5 ms·

They should also revive or create classes that teach other important, basic, life skills - budgeting, banking, getting a loan, investing, hiring a contractor, b

They should also revive or create classes that teach other important, basic, life skills - budgeting, banking, getting a loan, investing, hiring a contractor, buying appliances, tiling, roofing, drywalling, etc, etc.

millerm 2y ago
Civics, ethics, and cooking too. :)
- bloodyplonker22 2y ago
  I found that in ethics classes, a lot of it was holier than thou and virtue signaling instructors preaching but not necessarily practicing. I am not saying all of the instructors and people who teach ethics are bad, this is what I have observed.
  - gameman144 2y ago
    This is interesting to me, none of the ethics classes I've ever taken even had room for a holier-than-thou instructor; they were taught as "here are various ways that people have tried to determine the right thing to do throughout time". A professor saying "And I'm great at doing the right thing" would be as out of place as them bragging about their fitness or wealth.
    - protocolture 2y ago
      I remember my equivalent (they called it "Commerce" but it was basically law/politics/ethics) spent some significant time navel gazing at legislation that had directly influenced the private school system we were in. "here are various ways that people have tried to determine the right thing to do throughout time" would have been vastly preferable to "heres how private schools with private funding successfully managed to extort the government for even more funding" Maybe you can consider the teacher to be good because I remember the (many, many) lessons on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn_School_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn_School_Strike
      - protocolture 2y ago
        I must have gotten downvoted by a diehard goulburn toilet seat strike patrician.
    - uxp100 2y ago
      That was my experience as well. OTOH I don’t think ethics classes will magically make the students “more ethical” or something. Might as well let students have a choice of philosophy electives if possible, I don’t think making everyone take ethics is better than making everyone take aesthetics. Although if you were going to have something more concrete, like Engineering Ethics except somehow for high schoolers without a particular career chosen, a few weeks of philosophy would probably be good background.
- blooalien 2y ago
  When I was a kid, cooking was part of the "Home Economics" class, which also included budgeting, shopping, basic repairs (home, clothing, etc), and some other useful "adulting" skills they apparently don't teach in school anymore.
  - Teknoman117 2y ago
    It's shocking how recently this all seems to have been removed. I'm in my early 30s and learned most of this in public school.
    - crooked-v 2y ago
      It's at least partly because, starting with NCLB in 2001, schools got defunded if students didn't do well on standardized tests. That resulted in curricula being redesigned around those standardized tests, and in an even more exaggerated way for obvious reasons in poor schools.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Late 40s here. Interestingly, I wasn’t allowed to take home ec - the school considered it beneath me. Latin was thrust upon me as my senior year elective. And I still can’t bake a souflee to save myself.
  - millerm 2y ago
    I think about how great my home economics class was. I still think of my teacher decades later. All that she taught me (I took several of her classes). From grocery shopping trips, food inspection, food preparation & safety, sewing, how to inspect clothing for quality, basic home maintenance... like, so much stuff that has been more impactful in my life than any other thing. I'm sad to think that my teacher is probably no longer alive after all these years. She also encouraged the hell out of me to play the guitar, which I still do. Cheers to you, Marlene. I'm sorry for those days where I might have been a bit of a pain, but I was just a young one then.
yapyap 2y ago
these are high schoolers we’re talking about, sure people have used the excuse of the classes not being given but if they were, nearly no one would be interested. also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage
- goodoldneon 2y ago
  Looks like you're being downvoted but you're right. A tiny fraction of high school students would actually care about these classes -- high school me wouldn't
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    I didn't care about English or Geometry either, but I still wish somebody had taught me about quarterly tax estimates for independent contractors. Baking cookies and learning to sew was at least a nice break from studying books.
- dawnerd 2y ago
  The cooking class at my middle school was insanely popular, same with shop. A surprisingly large number of students also signed up for “consumer math” which was all about taxes, budgeting and such.
  - jwagenet 2y ago
    I think consumer math and statistics should be required alternatives to precalc and calc. Maybe even algebra 2.
    - dawnerd 2y ago
      100% agree. I took it and it was the best class. Also taught me how to use excel at a pretty advanced level.
- dartos 2y ago
