All high school students should be required to take and pass Personal Finance classes before they can graduate with their diploma. These classes should include the following subjects:
-Banking
-Budgeting
-Debt (credit cards, loans, LOC, etc) - including credit agencies/scores
-Insurance - including scores
-Investing
-Personal tax (sales, income, property, etc)
-Contracts (importance of reading them before financially obligating oneself)
-Entrepreneurship
It would great if there were a simulation module developed that allowed students to “practice” basic personal finance management in these classes.
Junior Achievement has a national platform in almost every state with a simulation program that is perfect for jr high and high school students. Check it out in your state. JA Finance Park. Teaches all these things with classroom lesson prior to sim
I think schools should use a curriculum credit card throughout all of highschool for different things such as needing a pencil, needing a bathroom break, being late to class, going and getting water, or to payoff debt you get credit/fake money for turning in assignments or showing up on time or really anything but having it be real life and throughout all 4 years as they go through school would be such a fun way to learn this stuff and be more of a kid friendly way to actually keep the knowledge. Because I had a class that taught this stuff and as a kid it kind of goes in one ear and out the other.
It needs to be taught, but let the states handle this and make the determination of what the material should be.
If such a course were designed right now it would be a wreck. They’d be encouraging kids to take college loans, home loans, car loans, medical loans, etc.
Centralizing education has been a disaster. Don’t double down on it.
I’m a Homeschool mother and this is very important. My children are taught Financial classes through their homeschool program. Every school should be doing this to prepare the children for the real world that they will step into.
I believe this needs to be a State issue and bring the leadership of education back to local communities rather than relying on federal. Which comes back to liquidating the Department of Education and making it state run.
There used to be a requirement for banks to do so many hours of community service re financial education… Might be a win-win for banks to meet their requirements and offset some of thecost for the schools win win
These subjects could be taught K-12. 1st graders have smartphones and play computer games, shouldn’t be difficult to incorporate these subjects throughout their education eliminating the “Learn the Test” type of knowledge because you have developed “Life Habits”.
In a previous century, I attended a school that did require a 1 semester course in finance, and a second semester course in “life,” - how to fix yourself a simple meal, sew on a button and hem a pair of pants, do laundry (including cleaning lint traps and cleaning the hose from the dryer, balancing a checkbook, setting up a budget, your credit score, insurance (health, life, car, etc). These were the 2 classes I still use to this day (as opposed to my botany class).
It all needs to be taught! But how it has been being taught when and where it has been taught needs to move away from just talking and testing. We need to be teaching application of concepts. The best way to do that is by doing. Most kids…most people…actually learn and retain knowledge like this by doing not by listening, seeing, and testing. The idea suggested would help teach application although it would need to be fine-tuned a bit.
I didn’t know that existed. It looks like it covers most, if not all, of these subjects above.
I think we need to include more trade and entrepreneurship conversations early on so kids don’t leave high school thinking they MUST go to college to set themselves up to be a high earner in the future. They need to know that college isn’t the only path to future financial stability.
I took a Food Science class and a “Business Services” class that taught us how to fill out checks (and also parliamentary procedure) but these were considered electives. They weren’t mandatory in the early 90s, unfortunately.
Please add mandatory U.S. government and civics courses in American high school. Future generations need to understand the U.S. Constitution and their God-given rights in this nation. Also, include in this course package a mandatory course on the brutal history of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, Communist China, North Korea, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. That course should also explain how communism got repackaged into the leftist woke ideology that infected American institutions today. No American high school graduate should graduate knowing only about fascism in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. I know that the federal government cannot mandate it at their level; however, it can propose this course package as a recommendation to state governments to pass at the state level.
I plan to propose a policy to withdraw funding for public American universities that do nothing to address the leftist bias of its faculty, administration, and staff. This policy will put a stop to left-wing ideological infiltration in American academia and the violent persecution of populist nationalists and conservative faculty, staff, and students on campus.
I wholeheartedly agree! I am a 1989 graduate, back when Home Ec was still a thing. The only thing I recall learning about finances was how to balance a checkbook and I think we followed the stock market for a time.
We weren’t taught how to file taxes, how to pay bills, how to save money for our future, how to invest financially in our future.
That being said, as a young person who didn’t have an income, there was a disconnect to the things I learned. I don’t know what the solution is exactly, I just know that I’ve always felt cheated in this area of my education.
Financial responsibility and accountability should also be mandatory before college students take out student loans. College tuition is outrageous because they have the students set up to take out massive amounts of student loans. Too many are ending up with worthless degrees which will not generate the income needed to repay their debt.
I would highly recommend a Dave Ramsey style program. His program allows anyone to start from where they are at and promotes generosity. I do not represent them…just recommending because it has helped me and my family break free of generational debt slavery. www.ramseysolutions.com.