Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#191

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #166

leetcrew wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the median net worth of a US household is $121,411. you have to go down into the bottom quartile to find households with a net worth under $10k. most americans absolutely have enough money to make investments relevant. https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/

I would assume that that ‘net worth’ is mostly caught up in housing, and very much not available for investment.

fair point, although even if the majority of your net worth is tied up in your house, it's worth at least considering whether you would be better off selling or trading down and investing the remainder.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#192

Post by jhanschoo » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #188

GuB-42 wrote: post #175

Generally, school doesn't teach practical things, it teaches the fundamentals for learning practical things later. Finance by itself is not that complicated. If you know the underlying maths, that's the kind of thing you can learn on the spot, at least on a basic level. If you want more than that, you probably should hire an accountant, or it becomes specialized studies. For the rest, I don't know what kids learn in…

>"Generally, school doesn't teach practical things, it teaches the fundamentals for learning practical things later." This is a common belief, but it unfortunately doesn't work that way. "Transfer of learning" as it is known in educational psychology, (similar to 'learning how to learn',) is basically a failure. People have been studying it for over 50 years, and it turns out that students are very bad at taking thin…

I don't think parent comment was talking about transfer learning but prerequisite knowledge: arithmetic, algebra, series manipulation, logarithms, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#193

Post by nickff » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #192

nickff wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Generally, school doesn't teach practical things, it teaches the fundamentals for learning practical things later." This is a common belief, but it unfortunately doesn't work that way. "Transfer of learning" as it is known in educational psychology, (similar to 'learning how to learn',) is basically a failure. People have been studying it for over 50 years, and it turns out that students are very bad at taking thin…

I don't think parent comment was talking about transfer learning but prerequisite knowledge: arithmetic, algebra, series manipulation, logarithms, etc.

An example of transfer of learning would be where you learn some mathematical principle, then apply it in an adjacent field, such as finance or physics. The parent comment was relying on the assumption that this works (well), and it doesn't.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#194

Post by stakkur » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

Much of public school curriculum is politically determined, thanks to changes in the past 30 years or so--No Child Left Behind, Common Core, and other crud has left public ed a mess. So, 'core' classes are all tied to state and federal testing, because testing is tied to funding.

People always have pet subjects they think are 'essential' for public education: Robotics! Computer Science! Coding is the new literacy! Teach kids to balance a checkbook! Learn to use spreadsheets! Start getting college ready in kindergarten! And so on.

Really, the public question is always 'what is education for?' The answers have always been varied since public school began. Today, the answer is largely determined by political money disbursement.

TL;DR: It's all about money ain't a damn thing funny. --Grandmaster Flash

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#195

Post by nostrademons » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #175

Generally, school doesn't teach practical things, it teaches the fundamentals for learning practical things later. Finance by itself is not that complicated. If you know the underlying maths, that's the kind of thing you can learn on the spot, at least on a basic level. If you want more than that, you probably should hire an accountant, or it becomes specialized studies. For the rest, I don't know what kids learn in…

There are fundamentals of finance, too, though. You should know how supply & demand work, how markets work, how interest rates work, how profit & loss work, and how different capital structures (stocks, bonds, etc.) allocate profits to different people.

I don't think it's important for kids to learn about specific financial products like savings accounts, CDs, different categories of stocks, etc. That all changes by the time they get into the working world anyway. But just knowing how debt & compound interest works would save many young adults from mistakes that cost them decades of their life.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#196

Post by stretchwithme » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #175

Generally, school doesn't teach practical things, it teaches the fundamentals for learning practical things later. Finance by itself is not that complicated. If you know the underlying maths, that's the kind of thing you can learn on the spot, at least on a basic level. If you want more than that, you probably should hire an accountant, or it becomes specialized studies. For the rest, I don't know what kids learn in…

I would be happier if kids learned fundamental principles, like the law of supply and demand, rather than some interpretation of historical events.

If history is going to be discussed, it should be more just one view. The Great Depression, for example, is often described as a failure of economic freedom, rather than the failure of the government's myriad interventions.

Knowing only ONE side of the story doesn't necessarily leave kids better prepared to learn, unless it's essentially true (good luck reaching that consensus).

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#197

Post by playingchanges » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 5:01 PM UTC

I believe most high schools (at least in California) have an economics semester that covers a lot of loosely finance related topics. And actually mine had a work experience class that did cover basic personal finance / talked about compound interest.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#198

Post by thotsBgone » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

asciimov wrote: post #160

Two things to consider. 1. The purpose of school: To produce a basic worker who wont question authority and to keep a large segment of the population out of trouble for a majority of the working day (babysitting). School hasn't really changed much since the late industrial revolution with the exception that child labor laws mean more kids stay in and complete school. 2. A typical high school student completes 25 year…

> What are you going to get rid of to open up some time in the kids schedule to teach finance?

Half of the English curriculum now is literary analysis. Split English into a grammar class and a literary analysis class, and let students take finance (or computer science or psychology or ...) instead of literary analysis.

I also don't see why foreign languages or art would be particularly more important than finance.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#199

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

recursive wrote: post #153

leetcrew wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's really not that complicated. step 1: accumulate a buffer of 3-6 months expenses in your checking account step 2: a) identify money that you will not need in the near future. b) accept that you will not beat professionals at picking individual stocks. c) use the money to invest broadly in the market. step 3: in preparation for retirement (or a large, time-sensitive purchase), shift allocation to bonds. if steps 2…

I think your simplified steps 2 and 3 might still be too complicated.

my point is that, once you accept that you can't beat the professionals, there is a very limited set of investments that make sense for most people. you can get optimal returns without understanding much about how the instruments actually work.

there are some hard decisions to make along the way, but they depend more on self-knowledge (what's the minimal lifestyle I can accept? how much risk can I tolerate?) than a technical understanding of investment vehicles.

Re: Ask HN: Why isn’t finance a part of the core curriculum at schools?

#200

Post by thotsBgone » Sat, Oct 24, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

pgwhalen wrote: post #177

forinti wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could teach it as part of maths. I think there's too much algebra in secondary school (and not enough of it in college). Few people are gonna miss matrix multiplication after school.

I may be mistaken, but I think the kids that would benefit most from finance education don’t get to matrix multiplication anyway.

In my school (Canada), the math classes for the smart kids have stuff like matrix multiplication, and for the less ambitious kids there are units on finance.