  > nearly no one would be interested. I went to a public US high school with a nursing magnet program and an automotive program. Both saw you with a phlebotomist license or a technician certification respectively. These were wildly popular programs despite having academic requirements (for the nursing track) I think high schoolers care about practicality, actually. > also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage crazy thought, though. Maybe pay teachers more? Make it a more attractive career? Vote in superintendents with more education experience than corporate. Idk… anything but throw your hands up and say “well nobody wants to teach so idk”
jjkaczor 2y ago
Media (and now social media) awareness and understanding (I was lucky enough to take a course in this, back in... 1989/90)
- Symbiote 2y ago
  It was a core part of GCSE English in the 2000s, so almost everyone in England studied it. Things like reading a Daily Mail article and identifying all the nonsense parts. I don't know it out helps society. I suspect people don't think like this once the class is over.
Ancalagon 2y ago
drywalling is so far from basic. that shit is so hard
- koolba 2y ago
  Dry walling is easy. Good drywalling is moderately difficult. Best advice is to go with a slower set time so you can go at the pace you feel comfortable.
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    Loss of trying, drying, and sanding off your failures
  - aorloff 2y ago
    In many ways like coding, the worse you are at drywall the harder it is, the messier you are, and the longer it takes.
    - toast0 2y ago
      The more you're ok with good enough, the quicker you can be done. :p
- xaldir 2y ago
  Drywalling is easy. Good drywalling is not that difficult if you are patient. Now good and fast that's the hard part.
Buldak 2y ago
We called that "Home Ec" (as in "Home Economics") when I was a kid. (I'm an elder millennial.) To be honest, I didn't find it particularly useful, and I think many of the calls for "practical" classes in primary or secondary education miss the mark.
- tejohnso 2y ago
  Oddly, "Home Ec" for me was all about baking and knitting. It was basically "home ec" is for girls, shop is for guys.
  - waste_monk 2y ago
    We had something similar, our home ec classes had some household management, but the focus was largely on cooking and making/repairing clothing. This further split into seperate elective classes in the last few years of high school. That said some aspects of homekeeping were absorbed by other classes (math module on balancing a budget, social studies modules on how you'd start a business, etc.). > It was basically "home ec" is for girls, shop is for guys. We didn't have too many girls in the shop classes, but we had a surprisingly large numbers of guys taking the clothing and textiles classes. It was regarded as one of the most relaxed and enjoyable electives, and there was an unofficial exemption to the uniform policy that you could wear things you'd produced in class, so it was nice to see the schoolyard brightened by students wearing strange and colorful clothing.
- slumberlust 2y ago
  Did you by chance receive supplementary lessons at home? I didn't take a home ec class, but my mother made it a priority to teach me budgeting and such.
ajsnigrutin 2y ago
Half of those are things that parents should learn them, and the other half are things most won't ever actually do. Buying an appliance is not a thing you need class for, your parents can take you with them when they're buying one and show you the process... and roofing.. well, let's be fair, most people won't be doing that themselves. In my small country we have a website where random people can post suggestions for the government, and if it gets enough votes, some PR representative has to look at the suggestion and write a answer.... every few weeks there is a suggestion about how schools should teach kids stuff that their parents should teach them at home... even cooking, cleaning, etc. Have the parents really "failed in life" so much, that they can't even teach the kids to cook and clean and wash, etc.? Shop class... somewhat understandable, power tools are not realy a thing parents living in apartments in large cities have, so yes, that's beneficial to kids... but other stuff?
- jcgrillo 2y ago
  > and roofing.. well, let's be fair, most people won't be doing that themselves Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a roofer out to fix your roof? In my area if the job is less than $50k you can't find anyone who is interested. Not doing it yourself is an incredibly expensive luxury. Best know how to do it properly and safely.
  - giardini 2y ago
    Learning to fix a roof is like learning how to build a boat hull upside down: if you can do it properly then you can make lots of money doing it. That said, " if the job is less than $50k you can't find anyone who is interested" is difficult to believe. I only use experienced roofers and make sure my and their insurance coverage is good. I've always felt roof repairs were well worth the price.
    - jcgrillo 2y ago
      Experienced, good roofers and builders around here have enough new construction and full roof replacements that scheduling a small repair just isn't feasible. Those are not jobs they want, because they already have too many big jobs--some are fully booked 1+yr out.
alistairSH 2y ago
Something like 25% of high school students can’t do basic arithmetic and you want them to budgets and retirement planning? I’m not saying “home ec” (as it was called through the 90s - no idea what happened to it) isn’t potentially useful, only that we might have bigger fish to fry. As for trade skills, sure, no issue with that.
- p_j_w 2y ago
  If we taught kids the basics of compound interest then maybe we’d have fewer people struggling under the load of some extremely heavy debt burdens. Good for usurious banks, I guess, but probably not society as a whole.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    You can’t do compound interest without basic arithmetic.
