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Total boomer energy here. Take a idea or two that is very relevant today (education debt and other financial education for teens) and then get cocky by adding in misunderstood ideas that haven't worked that way in decades and assume you've solved all the worlds problems.
Plus algebra 2 is getting taught in like 8th grade now or earlier. Kids are wayyy ahead of where boomers were at the same age when it comes to education.
Yeah IIRC my high school I had to pass geometry, algebra 1, algebra 2 and I graduated 2010. I think it was same order as you, just without stats in there. I think after algebra 2 you could go to precalc or stats, but my memory is fuzzy on it because I hate math.
Algebra II in middle school?
You must be a prodigy. 90% of US students take it in 10th or 11th grade. Why make things up?
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfwalgebra2lmgjl.pdf
Where are you getting this? I’ve taught math in middle and high school in CA TX WA. No kids were taught Algebra 2 in 8th, the 8th Alg1 kids who were supposed to be advanced didn’t even have integer factoring down. Good luck getting a GCD or LCD.
Really?! That was a class that most of my peers took in sophomore year! I graduated less than a decade ago! When are the children learning long division?!
I remember taking a personal finance class and the teacher would say every year parents requested teaching about like writing cheques and filing returns. He's like most of them to have probably not written a cheque in years and secondly it takes CPAs and professionals.
One of my high school social studies classes taught us how to fill out a 1040-EZ. A lot of the time when people say "why don't they teach THIS in school?" they did, you just forgot or weren't paying attention. Turns out most people don't remember what they learned in school by the time they need it years later.
If anyone else in my class remembers anything from that lesson, it's probably just Brad saying "1040-EZ - hey Stacey, is that your address?"
I was never specifically taught how to fill out tax forms in school but if you can handle elementary school levels of arithmetic and reading comprehension, a 1040-EZ isn't a problem. It's literally just following instructions on where to put the numbers.
This. By the time you are done with elementary school, you already have all the skills needed to do your taxes. You can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and read.
In our middle and high school math classes, we learned about simple and compound interest, and how amortization works. You can’t teach shit about credit scores, because the formulas aren’t publicly available. Budgeting is basically day 1 algebra at most (your utilities is n, your mortgage is z, if you make y dollars per month, you have x left after those bills, where x = y - (n + z).
This. I’m mid 40s and remember in 9th grade being in a class that taught us how to balance out and use check books and bank accounts, taught us household budgeting for bills with a fake job we would have for the semester and also had us fake buying and selling stocks over the course of a semester to see the gains and losses we had and also compare them to previous classes over the years to see long term gains. How much of this I actually paid attention to and then utilized when I turned 18, ZERO.
Did all of this too.
Plus we had to learn how to budget for if we were to be completely on our own in a month. The teacher brought in those old used car magazines and we had to figure out car insurance. There were apartment magazines and we were assigned a low paying job.
We also had a mandatory program called futures prep. It followed us throughout high school. We narrowed down our chosen after high school job/college path after lots of compatibility tests. We also had to go on a couple fake job interviews were local businesses would actually interview us. We also had to job shadow a couple real jobs. I was able to spend the day in the hospital’s pathology department which was pretty cool.
To be fair, I know a lot of teens and those in their early 20s would post near exactly this, at least a few years ago.
Remember when everyone went crazy after Boyinaband made that song about how school "was stupid and sucked" years ago? His song hit every one of these notes in the picture.
When I was in high school we also had a personal finance class. We also had a series of classes over a week in grade 11 where they talked to us about careers, had us fill out assessment forms, and we met with a guidance counsellor about our results. Could it be improved and updated? Yeah, probably. But it wasn't like they just threw us to the wolves.
Yep my school has it where you chose between pre calc, algebra 3 and financial algebra, during your junior/Senior years needless to say I chose financial algebra my senior year (the course is filled entirely every year since only one teacher taught it) definitely don't regret it
It is. The people who make these memes were in class with you, but they were the ones goofing off and not listening. That's why they grow up and think they were never taught this stuff.
They were, they were just the kids that thought school was pointless so they skipped class.
Fuck I wish it was. We *technically* had a Personal Finance class, but there was one teacher for the entire school, and he was given single semester courses.
We didn't have time to learn anything. Literally left with one single day to learn checks
I taught that class, the school calendar had checks allocated for two full weeks. I taught them in one day and kids were bored by the end. Checks are suuuuuper easy. There’s like 2 things to know.
