Schools in England are expanding their financial education curriculum to offer courses to 14-16 year olds in addition to the older students already served. These students can receive varying levels of certification in financial studies.
Will this work in the United States? Not at the moment. Educational issues go in waves, and right now we seem to be in the trough where popular sentiment suggests focusing on budget-tightening, three Rs, and basic skills.
Published or updated January 10, 2006. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
In Indiana, the legislation is proposing a joint program with the public high schools and the community college to give all students the ability to graduate from high school with not only a diploma, but an associates degree. I took some of the college level courses in high school, and some of them included accounting and economics, which are for all intents and purposes, financial, but not necessarily focused on personal finances… which can be a serious problem. There are plenty of people out there that have great financial acumen, but do not have the basic knowledge about personal finances.
I think this is a great approach to improve people’s financial literacy. At least, what i think, financial studies can improve their money mind and improve their money management skills.
This is a great idea.
I remember in high school having to take a “career pathways” course. Most members of the community were outraged that we were wasting our time on things like “writing resumes,” “interviewing for jobs,” and learning such mundaine, useless things as how many times the average member of our class would change jobs.
In the end though, I still remember two things from that class:
1) I should expect to change jobs 5 to 10 times in my adult life
2) Most of the jobs that we were going to take hadn’t been created or even thought of yet.
It drove home the point of staying flexible in the job market.
This is great. Kids should learn financial skills as early as possible. When you wait until college or afterwards to learn about personal finance you lose valuable time in learning to save and creating the good habits needed to be successful.
I think this is fantastic! I am actually doing a report (for a college class) on why it should be required. One of my instructors said at out comm college 90% of “drop outs” drop out because of high debt. I wish I had learned about debt and savings 10 years ago in H.S.