- c6400sc 2y ago
  Those students might do better if they are taught practical uses of math, rather than STEM-focused abstractions. (I was one of those kids going "why the hell are we learning this" until I got to grad school and was able to put it together).
  - shalmanese 2y ago
    Except they're not practical uses. Every well meaning civilian attempt to propose these topics is rebutted by educators who report back that these concepts are totally alien and abstract to teenagers until they actually own and are responsible for their own money. The retention rate for these classes are abysmal, which is why you have people propose they should be taught, despite they themselves actually sitting through these classes, simply because any memory of these classes have been erased from their memory.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      Exactly. In my case, Calcilus didn’t really “click” until undergraduate economics. Before that “why the heck do I care about the area under the curve?!?!” Of course, I then went into software and haven’t used calculus since.
rawgabbit 2y ago
I would create a modern version of Home Economics to teach things the average person should be able to do. 1. Basic cookery. Including how to use the stove top, induction range, microwave, air fryer, stand mixer, and oven. How to choose a refrigerator, dishwasher, and other big ticket appliances. 2. Basic economics and finance. What is taken out of your paycheck e.g., state and federal taxes, social security and Medicare taxes, health insurance premiums, and contributions to 401k etc. How do credit cards work, how do car loans work, and how do mortgages work. Understand the different interest rates they charge. How do medical, auto, and home insurance work. How to file a tax return. 3. Elementary engineering. Basic concepts of how things work and how not to get injured. How electric circuits work (avoid touching the hot wire to something other than the terminal). How the house electrical circuits work. What is the purpose of the breaker panel and the GFCI mini breaker. How fires start and how to put out an oil fire vs regular fire. How to start a wood fire including feather sticks, fire steel, and steel wool & a nine volt battery. How house plumbing work including where does the pee and poo go. How the HVAC, furnace, and mini split work. 4. Basic technology. How to stay safe online. What to do if your credit card or identity is stolen. Password managers, MFA, and passkeys. How to shop for a mobile phone and understand all the fees the carrier will charge. How to use a LLM and ChatGPT.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  #2 there reminds me of all those "got a first paycheck" teenager reaction videos, when having to pay taxes and everything else sinks in for the first time because nobody bothered to tell them about that stuff earlier.
- floatrock 2y ago
  I wonder if the best way to teach #2 is abstractly or hands-on. Abstractly, people's eyes glaze over on a spreadsheet. Hands-on exposes kids to the vast inequalities out there, and that sounds terrifying without the right societal contextualization. What if the doctor's kid analyzes daddy's W2 and the other kid can only analyze their parent's 1099 uber returns. Or, a kid grasping the mathematics of compound interest doesn't necessarily mean that mean they can understand why their friends' parents have a 16% auto loan while theirs is only 4%. Not saying we should protect The Children from the messy realities of the world -- our current approach of "they'll figure taxes out on their own" is about as effective as the "don't even mention sex" philosophy used until the mid 1900's -- I'm just saying to really understand these financial concepts requires guiding kids through a whole lot more ugliness of the world, and I'm not sure many schools know how to do that kind of integrated life learning. Hell, even most adults don't know how to think about such things. I dunno... maybe the easiest thing here is to just go live in income-segregated neighborhoods so we never need to ask such difficult questions with our neighbor-friends.
jackcosgrove 2y ago
It is mind-boggling to me that one of the most important numbers in life - the 2% inflation rate target - is not taught to everyone. It's the financial equivalent of not teaching what temperature water freezes at.
hnthrow90348765 2y ago
Of this list, budgeting and banking are probably the only two that still need to be taught in high school because it's directly applicable during college. Save the other stuff for college. If you want to incentivize the population to take those classes, give credits or discounts on tuition or find some other mechanism. I always dislike trying to stuff more classes in high school because you're still kids.
- slackfan 2y ago
  Why. If you're going to college, often times you're being pressured into taking a loan. You're moving out, so finding contractors, etc, etc, is useful. If you don't have all of your lifeskills in order by the time you're 18, what are you even doing.
- pengaru 2y ago
  What %age of Americans attending high school attend college afterwards? What %age of Americans attending high school will take out loans in their lifetime? Financial sense shouldn't be knowledge of the privileged class, we ~all have to deal with money/debt.
nitwit005 2y ago
Unfortunately, you'd probably have to create a whole new teaching program to train teachers for it first. A lot of them are missing those life skills. You will find no shortage of teachers confused about their own pensions.