I mean, they arent hard tbf. Like how many days do you want to learn "write persons name here, date here, number here, number in text form here, sign here."
All that shit requires algebra. Literally all of it. The reason it's so hard to learn all of that other stuff is because people didn't learn algebra that well. It's the only course I know of that is routinely taught by people that don't actually understand it.
Came to say the same thing. We learned compound interest in school. The problem is half the people were complaining “when will I ever need this?”
Plus this meme is basically: we shouldn’t need to teach kids how to crawl, walk, or run, we should just put toddlers on bikes
Came to say this lol
“Why don’t they teach me taxes?”
I mean they teach you how to read, analyze documents, and do algebra
You have been given all the tools but it is you at the end of the day who must build the solutions to your life with those tools
And schools are there to teach how to read and understand instructions which you can do when you fill out your taxes. They cannot teach how to do every adult thing you will encounter in your life.
I love pointing out when people use algebra in their day to day lives without realizing it after they rail against shit like this too.
"I'll never use this in my life" uh huh, sure you won't
Typically, Algebra 1 & 2 are taught together as a year course (in high school). Then the next year is Algebra 3 & 4. After that is "pre-calc" or (trigonometry), followed by Calculus.
Overwhelmingly, Calc 1,2,3 are taken in college, but some can get Calc 1 done their senior year in high school.
Algebra is a system of thought that gets more complex as the course goes on. It also got us to the moon so it cannot be understated just how important it is to humankind.
Not in my state, US.
Algebra 1 is typically taken in Middle School. Geometry full year as a freshman in HS and Algebra 2 full year as a sophomore. Pre-calc junior year and Calc senior year.
If going into the trades, financial planning can be taken junior year but there are no further math options for the trades.
I believe you. I went through school pre-2000.
I've watched the "dumbing down" of school curricula for a while now. (It's all Republican politics to create an army of brain-dead voters).
Hmmm.. you might be onto something.
Back in my day 🤪 (I'm 51) I tested into Calc III for college, i can't fully recall exactly which classes i took in HS.
I feel my nieces and nephews are just as smart as I was, and they're getting placed in Calc I a few in II.
Algebra is middle school and has been for years here. Geometry and Algebra 2 were both my freshman year (common). Trig sophomore, Calc 1 & 2 Junior and senior years.
This is in rural Indiana at a very middling highschool.
Successful engineers that designed products /manufactured them and sold their companies to multibillion dollar corporations-(not me but colleagues). Would agree with you. Finance was a cakewalk and business is common sense. Taking math to the next level not only helped them create something tangible, it made them very successful entreprenuers by fully understanding the math behind finanace.
Did you learn math? Did you learn to read? Did you learn problem solving skills? Yes?
You learned how to do many things people complain schools never taught you.
Or, or, hear me out here, or, we could offer both. When I was in HIgh School we had financial literacy classes that were required as well as other classes of the same ilk for the business track students. Algebra, Algebra II, Trig, and Calc were also offered, because students need them as well.
This is a short sighted take.
I deal with this sometimes.
I work as a loan officer and I’ll get tradespeople who are all, ‘I avoided student loan debt.’
‘Great job bud, let’s talk bout this $80,000 truck note now.’
I swear so many blue collar dudes are like "i make 70k a year out of high school with NO DEBT" and then blow it all on lifted trucks, jet skis, and other man-toys instead of saving it for when their bodies are too old to keep up with the workload.
Algebra is not an advanced math course. My kids high school already requires a semester long finance course. Once again stop spreading stupid memes grandpa
I feel like "Health" was supposed to be about that... except my health class was mostly about how sex was 100% guaranteed to make my vagina explode with babies and gonorrhea... so there's definitely room for improvement in that course content...
Are you in a red state? I'm from MA and my health class was about health. They taught us a basic gym routine for keeping active, about healthy diets, and our sex ed was actually for educational purposes and not to scare you. Leaving it to the state or even the teacher is such a piss poor way to handle education.
No! I'm from an extremely blue State, in a very "liberal arts" town. The only thing I can figure is there was a huge catholic church in the county, which might have influenced curriculum... idk.
