• Impound4017@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    For what it’s worth, as someone who graduated highschool in Utah (one of the shittest US states in terms of funding and education) I learned the recorder in Elementary school and was required to take a financial literacy class in highschool to graduate. True, that class taught now-useless skills like how to write a check, but it also taught me about 401Ks/Roth IRAs, how to file taxes, managing credit scores and lines of credit, mortgages and debt, budgeting, and a bunch of other skills besides. I’m not sure how standard this is across the US, but I can’t imagine it’s too uncommon given that it was a shitty small town high school in a deep red state. Hell, I’ve seen memes like this posted by people who graduated in my year and it always perplexes me because I know for a fact they had to take that class.

    • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      The number of times I have to explain to people here in California that are my age that they did in fact take financial literacy, or that they were in fact taught skills like what to do during pregnancy is unfortunately too high. Tons of people like to talk about what schools need without realizing that it has it and they just didn’t pay attention.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Tons of people like to talk about what schools need without realizing that it has it and they just didn’t pay attention.

        A semester class that happened thirty years ago probably doesn’t stick out in your memory beside the 20 years of Facebook memes pounding your brain like a mini gun.

        A lot of people just repeat things uncritically because they’ve been listening to the crap on the radio or the Joe Rogan podcast or whatever for so long that it’s drowned the native memories out.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Totally agreed. I have often thought the same thing when people claim that schools need to teach critical thinking skills. Mine did.

    • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      At my shitty red state high school financial literacy was a “life skill class” and only meant for those not looking to attend college.

      • Impound4017@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        Wild. That seems incredibly stupid, but incredibly stupid is very on-brand for the US education system lmao.

        I’ll take that to mean my experience was very much not standard, then.

    • Switorik@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      I had math, history, science, and English class with Spanish or French (one foreign language). None of those taught me anything as useful as your class.