millerm 2y ago

Civics, ethics, and cooking too. :)

bloodyplonker22 2y ago
I found that in ethics classes, a lot of it was holier than thou and virtue signaling instructors preaching but not necessarily practicing. I am not saying all of the instructors and people who teach ethics are bad, this is what I have observed.
- gameman144 2y ago
  This is interesting to me, none of the ethics classes I've ever taken even had room for a holier-than-thou instructor; they were taught as "here are various ways that people have tried to determine the right thing to do throughout time". A professor saying "And I'm great at doing the right thing" would be as out of place as them bragging about their fitness or wealth.
  - protocolture 2y ago
    I remember my equivalent (they called it "Commerce" but it was basically law/politics/ethics) spent some significant time navel gazing at legislation that had directly influenced the private school system we were in. "here are various ways that people have tried to determine the right thing to do throughout time" would have been vastly preferable to "heres how private schools with private funding successfully managed to extort the government for even more funding" Maybe you can consider the teacher to be good because I remember the (many, many) lessons on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn_School_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goulburn_School_Strike
    - protocolture 2y ago
      I must have gotten downvoted by a diehard goulburn toilet seat strike patrician.
  - uxp100 2y ago
    That was my experience as well. OTOH I don’t think ethics classes will magically make the students “more ethical” or something. Might as well let students have a choice of philosophy electives if possible, I don’t think making everyone take ethics is better than making everyone take aesthetics. Although if you were going to have something more concrete, like Engineering Ethics except somehow for high schoolers without a particular career chosen, a few weeks of philosophy would probably be good background.
blooalien 2y ago
When I was a kid, cooking was part of the "Home Economics" class, which also included budgeting, shopping, basic repairs (home, clothing, etc), and some other useful "adulting" skills they apparently don't teach in school anymore.
- Teknoman117 2y ago
  It's shocking how recently this all seems to have been removed. I'm in my early 30s and learned most of this in public school.
  - crooked-v 2y ago
    It's at least partly because, starting with NCLB in 2001, schools got defunded if students didn't do well on standardized tests. That resulted in curricula being redesigned around those standardized tests, and in an even more exaggerated way for obvious reasons in poor schools.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Late 40s here. Interestingly, I wasn’t allowed to take home ec - the school considered it beneath me. Latin was thrust upon me as my senior year elective. And I still can’t bake a souflee to save myself.
- millerm 2y ago
  I think about how great my home economics class was. I still think of my teacher decades later. All that she taught me (I took several of her classes). From grocery shopping trips, food inspection, food preparation & safety, sewing, how to inspect clothing for quality, basic home maintenance... like, so much stuff that has been more impactful in my life than any other thing. I'm sad to think that my teacher is probably no longer alive after all these years. She also encouraged the hell out of me to play the guitar, which I still do. Cheers to you, Marlene. I'm sorry for those days where I might have been a bit of a pain, but I was just a young one then.

yapyap 2y ago

these are high schoolers we’re talking about, sure people have used the excuse of the classes not being given but if they were, nearly no one would be interested. also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage

goodoldneon 2y ago
Looks like you're being downvoted but you're right. A tiny fraction of high school students would actually care about these classes -- high school me wouldn't
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  I didn't care about English or Geometry either, but I still wish somebody had taught me about quarterly tax estimates for independent contractors. Baking cookies and learning to sew was at least a nice break from studying books.
dawnerd 2y ago
The cooking class at my middle school was insanely popular, same with shop. A surprisingly large number of students also signed up for “consumer math” which was all about taxes, budgeting and such.
- jwagenet 2y ago
  I think consumer math and statistics should be required alternatives to precalc and calc. Maybe even algebra 2.
  - dawnerd 2y ago
    100% agree. I took it and it was the best class. Also taught me how to use excel at a pretty advanced level.
dartos 2y ago
> nearly no one would be interested. I went to a public US high school with a nursing magnet program and an automotive program. Both saw you with a phlebotomist license or a technician certification respectively. These were wildly popular programs despite having academic requirements (for the nursing track) I think high schoolers care about practicality, actually. > also you need to keep budget in mind and the teacher shortage crazy thought, though. Maybe pay teachers more? Make it a more attractive career? Vote in superintendents with more education experience than corporate. Idk… anything but throw your hands up and say “well nobody wants to teach so idk”

jjkaczor 2y ago

Media (and now social media) awareness and understanding (I was lucky enough to take a course in this, back in... 1989/90)

Symbiote 2y ago
It was a core part of GCSE English in the 2000s, so almost everyone in England studied it. Things like reading a Daily Mail article and identifying all the nonsense parts. I don't know it out helps society. I suspect people don't think like this once the class is over.

