The following is an article “Financial Education In School”
by Marc Primo.
For generations, we have been ignoring finance as part of our school curriculum. It has been a norm to leave this branch of study as a responsibility of the parents. The problem is parents either don’t have the time or don't know what they are doing either. Schools ignoring personal finance lessons is probably the main reason we have an entire generation drowning in debt.
Even more disturbing, the lack of information and financial skill make our young citizens easy targets for the raging wave of ads and marketing pressuring them to take out credit cards personal loans and other financial products that promise instant gratification and low risk.
With no structure in place to learn about money and how to handle it, kids are bombarded with celebrity lifestyles, and social media celebrities pushing the latest and greatest product … and increasing their anxiety to consume more and more.
The pressure to appear wealthy and living a luxurious life leads them to take out store cards and rack up debt to acquire designer clothes and gear. With little to no understanding on how credit cards work and how late payments may affect their credit scores.
A study by NGPF (Next Generation Personal Finance) shows:
-Only 16.4% of U.S. students are required to take a personal finance course to graduate high school.
-Only 5 states have a personal finance requirement: Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.
-5.5% of low-income schools (outside of mandate states) have personal finance as a requirement.
The current educational system works great for banks and big corporations that benefit from mass consumerism and keeping the population in constant debt. But is this what we want for our children? Our future generations?
A better financial education is a necessity.
Parents can be super effective in creating change in their schools, so if you find yourself in a similar situation go to your school and pressure teachers other parents students anyone that would listen about the subject to integrate financial education into the mandatory curriculum.
Parents should ask financial literacy to be a required class, your children's future depends on it. In the meantime, there are ways to take matters into your own hands. There are resources online built to help, econedlink.org offers resources for parents and educators in an interactive way. Take action now and avoid a life of unnecessary stress and financial woes.