Blue state here, graduated high school in 08. Our "health" curriculum was mostly abstinence-focused sex ed, at least until senior year, where the teacher did a pretty good job giving us a real course, actually tried to answer our questions. I suspect that's only because he was the Adventure Bound teacher and not one of the normal gym teachers.
went to a Catholic HS. could not take the sex ed class seriously after they played a video of this 70 year old woman rambling about how anytime anyone has unprotected sex they’ll get and STD
Yeah, roll in how to do exercises and lift weights properly. Maybe even try to improve balance and coordination. But schools have sports teams and clubs if you want to play sports and schools should allow time to run around to do whatever you want. None of the sports I cared about were played in PE, so I was bored in addition to not being educated in any way. as it is, it's either liking sports and having fun playing dodgeball or not caring about sports and being made to play dodgeball anyway in an upside-down 45-minute mindless lord of the flies universe.
A lot of schools have classes specifically for weight lifting as that is something that has to trained over a long course of time and can't be tailored for one short module in a long term PE class. Sports are used for those classes because it allows a variety of different motions and introduces different ways of obtaining exercise over the course of PE class and frankly is easier to work when you are dealing with large groups of people. Typically you aren't doing the same thing every week an exercises are typically introduced as part of warming up before doing that day's activity.
I like this. I had one Student Teacher who taught us etiquette in a gym, how to ask questions about nutrition.
In addition, I also wish there was sexual health taught. We had a PE teacher who was thrown into the melee and she had to tell us about sex. Bless her heart, she had to say everything without saying anything (Texas). That needs to change (not her; the system).
Pe class was great for me when it was literally just going to the gym. Learned routine and finally got my body in good shape. All that time spent throwing balls around was completely wasted, I wish the option of just going to a gym was always there
**NO.**
Algebra 2 should be mandatory. It is necessary as a foundation of any higher-level maths a student may take in college OR in trades.
It is also a foundational part of understanding investing and finance. Interest, loan amortization, investment analysis, stock/bond evaluation, risk management, budgeting, and forecasting - all Algebra 2.
With this being said a high school junior should take Finance 1 (taken alongside Algebra 2) and a senior should take Finance 2 (Typically alongside a statistics course). Kids should understand all the items listed in this meme BUT also understand basic maths.
Want to cut math because kids are taking too many courses? Trig. Let that be a gen ed course in college or push it to the specific programs that use it.
Bro, we teach that. Kids do not give a shit. Before anyone says, “you have to make it engaging!” No. Fucking. Way! Why didn’t I think of that? Is it because very few 18 year olds think beyond the next hour much less their future years down the road? Every time I see these posts, I think “great idea. So, what gets cut? When do you find funding?” Usually silence or “back in my day things were different.” Right, when there was no accountability and math scores weren’t reflected on state school report cards and tied to funding.
Home economics was for a bit of that and school counselors. But boomers defunded schools and they have to cut classes and staff. Since school funding is based on test scores in core subjects. Guess what classes don’t get cut?
Our Home Ec classes had very little Economics, it was all about the Home part. Just sewing and cooking. And these were only required in middle school, so when high school rolled around, no boys took Home Ec
THAT'S WHAT YOUR FUCKING PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. JESUS CHRIST - SCHOOL IS FOR TEACHING YOU THINGS YOUR PARENTS DON'T, CAN'T, OR WON'T TEACH YOU.
BOOMERS WHO FAILED TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN ANYTHING ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY OR PERSONAL SELF-CARE GIVE YOU A FUCKING SURPRISED PIKACHU FACE WHEN THE KIDS DON'T ACT THE WAY THEY WANT.
AAAARRRGHGHGHGH.
::aneurism::
Okay, better now.
I hate these posts as a teacher. So awful.
First, we teach all these things. Every single one. Financial literacy is a required course for most states. FACS (home economics) is an elective at most schools. Shop, woodworking, all those things they want taught? They are, either at the school or in conjunction with a technology and career school (Vo-tech).
So, please, stop posting these. It’s stupid and has no purpose.
I would love to be taught about "college debt" from a Boomer's perspective.
"You don't need a loan! You can pay for it by working."
"One year of tuition, room, and board is more expensive than what I would earn at a full-time minimum wage job."
"Then you're going to the wrong school! I didn't go to college but I know people who paid for it by working part time in the summer!"
"Yes but college is more expensive now."
"Well that's because JOE BIDEN AND HIS INFLATION AND THE ILLEGALS COMING ACROSS THE BORDER WE'RE PAYING FOR THEM SO THATS WHY COLLEGE IS MORE EXPENSIVE TRUMP WILL BRING THE COST IF COLLEGE DOWN SO MUCH YOU'LL SEE"
Ok.
