To be fair, these are very different skill sets. To this date, I’ve yet to have an urgent need to get the area under a curve.
FreeTaxUSA takes care of calculating my taxes. It only tells me well after I have purchased something in telling me what kind of records I should keep if I want to claim that thing for a deduction.
I suspect if they actually did teach personal finance (in all schools), the labour pool would shrink tremendously and there’d be far less consumer purchases.
Probably actually. We had mandatory personal finance to graduate high school, and they gave us one major take away message – don’t spend more than you have. You could take out loans for things of course but your monthly payments plus everything else needed to be less than your monthly take home pay.
My school was a bit special though. It was a public school but it gave students a lot of freedom and was structured to be more like a college experience. My understanding is since then, the hammer has fallen and it’s become more “traditional”
Honestly, there should be a yearly class like english, math and science for “general education”. Like how to do taxes, basic first aid, how to apply for jobs/make a resume, what to expect when you rent an apartment, how and when you should seek therapy (and what it’s like), how to manage stress in a healthy manner, and very basic cooking.
I’m betting it’s not implemented because it’s incredibly hard to standardize and test this kind of stuff. But a general ed class would be nice for these types of things that don’t easily fit into another class.
Calculus is useful, but it’s significantly less useful in an average person’s daily life than knowing why their resume is getting instantly tossed in the trash at every single place they apply to.
The biggest problem today (and I suspect even when you and I were in school) is that education is in the shitter for a good segment of the population.
In theory, school should be teaching how to learn, which includes skills like where to go if you need help with something, critical thinking, how to use public resources, etc. To a large extent, most of this I learned in college, not in high school.
My middle/high school was more concerned on passing exams than in actual teaching. And, based on articles I read today, schools are more concerns about making sure “woke doesn’t get taught” than in actually educating students.
FUN FACT, the financial body in your government does your taxes for you every year, they use these numbers to see if you messed up, or if there was anything that they were not aware of that you put in your taxes, that they need to adjust for.
if you have nothing to claim outside of normal employment income, in many places, you can sign your tax return and send it in blank, and they’ll just do everything for you.
To be fair, these are very different skill sets. To this date, I’ve yet to have an urgent need to get the area under a curve.
FreeTaxUSA takes care of calculating my taxes. It only tells me well after I have purchased something in telling me what kind of records I should keep if I want to claim that thing for a deduction.
I could have used the latter more than calculus.
They really do ought to teach economics as part of compulsory education
Good schools do.
Privileged schools do. Don’t want the plebs letting daylight in upon the magic that is used to fuck them.
You’d figure if capitalism is as great and infallible as they say it is, they’d want to teach everyone all the details in school.
Or rather, I’d say by not teaching you how to capitalism they’re giving you the fish instead of teaching you how to fish, letting you get screwed over
I suspect if they actually did teach personal finance (in all schools), the labour pool would shrink tremendously and there’d be far less consumer purchases.
Probably actually. We had mandatory personal finance to graduate high school, and they gave us one major take away message – don’t spend more than you have. You could take out loans for things of course but your monthly payments plus everything else needed to be less than your monthly take home pay.
My school was a bit special though. It was a public school but it gave students a lot of freedom and was structured to be more like a college experience. My understanding is since then, the hammer has fallen and it’s become more “traditional”
They used to
Honestly, there should be a yearly class like english, math and science for “general education”. Like how to do taxes, basic first aid, how to apply for jobs/make a resume, what to expect when you rent an apartment, how and when you should seek therapy (and what it’s like), how to manage stress in a healthy manner, and very basic cooking.
I’m betting it’s not implemented because it’s incredibly hard to standardize and test this kind of stuff. But a general ed class would be nice for these types of things that don’t easily fit into another class.
Calculus is useful, but it’s significantly less useful in an average person’s daily life than knowing why their resume is getting instantly tossed in the trash at every single place they apply to.
The biggest problem today (and I suspect even when you and I were in school) is that education is in the shitter for a good segment of the population.
In theory, school should be teaching how to learn, which includes skills like where to go if you need help with something, critical thinking, how to use public resources, etc. To a large extent, most of this I learned in college, not in high school.
My middle/high school was more concerned on passing exams than in actual teaching. And, based on articles I read today, schools are more concerns about making sure “woke doesn’t get taught” than in actually educating students.
And if we’re being extra honest, the government should just tell us how much we owe each year. Because they know.
They don’t., even if it’s just that different levels of govt don’t talk to each other
FUN FACT, the financial body in your government does your taxes for you every year, they use these numbers to see if you messed up, or if there was anything that they were not aware of that you put in your taxes, that they need to adjust for.
if you have nothing to claim outside of normal employment income, in many places, you can sign your tax return and send it in blank, and they’ll just do everything for you.