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.'"

Comments

Good

[realilskater]

Maybe students will fully understand the ramifications of going deep in to debt to with student loans.

Great Idea

[Etherwalk]

Absolutely. Long overdue.

Re:Also required in Oregon

[vux984]

Thusly, I wonder how politically neutral this implementation is...

personal finances courses tend to be:

how to make a budget
how to balance a checkbook (even though nobody uses them)
how credit card interest works
how car loan interest works
how leasing works
how home mortgages work
how bank interest works (or in today's banks doesn't)

some very introductory stuff on investments (ie what are bonds, gics, stocks, dividends, mutual funds, etc).

And I would hope in today's versions they talk a bit about things like payday loans.

Its pretty practical stuff largely divorced from any economic theory.

I'm not surprised.

[Valdrax]

You know, I count myself firmly as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, but one of the strong suits of conservatism as a philosophy is a belief both in the value of self-reliance and self-responsibility, especially in a financial realm. I have no surprise seeing this come from a red state, and I wish more states would embrace such a curriculum.

It's irresponsible that we don't teach kids how to manage money, and it's a good place to get in their heads that math is useful for something, even if they don't like it. We need a society that values saving and long-term rewards over short-term consumption.

We spend too much time thinking of the other side as "the enemy" because of "wrong" beliefs that don't match our own and not enough time looking seriously at their strengths and how we can embrace those as common values -- places where we need to step up our own game in a bipartisan fashion.

So, good for you, Okies. May this be an example for the rest of us.

Re:I'm not surprised.

[Valdrax]

Don't worry - that sort of thinking will be a quaint anachronism soon. Government dependence is the name of the game in 2014. Then, the dependent people can vote for more benefits for themselves, and continue in a virtuous cycle until America is a one-party nation. The future is going to be awesome!

I know you think you're being cute and funny, but this kind of asinine reductionism (whether sincere or not) is a huge part of the problem. There are some problems for which government -- i.e. the democratically chosen pooling of resources by the people -- is the best or only solution. Where the line lies between the far extremes of pure laissez faire capitalism and state-run socialism is a valid matter for civil debate and disagreement, but this sort of "all or nothing" BS is why America is completely dysfunctional at this point.

Because of people who think that the other side has nothing of value to offer and must be relentlessly mocked at any turn. Who think that purity of thought is a virtue and compromise a deadly sin.

Frankly, a lot of us are sick and tired of it. We need negotiators and diplomats. We need scientists and engineers. We don't need more divas and demagogues and firebrands. No more culture warriors and sound byte artisans.

We need an adult in here.