“We need a mandatory class in high school for all students that teaches basic finance and life skills.”
In my thirty years as an educator, I’ve heard many suggestions from people outside education about what “schools should really be doing.” Ideas range from personal finance to basic household maintenance to interpersonal communication and letter writing. It surprises me how many people are upset that “kids today can’t change a tire or balance their checkbook anymore.” I smile and nod politely as I struggle to remember where my checkbook even is or whether I’ve changed a tire since I was about sixteen.
Sometimes these concerns rise to the legislative and policy-making level, as in Oklahoma which last year proposed a law requiring all high schools to teach a class called “Adulting 101.” Yes, the term adult has now become a verb, and apparently there’s a curriculum that will teach everything a person needs to do to become a licensed practicing adult. The proposed class covered all manner of useful life skills from finance to home repair, and it pledged to teach young people all the soft skills they will need to be successful adults.
Granted, there is value in teaching the basics of personal finance, especially for young people going off to college or entering the workforce. My daughter was genuinely shocked when we received the long-term payments for her college loan offer recently. “How is it even possible?” she reasonably wondered, that people end up paying so much in interest to borrow money. And she’s an honors student who has taken AP micro and macro economics. When the theoretical becomes personal, and young people face the prospect of incurring five and six-figure debt by the time they’re twenty-years old, the intricacies of high finance become all too real.
That said, no high school class will magically prepare students for all the challenges they will face in their adult lives. Schools could devote a semester or a year to teach teenagers about variable interest rates and escrow, about compound interest and mortgage deductions, about all the byzantine intricacies of their credit card agreements. But that would be as big a waste of time as teaching all kids to change a tire or install a dishwasher. In reality, no one will remember those details years later, any more than they remember the plot of the Great Gatsby, the dates of major battles in all of America’s wars, or the countless formulas from algebra and physics class. When a consumer takes out a loan to buy a house or a car, they want to know and understand one thing – what’s the monthly payment.
People believe students need a financial literacy class so they can understand the economy and make wise decisions about credit and interest rates and risk. Yet, wasn’t the housing and subprime crash of 2008 fueled by people who knew finance better than anyone? They still made bad decisions. Studying government for a semester doesn't make people better citizens, nor does a couple years of world language make people fluent. And no one learns to change their oil anymore because they don’t need to. In fact, with computerized cars and hybrid-electric models, it’s almost impossible for car owners to tinker with the engine anymore.
For as long as schools have existed, students have inevitably asked, “When am I going to use this?” For most content, the answer is likely never. School is not simply a utilitarian training course of useful skills that barely require a twenty-minute tutorial, much less a semester class. Few of us ever use much of the information we encountered in twelve years of public school. But we all use the well-developed brains and temperaments that were cultivated during the long process of growing up and going to school.
A classical liberal arts education, upon which modern school systems are grounded, is in fact Life 101. It’s about working with people, meeting responsibilities, opening the mind to new ideas, learning foundational theories and skills. Requiring a class like “Life 101” to teach check balancing and tire changing is based on the naive belief that education is simply utilitarian, practical, and indelible. And expecting that once we learn something we never forget it is completely unrealistic. So, the next time someone suggests young people need a class in Life Skills 101, remind them we already have one. It’s called the K12 education system and simply growing up.
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