Ancalagon 2y ago

drywalling is so far from basic. that shit is so hard

koolba 2y ago
Dry walling is easy. Good drywalling is moderately difficult. Best advice is to go with a slower set time so you can go at the pace you feel comfortable.
- nothercastle 2y ago
  Loss of trying, drying, and sanding off your failures
- aorloff 2y ago
  In many ways like coding, the worse you are at drywall the harder it is, the messier you are, and the longer it takes.
  - toast0 2y ago
    The more you're ok with good enough, the quicker you can be done. :p
xaldir 2y ago
Drywalling is easy. Good drywalling is not that difficult if you are patient. Now good and fast that's the hard part.

Buldak 2y ago

We called that "Home Ec" (as in "Home Economics") when I was a kid. (I'm an elder millennial.) To be honest, I didn't find it particularly useful, and I think many of the calls for "practical" classes in primary or secondary education miss the mark.

tejohnso 2y ago
Oddly, "Home Ec" for me was all about baking and knitting. It was basically "home ec" is for girls, shop is for guys.
- waste_monk 2y ago
  We had something similar, our home ec classes had some household management, but the focus was largely on cooking and making/repairing clothing. This further split into seperate elective classes in the last few years of high school. That said some aspects of homekeeping were absorbed by other classes (math module on balancing a budget, social studies modules on how you'd start a business, etc.). > It was basically "home ec" is for girls, shop is for guys. We didn't have too many girls in the shop classes, but we had a surprisingly large numbers of guys taking the clothing and textiles classes. It was regarded as one of the most relaxed and enjoyable electives, and there was an unofficial exemption to the uniform policy that you could wear things you'd produced in class, so it was nice to see the schoolyard brightened by students wearing strange and colorful clothing.
slumberlust 2y ago
Did you by chance receive supplementary lessons at home? I didn't take a home ec class, but my mother made it a priority to teach me budgeting and such.

ajsnigrutin 2y ago

Half of those are things that parents should learn them, and the other half are things most won't ever actually do. Buying an appliance is not a thing you need class for, your parents can take you with them when they're buying one and show you the process... and roofing.. well, let's be fair, most people won't be doing that themselves. In my small country we have a website where random people can post suggestions for the government, and if it gets enough votes, some PR representative has to look at the suggestion and write a answer.... every few weeks there is a suggestion about how schools should teach kids stuff that their parents should teach them at home... even cooking, cleaning, etc. Have the parents really "failed in life" so much, that they can't even teach the kids to cook and clean and wash, etc.? Shop class... somewhat understandable, power tools are not realy a thing parents living in apartments in large cities have, so yes, that's beneficial to kids... but other stuff?

jcgrillo 2y ago
> and roofing.. well, let's be fair, most people won't be doing that themselves Do you have any idea how much it costs to get a roofer out to fix your roof? In my area if the job is less than $50k you can't find anyone who is interested. Not doing it yourself is an incredibly expensive luxury. Best know how to do it properly and safely.
- giardini 2y ago
  Learning to fix a roof is like learning how to build a boat hull upside down: if you can do it properly then you can make lots of money doing it. That said, " if the job is less than $50k you can't find anyone who is interested" is difficult to believe. I only use experienced roofers and make sure my and their insurance coverage is good. I've always felt roof repairs were well worth the price.
  - jcgrillo 2y ago
    Experienced, good roofers and builders around here have enough new construction and full roof replacements that scheduling a small repair just isn't feasible. Those are not jobs they want, because they already have too many big jobs--some are fully booked 1+yr out.

alistairSH 2y ago

Something like 25% of high school students can’t do basic arithmetic and you want them to budgets and retirement planning? I’m not saying “home ec” (as it was called through the 90s - no idea what happened to it) isn’t potentially useful, only that we might have bigger fish to fry. As for trade skills, sure, no issue with that.