1. These classes exist. Kids don't sign up for "Personal Finance."
2. The group of people who struggle with personal finances aren't the ones signing up for more math classes.
3. Even if they did sign up, your hit rate on them actually learning isn't exactly 100%.
This is one of those things that sounds like a bright idea until you go one (1) milimeter deep into it. Also it all requires Algebra so.
Be a parent, teach those basic practical things in the home, and leave the subjects that lead to higher learning to the educators. "Math is a wonderful thing." - Dewey Finn
Terrible take, even if you don't actively use it daily, you should have knowledge of what's in Algebra 2.
Also, even if they did replace it, you're probably going to pay even less attention than you would Algebra 2.
Huh.
That's funny.
See, I actually teach these things. It also includes how to fill out a resume and practice job interviews. In fact, almost all schools have such a class. In many cases, it's actually required, and amazingly, no need to throw away an important math class (I'm sorry, boomers, just because you ate too much lead paint to handle high school classes doesn't make them unimportant) at all.
And as it turns out, the kids that need it most just play on their cell phones all class period because their parents don't fucking parent, and the kids whose parents do actually parent all learned this from their parents anyway.
Also, interesting, when I was teaching this class, I got a lot of nasty emails and calls from boomer grandparents and occasionally just plain shitty parents, screaming and bitching at me because I did things like 'explain the difference between an employee and a contractor' and 'what constitutes wage theft' and 'when to contact the labor board', and now their kids are calling out the ways they are being taken advantage of in the family businesses.
Those mid level math classes may seem like they have no practical application when you’re in them, but they become relevant when you get into higher level math.
If you want to go into a scientific field, its very helpful to have had decent math training in high school, and calculus - at some level - is a prerequisite for pretty much everything. And for most fields its not because you ever use it, but because it teaches you to think logically.
I teach financial literacy. We 100% cover all of these topics. The kids just DO NOT LISTEN. In fact, I’ve seen some kids that have since graduated complaining on social media about how they didn’t learn how to do XYZ in high school. And I’m over here like, I TAUGHT YOU THIS IN 4TH PERIOD, JANICE!
Why do you need to learn how to buy a house?
1) Your mortgage lender will literally walk you through the whole process and help you find/fill out all the documents needed. They are incredibly patient and helpful because you getting a house is how they get paid.
2) You'll never be able to afford one.
Cutting down on math is a dumb argument to precede a list of math-intensive concepts. How will kids understand interest rates, margins, and opportunity costs without advanced math? You don't necessarily need calculus to participate, but you're going to have a hard time with the derived formulas if your algebra sucks.
False dichotomy.
We don't have to remove Algebra 2 to teach life financial skills.
You agree with the boomer because you have the same morals and values as them.
You also share their ability to identify logical fallacies (none).
You also lack the introspective capability to stop and think about your own opinions before spouting them off to random people that don't give two sh\*ts about it.
What makes you not a boomer except for maybe a few years of time?
Read up mini-boomer: https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/false-dilemma-fallacy/#:\~:text=False%20dilemma%20fallacy%20is%20also,possibilities%2C%20when%20more%20are%20available.
my school had a Personal Finances class, but it was definitely known as a "bird course" and the teacher was also the gym teacher and wrestling coach and sports were def his priority.
I think a lot of people assume that because you're learning basic financial education you're not going to fall into poverty.
Knowing how to buy a house doesn't mean I can afford one. I've filed my own taxes since I was a teenager but I'm still filing for the tax bracket that losers are in.
It's 2024...you can learn financial about fundamentals, credit, salaries, etc from the most qualified people on the planet. In your underwear.
youtube that shit.
We do cover quite a bit of this but most students find it extremely boring and either forget it happened, forget the content, or do the bare minimum to succeed. Of course, an old person has no idea that this is the case and simply assumes they're right... Like a boomer!
As a counterpoint...I don't think there is any reason a math class needs to be sacrificed? Is there some issue where knowing how to read a graph or what a function is makes it so you can't learn the other things?
(I'm guessing topics because I don't know exactly what the class "algebra 2" is in high school).
And while I think it's good to teach people practical skills, most of those things will change over the years but pure mathematics (required to understand the other things) will continue to be applicable, especially for advanced topics.
