As early graduation looms near and some of us are preparing ourselves to be thrust out into the world of adulthood, some more willingly than others, I can’t help but wonder why essential life skills like how to negotiate a job offer or rent an apartment weren’t a part of my public or private education.
Attempts were made at my high school to educate us about the economy, but instead of learning about mortgages, taxes, and investments, we learned about the intersecting slopes of supply and demand.
Elective classes were offered on accounting and personal finance, but for someone who had a full schedule of honors and AP classes in the required fields of science and the humanities, as well as a part-time job after school, these electives were difficult to fit in.
At 16 years old, I was already participating in a working world of which I had only a basic understanding.
I knew I was getting paid above minimum wage, so I felt like I had very little reason to complain.
Little did I know that multiple retail companies I would work for in the future would be breaking OSHA guidelines.
When I started doing my taxes, and still to this day, I rely on the internet to provide me with the correct information and hope the IRS skips over my puny income.
Our education system gives students little opportunity, if any, to understand and interact with the world of employment, property, and taxes before it is absolutely necessary the moment we step down from the stage at graduation with a flimsy piece of paper in hand.
General requirements for both high school and undergrad programs include math, science, history, english, and a host of other related topics, but rarely require students to learn the most practical and basic knowledge necessary for our personal success, growth, and financial well being.
Whenever I think about the relevance of the education I’ve been given, I always remember one freshman year class in honors geometry with a teacher who always made an attempt to show us how the skills we were learning could be applied in our lives.
He also understood that sometimes they could not.
One day, we were learning about some more complex topic related to circumference, and he told us that this would be useful in our lives if we ever found a broken plate on the side of the road and were just dying to know how it originally fit together.
He understood that some things were irrelevant to practicality.
I’m not debating the relevance of learning about the tragic history of violence and oppression in the world in an effort to prevent it in the future, the validity of learning about the functioning of the human body to maintain our health, or even the necessity of learning how to do basic math so we don’t have to be completely dependent on machines.
I do recognize the privilege to be granted such an education.
I am questioning how it is possible that learning how to get and pay back a loan, how to rent an apartment, and how to negotiate a successful job offer are not considered important enough to be included in a list of general requirements.
[I]nstead of learning about mortgages, taxes, and investments, we learned about the intersecting slopes of supply and demand.
Arguments could be made that these are basic life skills that your parents or other trusted adults should be teaching you or that they are simply things you must learn through trial and error.
Consider someone who grows up with a single parent who barely has enough time to make a sufficient income to keep a roof over their child’s head, let alone teach that child how to do it themselves.
Consider the hardworking individual who is getting ready to have a relaxing retirement after a long and successful career only to find out they have barely enough money saved to last them five years out of work.
Consider the many young people who wind up in crippling debt and financial turmoil after college because they can’t effectively navigate their student loans.
With requirements and increased availability for classes like personal finance, career development, and the logistics of having a roof over head that could teach us how to do taxes, invest money wisely, manage and pay back loans, negotiate job offers and raises, rent and buy apartments and homes, and take out a mortgage, among an amalgamation of other life skills, we could significantly increase overall personal and financial well being.
In a society where being an informed citizen is of the utmost importance for the benefit of a government for the people, being informed in career and financial success should be viewed as one of the most significant factors to a healthy economy.
Therefore these concepts should be treated as a requirement in schools around the country.