Hacker News Reader

Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Secondary education typically includes some elective classes or even study hall periods. These suggested classes can even be a single semester, and may already be offered as electives. In fact, I took a 1 semester personal finance class in high school.

I strongly support adding personal finance and logic (philosophy of arguement) courses to the core curriculum.

View on HN

Financial education could begin at the grade school level and be rolled into math class as a practical application of concepts being taught. That could continue well into algebra 1 & 2. At a high school level you could address more complex aspects of finance as part of history and social sciences. We shouldn’t ever be teaching one subject at the expense of another, they’re all connected.

That is not a good idea. Focus on one topic at a time. Otherwise you will have a half baked understanding of both. It is probably great for Hacker News types who love STEM. For most children, having to simultaneously learn multiple things in class will not be viable.

I disagree—I think that math being so abstract rather than taught with extremely practical applications is why it feels so out of reach for many.

As someone who did extremely poorly in math at school until I found practical applications of it in programming I can tell you that for a part of the population (probably a large part considering how many other people don’t do well in math) it helps a lot to see how it applies to the real world and it provides more motivation to pursue the topic. Money is something everyone can relate to and it makes a lot of basic mathematical concepts much more concrete. Without looking it up I’d bet a lot of early development in mathematics was motivated by its application to money and management of quantities of goods, why shy away from history that makes the topic more interesting and relatable?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com