Comments on: Financial Curriculum: Classes About Money Management

By: thomas

thomas — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 07:33:49 +0000

I’m actually a big proponent for financial education in school. I can’t remember the last time I had to bust out the pythagoras theorum, but I do know I work with money EVERY day. Whether it’s buying lunch, paying bills, or getting my paycheck, I’m influenced greatly by money.

When I was in grade school, I took an elective “Checking and Banking” and it was the greatest class ever. You learned how to write checks, balance your checking book, and how interest works.

Too many kids today don’t know about money and the true value, yet they are tested on finding the radius of a circle or what a dangling participle is.

Maybe it’s me, but I feel school needs a more trade school approach. Take classes and learn about things you will use in your everyday life and save the other stuff for electives.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:09:56 +0000

Cashgoat: You bring up an interesting point about earlier school lessons being erased by negative models at home. I think that it’s important to lay the groundwork early but reinforcement is important. The parents are powerful forces in the development of values, which is why school programs will only be as successful as the parents’ attitudes.

This is different than mathematics classes, where in most cases, the only education is coming from teachers; parents are not at home modeling bad calculus or geometry habits.

iarenoob: I’m a proponent of including lessons in basic money management in *home* economics classes.

By: iarenoob

iarenoob — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:54:13 +0000

I wish they had this in my school (I graduated in 2004) and I swear some of the classes I took were just not worth it. If they can someone put that in with Economics or just a class on its own.

By: cashgoat

cashgoat — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:37:55 +0000

I’m torn on this issue. I agree that the curriculum is already overloaded and it would be better to start younger. However, there are way too many families out there that never had proper education in this area and therefore don’t agree with what the kids would be taught. Because of this, there is a good chance that everything the kids are taught at a young age would be erased in the home by the time they are old enough for it to make a difference. You would probably have a better chance of getting through to the high school age kids because they won’t have as much time for financial education to be erased by the parents. This is also about the time kids start working part time so demonstrating the benefits of retirement savings at a young age and the disadvantages of credit would make more sense to them because it would be less abstract.