By: Weston Katula
In today’s society the average american is brought up with the expectation that one day they will graduate high school, earn a degree, and work a 9-5 job. This is currently the social norm and one of the reasons linked to this problem is our country’s current education system. The big question teens always ask is “how will this help me in the real world”, the teacher usually responding with the simple answer, if you’d like to pass high school or not. Obviously, one day we will all need to solve an algebraic equation, know why little jimmy only has 6 apples, write a book report based off of spark notes, or have the table of elements memorized. But knowing how to do taxes, save money, invest, and overall manage money will not have any impact on one’s future… said nobody. Yet we still manage to have high standards when it comes to having a high GPA, scoring good on the ACT so that these teens can go to a college that won’t be paid off until they retire.
The picture above posted by CNBC, for one shows that only ONE-FOURTH job seekers have a second source of income! Many people expect to gain wealth by moving up the work chain and receiving a higher income, but according to Jim Wang of WalletHack “On average millionaires have seven sources of income.” But the education system today is teaching us and developing students to find a field or subject they excel in and pursue a career. Other forms of income, the most popular way of income being passive include investing money into stocks, real estate, mutual funds, retirement plans, and most of this requires saving money. School main goal is to give you skills to help with college and college only helps with getting a certain degree, so does that make it parents jobs to teach all life lessons, and the financial part of life?
Just imagine a world where everyone has basic financial knowledge and life skills, now of course other things would be applicable such as communication and dealing with real life problems. SImply being able to understand the importance of having a steady income and possibly even more than one only make life easier. According to Stephen Guise author of Mini Habits, “In 2011, 1.5 million, or 53.6% of college grads under age 25 were out of work or underemployed.” Obviously some may say this is because everybody is waiting for the perfect job or look for higher pay, when it’s more likely that many of these kids aren’t as privileged to be financially ready for the real world.
Other benefits of teaching the importance of the financial side of life with help improve poverty. Poverty being seen as an unsolvable problem, which leads to giving away taxpayer dollars which could be contributed to other programs such as education. Today their is around 1.06 trillion dollars towards welfare now of course there are many other parts to welfare but a major one is poverty. Focusing on incorporating new classes and focusing on the real world with the financial aspect is a must we need in our future education system.
Additional links
https://stephenguise.com/how-school-trains-us-to-fail-in-the-real-world/
https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-subjects-mandatory-arent/
https://medium.com/s/story/how-american-schools-educate-us-to-fail-3c2d99adfe00
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/30/most-employees-are-missing-out-on-one-way-to-get-rich.html
I would agree with you, I do believe as well that we live in a broken systeme, I feel like within the school systems, especially in high school that we are not learning enough skills that we will be needing after high school is over. Things like how to save money and how to properly start your life after, but within high school we learn things that we will mostly never use after high school, I believe that this should change for the better I feel like there should be more life skills need within high school.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we are expected to graduate high school, get a degree, and have a financially stable job, but what would be the better outcome? Most well paid jobs tend to require some type of qualification for it in order to ensure that the person knows that they are educated in that field. I personally believe that a college degree is necessary for when hiring someone (depending on the job). They do not want some person applying for a job that says they can program a computer when in hindsight, they just know how to go on google. They want to find someone who is capable and educated enough for the job. High school just broadens the horizon in all the possible fields someone can choose to go into for when they go into college.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that some courses we are forced to take as highschoolers do not address our interests or do not give us skills we can use in the future. However, the school system is often changing and while we still have some requirements we don't like, we are offered many different alternatives at PHS. For example, students can apply for Insight or the Dual Enrollment Academy. This allows you to get out of many classes you don't want to take. Also, more and more students are beginning to take online courses because they do not learn well sitting in a classroom. This allows us to have freedom in our education and take courses that spark are interests in different careers for the future. Although you may not approve of the system now, I do believe things are beginning to change for the better.
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ReplyDeleteI loved your introduction, it was very easy to follow and set up your post really well. I agree that financial literacy and education is probably one of the most important skills that you will need to be taught in your lifetime. I don’t think that that people really understand that the demand for such skills is so high and many people aren’t being provided with the education of finance. I agree that if more people were financially literate that society would heavily benefit from it.
While many of the statistics you used, including the number of young college graduates without a job, were interesting and helped your post, there were other parts that didn't include as much evidence. At the very end, you identify the problems you have with welfare, and you identify additional financial schooling as a solution to poverty, but do not provide any evidence as to how these additional classes would decrease poverty. Overall, I think this kind of evidence is something that you could have included more of in your post. You include lots of statistics about what you believe is the problem, but your claims as to how these problems could be solved would benefit from additional evidence.
ReplyDeleteI agree that school schools be teaching us more life skills so that we can exceed more in college and in real life jobs that we will have for the rest of our lives. I think we need to learn more financial skills such as paying taxes, more about the economy and more about the types of jobs. However I do think that school gives us important social skills that are critical when going for a job interview. School gives us interpersonal skills that we wouldn't necessarily have if we were home schooled. All of the skills we learn in school benefit us for college but we are still lacking many that will make us more successful after college.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with you as in primary and secondary school we are taught general non needed skills such as high levels of math which involve things that will never be seen again by the learner. In some cases it may be used in the future, but I believe that the student should have a choice on what they chose to learn in order to lead them into the right successful path in the future. Something that is also unseen and unheard of in school is a decent financial education that could be applied in the future. Most students go off to college able to say that they passed econ, or personal finance, when truthfully their outcome from that class was minimal. Your financial IQ is the most important mind aspect to succeed in the future.
ReplyDeleteYour opinion on this is interesting. I agree there should be a larger emphasis in school on real world skills like money or time management and a larger connection with what you learn to what skills you need later in life. However if we are not taught some things we will not use in our future how will we know what we truly want to do? Additionally, the purpose of school is to educate us so we become well rounded individuals because whether we use the specific information or not it can still be useful in some ways. If we are only educated on a subject we enjoy we will not be able to think in a variety of ways and may have less perspective than someone who is well versed in many subject areas.
ReplyDeleteI agree that financial literacy is a problem, in particular that less individuals are saving or investing money. I agree that education systems could do more for this real world preparation but I also come from the standpoint that financial success will only be attained by the majority of the population through individualist methods rather than collectivist methods. A capitalist society runs more efficiently than socialist systems because people make different financial choices and this benefits some and hurts some. There is competition and incentive to be financially literate. If people are not taking the initiative to learn about investing or saving themselves, why should we help them when they are reaping the losses from their own actions? If you make bad choices you get bad results. People who have financial literacy probably did so because of taking initiative to learn about it themselves. I think when more people believe that greatly investments improve their quality of life, then they will start investing and looking at ways to diversify their income.
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