Personal Finance. The valuable class where you learn… what, exactly?
That’s the question I’ve been trying to solve for the past two months during second period, where learning about personal finances appears to only be on the schedule every so often. And I’m not the only one struggling here. Any student you ask will tell you that they have yet to learn about phone bills, or car loans, or mortgages, but for some reason they’ve been taught how to calculate the Gross Domestic Product of a country (that’d be the value of all the goods and services they produce in one year, obviously).
This isn’t a rant against any of our teachers, but a jab at the state-mandated curriculum. Personal Finance tends to fall into three categories: completely irrelevant information (such as GDPs); very simple, time-wasting activities, and–every so often–actual useful information.
So first, the irrelevant stuff. Personal Finance classes this year spent several class periods learning about types of economies. There are four, by the way. Traditional, command, free, and mixed. The US is “mixed.” Why, exactly, do I need to know what a traditional economy is? Why do I need to know that people in these economies do the same work their parents did? How will this help me lease a car? This type of information is constantly fed to us, to be memorized and tested on, despite the fact that it is utterly irrelevant to the “personal finances” we’re supposedly learning about.
Then there’s the second category of information: time-wasting activities. This is the stuff we do that, while technically related to the subject at hand, doesn’t actually teach us. For instance, we spent an entire class calculating the cheapest place to buy goldfish. In 10 years, will I sit down and make a spreadsheet to decide if Costco has cheaper snacks than Target? I somehow doubt it. In fact, this entire activity was a waste of time, because teachers didn’t bother to mention that, in the real world, we will buy multiple products at the same store. Knowing that I will save three cents per ounce of Goldfish by going to Giant isn’t going to actually help me make an informed buying decision.
I’m not attempting to say that students won’t leave Personal Finance without knowing more about how to make responsible financial decisions. I’m sure they will. I’ve already learned about the value of saving for retirement, and I can quote a few of my consumer rights that I might otherwise have not known I had. This is why the governor signed into law the requirement that I take this class But this actually useful information is buried under a mountain of useless games, cartoon video clips and mind-numbing worksheets that only sometimes relate to personal finances (Why do I have to calculate the average income of an adult in Germany?!)
I want to make it clear that the Personal Finance teachers at our school are great. Based on my teacher and what my friends say about theirs, they are all friendly people who care about the course they’re teaching. The issue isn’t the teachers, it’s what’s being taught (and not taught).
Given that most students (and many adults) don’t have a clue how to manage their money, this class is an absolute necessity. But if I am going to be legally obligated to take a class, I’d prefer it not to waste my time. That’s not to say I’m not looking for a rigorous class full of difficult financial calculations, but the Personal Finance curriculum needs to teach me what I really need to know in the real world, and not waste my time with irrelevant information and time-wasting activities.
I’d like to leave this class knowing exactly how to pay my taxes. Would that be so hard?