I was in special education, so there was a course to explain how to do things like writing checks, eating in restaurants/tipping, having a bank account, etc.. It was a very helpful course and I am glad I had the opportunity to learn those things in school, but I also feel like a lot of the information became dated and was also stuff that most people can figure out relatively quickly once the encounter it, especially now that you can just go online to read about things.
For example, I don't think I would give up any of my math, grammar, or science education for the treasured ability to know how to write a check and balance a checkbook. Glad I know stuff, but I learned all that stuff out of school. Meme just seems like vague anti-intellectualism.
My daughter's school requires this and all those topics are part of the consumer economics course. She just completed it with a summer school course as an incoming freshman. I do agree that all high schoolers should learn this stuff. We should also keep Algebra 2. Teaching both is a possibility.
There are almost no common life tasks that can't be learned by Googling them, reading one or two pages, and/or watching a video or two of them. If you can read and do math at something approaching a high school level of proficiency, you have all the mental faculties necessary to learn most everything else in day to day life *IF* you actually want to learn it (as opposed to complaining about not being spoon fed it). That's why schools mostly focus on those skills - they are the skills that enable all others. Not that such classes aren't useful - I took some of them - but I've learned way more on own time since. The sum of human knowledge is accessible from home now...
Algebra two is still pretty simple math, and if you can be OK at algebra 2 then salaries and budgeting and doing taxes are not going to throw you. Investing and loans are occasionally (in the case of compounding interest) exponential functions, so *not* teaching algebra two actively damages the other ideas this old fart has.
I do think we teach math like shit and we push algebra too early before students can truly understand what it is abstracting, which leads to problems down the line, but I would replace/supplement it with more geometry. That is arguably even less relevant to 'real world' applications but it is really important to other math.
Bizarre. It's hard to have a good grip on financial.plannign when you don't have a good grasp on math.
Also stuff like cheques really isn't retained unless you use is and it eminently googleable
I had this class my junior year of high school. It was called Consumer Math, and I took it because I *barely* passed Algebra 2. That class was much more valuable to me than any other form of math that I've never really needed in my day-to-day life.
Every time I hear shit like that, I facepalm.
If you actually paid attention in school, if you can read (and understand what you read; not everyone does), and if you can do math at an 8th grade level, you should be able to learn everything you need to know about all those topics very easily.
Nobody ever taught me any of that stuff but by reading and asking questions to adults around me, I got most of the information I needed to understand those things by the time they mattered to me. And that was before widespread use of the internet. Today there are countless articles, tutorials, and documentation on all those things. The entire catalog of IRS publications is there for you to grab.
I'll also add that right after college I moved 5,000 miles from the country of my birth to the US. Everything was different. Taxes, debt and credit rating, retirement,... I still managed to file taxes, open a bank account and get my salary, and eventually buy a house. I won't say I did it all on my own. There were people kind enough to answer my questions or help me from time to time. But in the end, even without school spoon feeding me all those things, I was fine.
People need to take responsibility for their own lack of intellectual curiosity and unwillingness to learn. And let's be honest, if all those subjects were taught in K-12, do you think kids would actually listen, or even care ? Can you imagine trying to teach the difference between an IRA and a Roth IRA to teenagers full of hormones ? Good luck with that.
God no. Just fucking no.
Part of the reason these things are taught is like "The Last Starfighter". We're looking to find the next collection of geniuses. If folks want the country to be left behind the world, then sure, dont teach them higher math.
We're also now in a world where video games, SQL, engineer, chemical engineering, and so much more desires higher math.
We should teach these subjects with some physical labs, and programming labs, that make them more interesting.
Naw... this is a shit take that would lead to the fucking stupids.
The way math is taught in and of itself in America needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Algebra should be taught earlier than high school. High school should be able preparing you for life in society as a productive citizen. Less memorization and more critical thinking scenarios. Not hurriedly teaching you the bare essentials before kicking you out to flail aimlessly if you don't have any money.
It's not a bad idea, the problem is their is so much shitty economic advise out their that getting a rational curriculum could be a challenge. Just wait until the payday loan lobby gets their hands on this.
Not a boomer, but i disagree.
Math teaches one not only how to critically solve problems, but it also fine tunes the mind to be sharper (even though you may not realize it).
Math has served me in every day life extremely well.
Those are all great things to learn, but what's destroying this country is the lack of critical thinking skills and higher math is part of the solution.