p_j_w 2y ago
If we taught kids the basics of compound interest then maybe we’d have fewer people struggling under the load of some extremely heavy debt burdens. Good for usurious banks, I guess, but probably not society as a whole.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  You can’t do compound interest without basic arithmetic.
c6400sc 2y ago
Those students might do better if they are taught practical uses of math, rather than STEM-focused abstractions. (I was one of those kids going "why the hell are we learning this" until I got to grad school and was able to put it together).
- shalmanese 2y ago
  Except they're not practical uses. Every well meaning civilian attempt to propose these topics is rebutted by educators who report back that these concepts are totally alien and abstract to teenagers until they actually own and are responsible for their own money. The retention rate for these classes are abysmal, which is why you have people propose they should be taught, despite they themselves actually sitting through these classes, simply because any memory of these classes have been erased from their memory.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    Exactly. In my case, Calcilus didn’t really “click” until undergraduate economics. Before that “why the heck do I care about the area under the curve?!?!” Of course, I then went into software and haven’t used calculus since.

rawgabbit 2y ago

I would create a modern version of Home Economics to teach things the average person should be able to do. 1. Basic cookery. Including how to use the stove top, induction range, microwave, air fryer, stand mixer, and oven. How to choose a refrigerator, dishwasher, and other big ticket appliances. 2. Basic economics and finance. What is taken out of your paycheck e.g., state and federal taxes, social security and Medicare taxes, health insurance premiums, and contributions to 401k etc. How do credit cards work, how do car loans work, and how do mortgages work. Understand the different interest rates they charge. How do medical, auto, and home insurance work. How to file a tax return. 3. Elementary engineering. Basic concepts of how things work and how not to get injured. How electric circuits work (avoid touching the hot wire to something other than the terminal). How the house electrical circuits work. What is the purpose of the breaker panel and the GFCI mini breaker. How fires start and how to put out an oil fire vs regular fire. How to start a wood fire including feather sticks, fire steel, and steel wool & a nine volt battery. How house plumbing work including where does the pee and poo go. How the HVAC, furnace, and mini split work. 4. Basic technology. How to stay safe online. What to do if your credit card or identity is stolen. Password managers, MFA, and passkeys. How to shop for a mobile phone and understand all the fees the carrier will charge. How to use a LLM and ChatGPT.

crooked-v 2y ago
#2 there reminds me of all those "got a first paycheck" teenager reaction videos, when having to pay taxes and everything else sinks in for the first time because nobody bothered to tell them about that stuff earlier.
floatrock 2y ago
I wonder if the best way to teach #2 is abstractly or hands-on. Abstractly, people's eyes glaze over on a spreadsheet. Hands-on exposes kids to the vast inequalities out there, and that sounds terrifying without the right societal contextualization. What if the doctor's kid analyzes daddy's W2 and the other kid can only analyze their parent's 1099 uber returns. Or, a kid grasping the mathematics of compound interest doesn't necessarily mean that mean they can understand why their friends' parents have a 16% auto loan while theirs is only 4%. Not saying we should protect The Children from the messy realities of the world -- our current approach of "they'll figure taxes out on their own" is about as effective as the "don't even mention sex" philosophy used until the mid 1900's -- I'm just saying to really understand these financial concepts requires guiding kids through a whole lot more ugliness of the world, and I'm not sure many schools know how to do that kind of integrated life learning. Hell, even most adults don't know how to think about such things. I dunno... maybe the easiest thing here is to just go live in income-segregated neighborhoods so we never need to ask such difficult questions with our neighbor-friends.

jackcosgrove 2y ago

It is mind-boggling to me that one of the most important numbers in life - the 2% inflation rate target - is not taught to everyone. It's the financial equivalent of not teaching what temperature water freezes at.

hnthrow90348765 2y ago

Of this list, budgeting and banking are probably the only two that still need to be taught in high school because it's directly applicable during college. Save the other stuff for college. If you want to incentivize the population to take those classes, give credits or discounts on tuition or find some other mechanism. I always dislike trying to stuff more classes in high school because you're still kids.

slackfan 2y ago
Why. If you're going to college, often times you're being pressured into taking a loan. You're moving out, so finding contractors, etc, etc, is useful. If you don't have all of your lifeskills in order by the time you're 18, what are you even doing.
pengaru 2y ago
What %age of Americans attending high school attend college afterwards? What %age of Americans attending high school will take out loans in their lifetime? Financial sense shouldn't be knowledge of the privileged class, we ~all have to deal with money/debt.

nitwit005 2y ago

Unfortunately, you'd probably have to create a whole new teaching program to train teachers for it first. A lot of them are missing those life skills. You will find no shortage of teachers confused about their own pensions.