Teacher Brian Page is passionate about financial literacy.
In this post, he explains how we failed to teach the Class of 2013 about the hard financial realities of life.
They graduate knowing little about income inequality or wealth inequality or the financial consequences of the decisions they make.
“So while they have attended school through a time when our public education system has had it’s funding gutted, European nations have made a dedicated effort to improve financial education. A matter of fact, financial literacy has now been added to the PISA.”
And more:
“So as the student debt bubble has grown to one trillion dollars, guidance departments are overwhelmed and understaffed with students who have never taken a basic personal finance course that introduces resources such as the CFPB’s Paying For College. Most students may not understand the maximum amount of student debt to take on, or that student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Yet we are expecting teenagers to make one of the most important financial decisions of their lives and have failed to provide them with the preparation they deserve to make wise and informed choices.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You are so right with regards to the income distribution crisis. Inflation will literally make it impossible to buy a loaf of bread and the working poor and other people will be criticized for being that way.
Education on this issue is extremely important, because the anti-trust laws were made just for this kind of disparity. In my personal opinion, a portion of these exorbitant incomes should be sent to teachers and education. A kind of luxury tax. As a conservative, I am shocked and saddened by the way some have tried to balance the budget on the needy. Food stamps and Vitter’s amendment come to mind.
One thing I will not accept is letting one person suffer because they are poor, lazy or whatever. We can mitigate these deficits only through education and a bit of well-placed compassion.
The anti-trust laws came to mind when I head someone recalling the Progressive Era on the radio and suggesting we need something like that now.
I agree and the haves do not want to the have nots to have what they do. The nature of the beast, I guess.
I agree, but it’s going to take rioting in the streets to get it. The only reason for the power brokers to cede any of the power they currently have is fear of what will happen if they don’t.
I don’t follow the point of Page’s post. Its main thrust is that (1) too many students are choosing not to attend college; (2) this is bad, because college grads have higher incomes than non-college grads; and (3) the reason that these students are not attending college is because they fail to apply for the financial aid that’s available to them, such as Pell grants. But for most students, financial aid isn’t nearly enough to cover the cost of a university degree. (Pell grants max out at what, $5,000 or $6,000?) So most students who aren’t able to pay for tuition, books, housing, and food in cash are going to be forced into the private student loan market. Some of that can be subsidized, but most of it probably can’t be. So I don’t understand how pushing more students to go to college — particularly those students who think they can’t afford it because they don’t know about things like Pell grants and Stafford loans — will do anything but send more students deeply into debt.
I think the loudest message to graduating seniors concerned should be to attend affordable state schools in the state of their residence. If you live in Michigan, go to UM or MSU or Central or Oakland U. Your friends are all going away to Boston University? Stay behind, and save yourself the $40k tuition and the $200k total debt.
Let’s think now — whose best interests are served by keeping young people in the dark WRT keeping their debt to banks at a minimum level?
Couldn’t wise schools include units about paying for college in social studies or math or other classes? Actually, some do. I’ve seen some schools do this. I think it’s great.
That’s the charter spirit! Say nothing about the systemic decline of state aid to higher education amid endemic tax cuts and loopholes for the rich (who happen to be your funders) and the pushing of an entire generation into debt servitude, and then suggest that it be remedied with a class.
Yes, Joe, it’s just like Oprah and Tony Robbins say: our destinies are up to us, and if we fail it’s our fault (and of course our Bad Public School Teachers) and nobody else’s.
In fairness to Joe, I think that’s basically what Brian Page is calling for in the linked post: classes to teach “financial literacy.”
Yes, FLERP, you understood what I was trying to say. Looking at Mr. Page’s column, and others he has written, it’s clear he is a strong advocate of teaching elementary, middle and high school students about financial literacy. I was praising schools that followed his advice.
Thanks for reminding me why the course I am about to teach for the first time, which I hear my students are not even clear about what it means other than it is required for graduation, really does and really will matter!
