I have heard that if Ford likes your idea and you make a compelling case things happen. We all know the squeaky wheels are getting the grease in Ontario; especially if it has deep pockets too!
“… but it’s also just understanding how money works so we can advocate for policies that make sense,” she said.
Great. Except there’s disagreement over how money works even among academics. And what understanding you subscribe to has real political implications. For example different understanding of money is used to drive pro austerity vs anti austerity policies.
In addition, the way money works in practical, personal terms, is not how it works in government terms and this understanding is often used to promote austerity policies that are harmful for most individuals.
Also as much as we can argue over certain shades of blue-green being more blue or more green the Conservatives are out here trying to tell us that pure red should also be included in the discussion. We have so many good options with their own pros and cons and they’re just going for the objectively bad stuff.
Like, none of their financial policy works. The math doesn’t even add up at surface level. From buck-a-beer, to giving people a refund for plate renewals that ultimately is nothing, to deliberately misrepresenting how the carbon tax works none of it works with even the slightest bit of questioning. They just can’t stop failing no matter how many times real academics and qualified activist groups plead with them to listen.
It’s almost like making things better for the vast majority of people isn’t their goal…
It isn’t their goal to make things better for most people. Their goal is to make things better for them and their friends
Wow, really appreciate these points. I was mostly thinking about teaching people how to budget, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century.
It seems kind of ok, everyone agrees that they should be teaching some finance basics. I guess I would.jave preferred to see what outcomes this has had in other places (rather than just trying random experiments on our students). It’d be nice to see if Doug could pass this test himself.
I’m in favour of teaching financial basics but, I think, the last thing these kids need is another test to take to graduate. Way back in the olden days of the 1980s there was a high school course that taught things like budgeting and investing and the power of compound interest. I forget what is was called - Consumer something or other
By circa 1990, I believe the course was called Life Skills or something of that ilk, and was not mandatory. (I didn’t take it, although it would have been one hell of a lot more useful than PhysEd, I’m sure.) We did cover some related material in math classes at various points.
Really, you coulld put this in elementary schools—none of it needs more than fourth-grade math. Basic arithmetic operations, percentages, decimal points.
Between Math, English, and an Accounting elective I took, I think I learned at least as much as most students will be learning with this.
English teaches you to read the contracts…with a deep reading. It teaches you to infer the intentions of the writer based on the word they use. It generally teaches you to look at multiple sources, or at the same source from multiple perspectives, too. Don’t sign anything you haven’t made an effort to read.
Even Grade 9 math makes you over qualified to calculate the vast majority of what you’d need in most of your life. After Grade 9, you’re just getting more experience turning situations into math and practicing how to solve different problems with different tools. A Statistics module would help frame a lot of the more “complex” problems we see in our daily lives…but we already have the math skills to solve most of them by Grade 9.
They’ve been putting the tools we need into our toolboxes for at least decades by now. I don’t blame the education system for people who miss basic mathematical/reading principles (unless they’re really old or something).
- Credit card debt and the cardholder agreements
- Getting screwed by banks (except where banks do weird things like messing with transaction orders)
- Interest rates and financing things, especially choosing a low monthly rate and thinking you’re saving money rather than paying upfront
- Gambling
It’d be nice if this class would help students get out of those kinds of problems. Unless it’s a damn good curriculum though, I think it’ll end up like English and Math…kids don’t pay attention because they don’t know how to use the skills they’re being taught. (Which is a problem itself, but I don’t think a new class is necessarily the answer)
You’re onto something here. The missing piece is people are forgetting knowledge is transferable and they keep putting all these things into boxes that have to be checked off without looking at the big picture. Kids can grasp concepts.
Teachers are now being expected to teach our children everything under the sun in a very pointed way. Parents are being absolved of all responsibility to teach them anything or to reinforce concepts introduced at school. Take your kids grocery shopping. Tell them how much money there is in the food budget and let them be part of the process. This is the way.
