6 ms·
Why personal finance isn't taught in school is beyond me
by jshelly 10y ago
Why personal finance isn't taught in school is beyond me
- wldcordeiro 10y agoIn my experience, it is taught in school, only as an afterthought and a single semester-long high school course with usually one of their least competent teacher, much like the computer literacy courses.
- hueving 10y agoIt wasn't even taught in my school unless you didn't sign up for any other elective classes (e.g. shop, computer classes, etc). So on top of it being only taught once, it wasn't even taught to the majority of people that signed up for something else.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoThat's a great way to make sure that everyone mentally checks out of class and doesn't learn anything (even if it wasn't much.) My high school had a financial literacy requirement, but it was a half year class taught by one of the worst teachers I've had (very nice lady but like the computer teacher they were just riding out to retirement and relegated to these classes that were undersupplied and they weren't knowledgeable in), the content was out of date, and sparse. They cover things like writing checks, bank account creation, but I remember nothing covering how loans work or anything of that nature because the math required would make the class too tough for general education. The class was really something the school just paid lip service to as the state required it. It's a damn shame school's don't have better experiences because people enter the world totally unequipped for the financial predators that loom.
- mjevans 10y agoI think you've raised an excellent point here. Loans (interest, and also contracts in general) are not required to be presented at a level that /most/ of the population can understand. There is a giant, thick, legal language contract that even if you are a lawyer you probably don't really understand (it hasn't been adjudicated, so you don't know what a judge feels it says). Disclosure: I do use credit cards, but only as a convenient and insurance providing mechanism for accessing my bank account and recouping some of the fees built in to prices by the predatory banking industry.
- vitd 10y agoI get the feeling that naming a course "home economics" and including subjects like how to cook and clean and run a household is "too lame" for students these days. A better name might be something along the lines of "how to not end up in a van down by the river." [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhgfjrKi0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhgfjrKi0o
- reitanqild 10y agoWe did have that kind of a subject, 4-7 grade I think. Learned basic cooking and baking, doing the dishes, cleaning the floors basic nutrition theory (macros, vitamins, trace minerals, fibres and I even think we touched into calorie counting before finishing off.)
- vlunkr 10y agoI had an "economics" class in school that was mostly a personal finance class. It boiled down to "credit cards will destroy you", which isn't a bad lesson.
- vkou 10y agoBecause the best personal finance advice it could give for the majority of people would be 'don't get into debt, don't buy shit you don't need, and support unions'. Two of the three would be the death knell for our economy, whereas the third is politically unpalatable.
- kilroy123 10y agoIn some schools it is. One of my favorite classes in high school was class where, they taught us everything from balancing a checkbook to dating.