During my days as a financial advisor, a concern I heard quite often was the lack of financial literacy education in our K-12 schools. The comments ranged from students being unable to balance a check book to students not realizing the importance of considering the future implications of short term financial decisions. The Indiana legislature has added requirements for school corporations to provide Personal Financial Responsibility Instruction. This blog will look at the requirements, and eventually provide assistance to school corporations and teachers in providing adequate instruction to fulfill the requirements. To begin, here are a few questions to consider. What should Indiana school corporations role be in teaching personal financial responsibility? Are current teachers prepared to teach this topic? What type of resources are required to assist teachers in fulfilling this educational requirement? What questions can you add to continue this discussion?
I think that this is a great idea for a blog subject. Looking at my own schooling, the largest financial-minded lesson we did was exchange city in elementary school, which simulated getting a job, paying taxes, and spending using checks. It was memorable, but didn’t really get into anything complicated. Reflecting on this, I think that students could benefit from financial classes that go more in-depth as students get older. It could be tied into the economics classes that most students are required to take for graduation. Teachers may have to take classes as part of further education to prepare for the additional class, but they could also partner with local financial groups to run presentations. Another option would be to do optional before or after school meetings/classes. This was something that Zionsville high school did as part of an economics club series. My main question with this is how extensive does the potential program need to be?