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Oklahoma Schools Required To Teach Students Personal Finance
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Paula Burkes reports that under legislation passed in 2007, Oklahoma students, effective this May, now must demonstrate an understanding in banking, taxes, investing, loans, insurance, identity theft and eight other areas to graduate. The intent of personal financial literacy education is to inform students how individual choices directly influence occupational goals and future earnings potential. Basic economic concepts of scarcity, choice, opportunity cost, and cost/benefit analysis are interwoven throughout the standards and objectives. 'Oklahoma has some of the strongest standards in the country,' says Amy Lee, executive director of the Oklahoma Council on Economic Education, which lobbied for and helped develop the curriculum. 'Where other states require four or five standards regarding earnings, savings and investing, Oklahoma has 14 standards including three that are state-specific: bankruptcy, the financial impact of gambling and charitable giving.' The law is designed to allow different districts to implement the curriculum in different ways, by offering instruction in various grade levels, or by teaching all the curriculum in a single class or spreading it across several courses. 'The intent of this law was always to graduate students out of high school with a strong foundation in personal financial literacy to reduce the many social ills that come from mismanaging personal finance,' says Jim Murphree. 'I cannot think of anything that we teach that is more relevant.'"
OK put a leash on their teacher's union back in 2001 and since with Right To Work laws, school accountability reforms and other measures. The union has actually lost members as existing members walk away from the union.
Lacking a strong union to dominate the state legislature they've been able to innovate. Otherwise, introducing new curriculum like this would have been precluded by the union because it displaces tenured staff; there are only so many hours of school a day and teaching personal finance takes up time that should be used for gender/race/sexual-orientation sensitivity training, and stuff.
The "Pay It Forward" proposal amounts to an entitlement view on life that everyone is "owed" a right to higher education on someone else's dime. How many students are on educational tracks for occupations that will not pay enough to allow them to re-pay their debt?
Was anyone else prepared for something much worse after reading the words "Oklahoma Schools Required to Teach..."?
I saw "Oklahoma" and "required to teach". I thought it was going to be intelligent design.