Financial Literacy has been the topic that has been talked about recently of it being taught throughout high schools to help students prepare for when they graduate and it has come to the attention that there are different thoughts and opinions on it. Some say that it’s a good way to help educate the students and others argue that it’s pointless and it doesn’t make a difference if students were to take the course. I believe that students should take the course to gain knowledge for the future.
Throughout high school, we take set courses based on Math, English, History, etc. to learn what we need to know to get through these years and college. Once we graduate, sure we’ll know how to graph a hyperbola question or how to write a rhetorical précis but what we won’t know is the basics of handling money. For example, in source 1, Tara Siegel Bernard from Working Financial Literacy in with the Three R’s states, “Yet we’re expected to make big financial decisions as early as our teens - Should I take on thousands of dollars of student debt? Should I buy a car?..” (Bernard). Knowing that most Americans aren’t able to “correctly” handle money, they still don’t do anything to help us teens, the future of the generation, to properly make financial decisions when we become adults. I think we should make it necessary to make it a requirement to take a financial literacy class before we graduate high school. This would help us tremendously like the other classes we are required to take. Another example comes from Gina Davis from Finance Course Prompts Debate (Source 4), where she sheds light on how in one school, students who wearing taking a financial literacy elective needed to take a pre-test before the class and that all students scored lower than 60%. This demonstrates how little awareness we have towards financial literacy and why students should be required to take a course on it.
Though some believe that student...