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It may have been taught but has it been mandatory?
I don't know if my high school had accounting or not. They just put me in what they defined as college prep and accounting was not in it. I checked their website a few years ago and they do have accounting now. But what would the effect on poverty be if accounting had been mandatory since 1960?
Nobody knows!
All of this talk about education seems to emphasize JOBS even more than it did back in the day. But even if they get jobs they must decide what to do with their income. So what sense does it make to go on about jobs if they don't know what to do with money afterward?
So we have had decades of consumer slavery. People going into debt for junk designed to become obsolete. Our brilliant economists cannot specify what consumers have lost in depreciation every year since 1960. Economists can't do accounting either.
This is funny after all these decades.
Why Americans have come to worship their own ignorance
An accounting class may not be the best way to teach financial literacy. Unless you plan to start your own business, you don't need to know double entry bookkeeping.
Certainly, financial literacy is necessary, but you do not have to have an accounting course to learn that. Aside from that there are problems with teaching these kinds of things in high school. What courses will you drop to make this one mandatory?
Note that Oklahoma just passed a law to require high school students to pass a financial literacy standard to graduate.
Some school districts in Oklahoma are embedding personal finance modules into math, science, home economics and other subjects throughout the school year instead of having a dedicated financial literacy or personal finance class. "Financial literacy should be weaved into many subjects throughout all school years," says Katie Stokes, a certified financial planner and director of financial planning at J.E. Wilson Advisors.
"Like most life skills, learning financial literacy is cumulative," says Stokes. "You can't expect a high school student to take a semester-long course in economics and come out financially literate. Literacy is knowledge, but without real-world application, that knowledge is stale and not committed to long-term memory."
What courses will you drop to make this one mandatory?
What is so useful about English literature. The Mayor of Casterbridge? The Scarlet Letter? The Catcher in the Rye? Fahrenheit 451 is science fiction but I never recommend it. Bradbury was literary not sci/tech.
What is so useful about English literature. The Mayor of Casterbridge? The Scarlet Letter? The Catcher in the Rye? Fahrenheit 451 is science fiction but I never recommend it. Bradbury was literary not sci/tech.
psik
Literature in formal education is all about reading for comprehension, critical thought, and discussion of ideas. The antidote to Fox News, pretty much.
You can train a monkey to do math. I remember as an undergrad taking a modern physics course. Quantum mechanics. Relativity. Things that are very removed from the Newtonian physics world I live in. I had the probability theory math training to "do the math" for the quantum mechanics part and get an A in the course but I never was able to comprehend the system I was modeling mathematically. It's probably the most useful undergrad course I ever took because I learned that there are ideas out there that I can't easily grasp.
Education is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to challenge you. If you're any good, it's not just rote memorization. It's teaching critical thought and analysis. The problem with US K-12 is that it has been corrupted to teach to the low-middle. When I was doing K-12 in the 1960's and 1970's, my school system culled the top 10% to 15% of the class and put them in accelerated classes. It did a pretty good job of simulating the education you'd get at a high end prep school. That program was killed a few years after I went through it in the name of political correctness. The only way you can get that kind of education these days is through a high end private school or to move to a really wealthy town stuffed full of tiger parents. The really bright middle class kid is denied the opportunity. Bill Gates has been trying to change that. There are now a relative handful of competitive entrance public schools that cater to bright, motivated children. It's a small start but that really has to spread to every city & town in the country.
Literature in formal education is all about reading for comprehension, critical thought, and discussion of ideas. The antidote to Fox News, pretty much.
While I agree in concept, teaching "critical thought" often turns into parroting back what the teacher believes about the story. Agree with the teacher = A. Disagree = C. The net result is rather than learning critical thought and challenging the teacher, students learn that going along with the popular thought gets the best grade.
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Education is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to challenge you. If you're any good, it's not just rote memorization. It's teaching critical thought and analysis. The problem with US K-12 is that it has been corrupted to teach to the low-middle. When I was doing K-12 in the 1960's and 1970's, my school system culled the top 10% to 15% of the class and put them in accelerated classes. It did a pretty good job of simulating the education you'd get at a high end prep school. That program was killed a few years after I went through it in the name of political correctness. The only way you can get that kind of education these days is through a high end private school or to move to a really wealthy town stuffed full of tiger parents. The really bright middle class kid is denied the opportunity. Bill Gates has been trying to change that. There are now a relative handful of competitive entrance public schools that cater to bright, motivated children. It's a small start but that really has to spread to every city & town in the country.
This is to me one of the most critical failings of schools -- letting the top students down with a "they'll get it on their own" attitude while putting most effort into the middle and lower performing students. It's an important and uncomfortable truth and I usually get flamed here on CD by supporters of the politically correct.
............. The really bright middle class kid is denied the opportunity. Bill Gates has been trying to change that. There are now a relative handful of competitive entrance public schools that cater to bright, motivated children. It's a small start but that really has to spread to every city & town in the country.
You may think that's what Gates is doing but on the ground his money is going into low-performing schools where lower ability kids are being encouraged to take classes beyond their abilities. But the schools have really nice computers and programs (especially form Pearson Education).
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnff
This is to me one of the most critical failings of schools -- letting the top students down with a "they'll get it on their own" attitude while putting most effort into the middle and lower performing students. It's an important and uncomfortable truth and I usually get flamed here on CD by supporters of the politically correct.
I'm going to correct you a bit. It's not even the middle kids who've been targeted but the lowest performing. In every single education initiative over the last 30 years. That's who teachers have to, are required by administrative fiat to, concentrate on-not the middle, certainly not the higher, but the lowest.
[quote=nana053;47650095]An accounting class may not be the best way to teach financial literacy. Unless you plan to start your own business, you don't need to know double entry bookkeeping.
Certainly, financial literacy is necessary, but you do not have to have an accounting course to learn that. Aside from that there are problems with teaching these kinds of things in high school. What courses will you drop to make this one mandatory?
Note that Oklahoma just passed a law to require high school students to pass a financial literacy standard to graduate.
An accounting class may not be the best way to teach financial literacy. Unless you plan to start your own business, you don't need to know double entry bookkeeping.
Certainly, financial literacy is necessary, but you do not have to have an accounting course to learn that. Aside from that there are problems with teaching these kinds of things in high school. What courses will you drop to make this one mandatory?
Note that Oklahoma just passed a law to require high school students to pass a financial literacy standard to graduate.
But then there are books that cost $100 but don't specify the basic accounting equation until page 48. Education is often the watering down and dribbling out of information with the implication that the student is being given a great opportunity.
A good reading list might make education too cheap. But a society where too many people know too much would have peculiar effects on supply and demand. What would the economy be like if accounting had been mandatory since 1960? Nobody Knows! But economists don't suggest that option. We must not do something that makes economists look stupid.
And where is discussion of planned obsolescence in cars which results in depreciation losses by consumers? Sylvia Porter had that in her Money Book in the 1980s. Our educational system tries to produce worker/consumers whose thinking is about 30 years out of date.
Our Heavy Economists can't tell us the annual consumer losses on depreciation of automobiles. Going into debt for more under engineered junk is Economic Growth.
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