Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

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Why should I learn this?

This is the question most kids ask when offered education. If you answer that first, everything else follows.

Start with why. (Thank you Simon Sinek.) Are there meaningful, ongoing benefits to learning how to make specific decisions with your money? Should you care enough to learn the more mundane details like reviewing expenses or filing your own taxes?

I know there are attempts, like showing those log graphs that try to impress upon young minds the long-term value of compound interest. I'm sure those help a few people, but I do wonder if there might be other more impactful concepts.

Personally, I get a great deal of satisfaction out of things like efficiency, self-reliance, and so on, but I don't know if valuing those things can be taught, or just develops organically. Regardless, I think you always need to impress upon students the motivations for their decision-making and try to help them care. The rest can come later.

> Start with why. (Thank you Simon Sinek.) Are there meaningful, ongoing benefits to learning how to make specific decisions with your money?

It's a great approach when the "meaningful, ongoing benefits" start to occur either immediately, or in the near future when you're living a life very, very much like the one you're living today.

The difficulty of doing that within the context of educating 5-18 (+/- 4) years olds is that benefits (and costs) of learning (or not) are far, far down the road, in a life that they can typically not even imagine with any degree of accuracy.

Many high schoolers on the cusp of needing some finanical literacy. They may be starting their first jobs, and making a budget and saving for a rainy day would be good skills. Others are about to borrow for college and financial understanding could help them avoid getting into a lot of debt in order to struggle at a degree that they end up not attaining, or in order to attain a degree that doesn't add up economically. Some may be moving out (voluntarily or not) and need to have an income, find a place an pay rent, pay for food and utilities, etc, with potentially little room for error.

Yes, this is a very general insight, not just for education, but for any presentation: work backwards from what problem you're solving with the material. Then everything makes so much more sense!

> Start with why

This would have done so much for me, especially with the more abstract math classes that made no sense until much later. It would have been good if the math problems even approximated reality. Simple things like adjusting a recipe to a different number of people, applying taxes, calculating interest. Only shop class gave me the satisfaction of doing something concrete.

For me, there was no "aha!" moment in high school, and it made it very difficult to understand why I needed to care.

https://xkcd.com/1050/

Excuse the smugness. Just providing counter perspective.

I know people, this does not help more people to easily understand the topic. But, lot of math like number theory was worked out as a intellectual exercise rather than application based.

Application followed theory. And people theorized for fun.

That can also make topics, abstract and unrelatable.

How is it a counter example?

Things you won't end up using lack any "why" beyond "just in case". The only way you avoid using personal finance skills is if you partner up and completely offload that responsibility onto someone else. Fine, in that case, don't bother learning it!

Hey,

Non native speaker here. I think I conveyed something that I did not mean to convey. I was just saying concentrating on the "why" and having a utiliterean perspective about the topics to learn while useful and help the children to relate, need not be the only criteria.

Cause, lot of things can be a little more abstract and some what removed from exact applications in real world. But, they can still be beautiful. That is what I meant to say. I think I conveyed the exact opposite.

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