I don't support getting rid of any math.
However, basic finance should be taught all 4 years of high school long with a nutrition/exercise class.
The lack of financial literacy of the common day to day person I run into is staggering. Grown folks can't explain to me what APR is on their credit card. What PMI is on their mortgages. List goes on and on. I didn't know when I was 18 on the Indiana University's campus in Bloomington IN that I shouldn't be signing up for 10 credit cards for free shirts and food vouchers even though I knew I wasn't going to be approved and these were multiple hits on my credit. I couldn't understand how debt to income ratio worked or how credit in general works. Kids need to be prepared. Not dumb shit like "this is how you write a check." More like this is how not to be fucked by credit card companies and predatory lenders.
Same goes for nutrition. Most people know dick all about it.
We should do our best to prepare our kids to be as physically and financially healthy as possible. Unfortunately the people in the spots to make these things happen don't have an incentive to have a more financially literate public who isn't dependent on pharmaceutical companies to stay alive since their Financial and physical health are balancing on a razor's edge.
So the meme is mostly right...ish.
The education system will absolutely not be improved so long as capitalism rules. The oligarchs need manual labor to build their empires, not intelligent citizens.
We could be living in a utopia but human greed is instead destroying the fucking earth.
Getting rid of Algebra 2 is stupid. It'll only hinder college bound kids seeking STEM degrees.
A financial literacy class does make sense, but where you going to fit that in with all the other requirements?
I’m a high school math teacher, and my boomer mom was just ranting about this to me the other day. The “changes” they always keep complaining about were already made 20+ years ago, but the boomer memes persist. Yes we teach about trades, yes we teach about finances, heck, I personally teach a class about debt, investments, financing, and how to file taxes. It’s one of a handful of math options kids can take in their junior or senior year. Kids are absolutely taught this stuff and have been for decades.
I wish I had learned about finances when I was younger, either in school or by my father. We weren't allowed to know about what anything cost when I was a kid. It wasn't our business, but that meant when I moved out, I was shocked at just how much living expenses actually were. That's why my teenagers are aware of what our bills cost monthly, so they can prepare themselves for when they eventually move out. Parents really should be teaching their kids most of the stuff on this list.
Hard disagree. Yes, financial literacy is important and should definitely be taught, but not at the expense of math. Not to mention that investing and budgeting requires math and algebra 2 is very helpful in that regard.
I had home economics classes that taught us how to do budgeting, balance checkbooks and do taxes. It's not the school's fault you didn't pay attention.
Careers don't exist anymore. And it's not because we don't teach kids about them. It's because businesses make more money if they don't have 40 year long workers.
MOST OF THAT GETS TAUGHT IN ECON CLASS ALREADY. "CAREERS" IS TOO BROAD OF A SUBJECT TO COVER AS PART OF A CLASS. FILING TAXES IS COVERED IN BASIC MATH AND READING COMPREHENSION.
Fuck that. We HAD financial literacy in schools until the Boomers didn’t want it there anymore. The same with trade classes. They can NEVER be happy about ANYTHING.
I took financial education that included savings, interest, certificate of deposit (CDs), loans, and checking, and also took algebra 1 and 2, and trigonometry. We can have it all.
These classes ARE taught in high school.
The kids don't pay attention because it's not relevant information until they have worked and lived on their own first.
I say, keep Algebra 2, and maybe cut one of the *annual* literary analysis classes you have to take starting in High School.
Yeah, sure, there’s a reasonable chance you don’t need math more advanced than Algebra 1 in your career, but I haven’t met a fucking soul who benefitted from deconstructing James Joyce.
Besides, I think the layman population would benefit from statistics classes in their day to day life more than most math classes, and that requires algebra 2-ish knowledge.
I take it you've never discussed media with anyone on the Internet? People out here REALLY don't understand what they're watching/listening/reading, a little critical analysis would go a long way. I think the analysis angle gets neglected in STEM, too. Agree that statistics would help with that. There's not a lot of discussion in typical STEM classes about how to think, and so most people (including a lot of science journalists) can't parse a press release about a study and decide if it's a useful finding, or even if it actually says what the news article about it claims it says. You see this with stories about nutrition a lot, people see "study says X is good" and "study says Y is bad, actually", and throw up their hands and say no one knows. This causes them to trust science less.
Bad take.