Financial literacy is knowledge. But “knowledge is obsolete” according to TED Education Prize winner Sugata Mitra. Let’s just give kids Google and all-purpose critical thinking skills; no knowledge necessary. The 21st Century demands knowledge-free brains.
Nor do kids have political literacy. My evidence for the failure of the public schools in the last two decades is that Obama was elected, twice no less.
As time goes on, however, even fools will be able to see the poisoned dragonflies of his policies returning to sting him. Russia’s humiliation of us over Snowden, Benghazi and the probable permitted assassination of Ambassador Stevens for illegally sending CIA purchased weapons to Syrian rebels via Turkey before congress had authorized it, and now the strenuous cover up of same, the IRS vote suppression of tea party non-profits, the NSA secret metadata collections, Obamacare (with the special eligibility of Congress and it’s staffers for subsidies now even though they make way above the normal income test), artificially low interest rates that permit big banks to profit from high risk investments (stock market) made with money borrowed from the fed, Fast and Furious, NCLB, RTTT, the probable assassination of Seal Team Six (the specific guys that got Binladen) by our own chain of command, domestic drone surveillance, the upcoming efforts to steal the 2014 elections, the perpetual effort to raise taxes on the middle class, and the gross mishandling of the economy so that job creation continues slow, and a few other so-called “phony” scandals. And more to come from the EPA, HHS, and HSA.
Not to mention his own projection of a careless, elitist sense of entitlement in his personal life style on the tax payer’s dime. Where is the outrage? I forgot to mention the Keystone pipeline approval refusal ( cui bono?).
given that radicals, rational (fractional) exponents, logarithms and exponential functions are part of the WA. state Algebra 2 standards, I TRY to get my kids to be able to use the exponent key on any cheap calculator to calculate annualized rates of return.
(having lived through 3 bubbles, I was always amazed at how all kinds of dodgy arithmetic justified “Everyone is buying _____ because it keeps going UP!!!! “)
I also TRY to get them to use logarithms to figure out how long it will take for some stock / house / account to go to zero or a million, given some starting point and some annualized rate of return.
In ’98 & ’99 when I was contract serf at Microsoft, if I had a dollar for every time I heard some “educated” spreadsheet jockey explain how the stock always doubles every 18 months and then splits and how this $30,000 was going to be 700 gazillion in 10 years … whew. Even when they did the calculations accurately, the assumptions were beyond ridiculous …
rmm.
about 5 years ago, before the demise of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, I gave out paper copies of several tables with guided questions – Money Income of Persons over 15, Money income of Households, Table 620 Employment By Industry (2012 STABUS), 301 – Degrees and Awards Earned Below Bachelor’s by Field: 2009, 302 – Bachelor’s Degrees Earned by Field
It figures the Raygun-Cheney-Clinton-Obama crowd flushed the STABUS … who’d want all that kind of info in 1 place?
(ya know … like in 2011 there were appx. 24419000/121084000 households with money income OVER $100k a year – and 65642000 UNDER 50k! or in 2009 there were appx 190656000 over 15 Americans with Money Income UNDER 50k, and appx. 24.092 million with money income above 75k, out of appx. 242.168 million over 15 …)
rmm
Great examples, rmurphy12. Thanks for sharing.
Nor do kids have political literacy…
Did you REALLY expect political literacy to be a component of the GOVERNMENT/PUBLIC SCHOOL system?
Nor do kids have financial literacy…
Did you REALLY expect financial literacy to be a component of the
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL system? Preserving the Economic Order
IS the GOVERNMENT SCHOOL system.
Blissful ignorance can be maintained by pretending the Elite instituted
Schooling as a means to share their wealth. Sooner or later your eyes
can no longer deceive. What do you see now? How’s that Representative/
Democracy working? Hows that Schooling working?
I’d say it’s working as designed, nothing more, nothing less.
Power has always been the true aim, and power demands inequality. Without
inequality you don’t have sufficient leverage to overwhelm the Demos.
Class politics continues as long as “Sheep” are willing to believe what they are told.
The evident contradiction between words and deeds is obscured by illusion.
Schooled herd behavior provides the illusion.