks Jennifer Varga, a teacher at Memorial Middle School in Willingboro, New Jersey, a suburb about 20 miles outside Philadelphia. She has projected a live visualisation of S&P 500 companies sorted by market cap onto the board at the front of her classroom. It is a sea of mostly red boxes. A 14-year-old pupil quickly answers: “Trash!” She is not wrong—it was a rubbish morning for the index on June 11th. Ms Varga adjusts the picture to show the S&P’s rise over the past month, then the past six months. The pupils nod approvingly at the sea of green boxes as Ms Varga explains the virtues of investing long-term.