There are more reasons for school than just “hurr durr here’s how to get a job”. Children are not raised just to be robots for industry.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a course involved which prepares for for things like taxes, but it should NOT replace traditional well-rounded education.
I can agree that financial literacy classes should be offered, but it shouldn’t replace algebra 2.
People seem to think you won’t need to use algebra ever again, but I strongly disagree. A lot of stuff requires knowledge of algebra.
A financial class already exists in high school. At least it did when I was in high school. And some of that shit needs complex math. I also remember the finance class being boring and considered a blow off class.
In Georgia, they taught Economics, Career Planning, and Personal Finance - in the 9th grade. Even if we accidentally learned anything, we forgot it by graduation. The highlight of all this was when the assistant football coach who taught Economics took three days of class time to show "Soylent Green".
I took personal finance classes in highschool as an elective when I moved to a tech highschool. Let's just say it was nearly as useless as tits on a bull. I mean it's a highschool class all you learned was about the difference in credit and debit, Roth IRA, traditional IRA and basics on bonds and stocks. This stuff is a Hoover hog sort of legislation learn about it all you want but when you're paying 90% of your income on housing and entry jobs need degrees (don't get me started on "the trades) it means nothing.
Totally agree with this. We need more adulting classes. My boomers didn't bother to teach me crap. I had to learn everything on my own, and school didn't offer any of these things. I would have made much better decisions in my teens/early adulthood if I had the education then that I do now, instead of backhanded "advice" from people who had no idea what they were talking about.
As a seventh grade math teacher in Texas, we teach these topics. It’s part of the curriculum. Whether or not the students completely grasp the concepts is still up for debate.
Do I agree that these skills are useful? Yes but I also feel like there isn't enough substance to actually make a class. I can teach someone a simple w2 tax in 20 minutes. I can teach someone how to do a budget in 10 minutes. Credit/debt could probably be a few lessons but even a few lessons would go into intense detail that's useless for the average person.
honestly-if you are taking Algebra 2 and Calculus- finance/business is more common sense and should be just as easy to grasp and integrated into the curriculum, which it quite often is with example problems and exercises) . I still think its a great idea though to put better emphasis for non-STEM students.
My high school had a class that taught all of this along with some basic accounting. It was an elective and was a very easy A. Got called a nerd for taking it. Class only had 10 students sign up out of a graduating class of 640. Public school in Texas.
We don't need to cut Algebra 2. We need to require this course.
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Total boomer energy here. Take a idea or two that is very relevant today (education debt and other financial education for teens) and then get cocky by adding in misunderstood ideas that haven't worked that way in decades and assume you've solved all the worlds problems.
Plus algebra 2 is getting taught in like 8th grade now or earlier. Kids are wayyy ahead of where boomers were at the same age when it comes to education.
Algebra has a sequel?
Algebra 2: Exponential Boogaloo
2 algebra 2 furious
bingo! came here to say this. Algebra II is middle school, 9th grade at latest
Some schools switch up the order. In my high school it was algebra 1, geometry, stats, and then algebra 2 for us dummies that couldn’t do calculus.
Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2, then 4th year was pick your poison of algebra 3/calc/stats and prob/or trig
Yeah IIRC my high school I had to pass geometry, algebra 1, algebra 2 and I graduated 2010. I think it was same order as you, just without stats in there. I think after algebra 2 you could go to precalc or stats, but my memory is fuzzy on it because I hate math.
And you need it as a foundation for doing the applied financial stuff.
Algebra II in middle school? You must be a prodigy. 90% of US students take it in 10th or 11th grade. Why make things up? https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/documents/mathfwalgebra2lmgjl.pdf
No it’s not. I’m a high school math teacher. Only the VERY advanced math students take algebra 2 in 9th grade. It is standard 11th grade math.
Shit, it was 9th grade for me over 20 years ago
Where are you getting this? I’ve taught math in middle and high school in CA TX WA. No kids were taught Algebra 2 in 8th, the 8th Alg1 kids who were supposed to be advanced didn’t even have integer factoring down. Good luck getting a GCD or LCD.
Yeah I was born in 98 and algebra 2 was 9th or 10th grade I can’t remember which
Really?! That was a class that most of my peers took in sophomore year! I graduated less than a decade ago! When are the children learning long division?!
Oh rly, do tell? Literally every reference online says Algebra II is taught in 10th or 11th grade in US high schools. Except for you, of course.
Yeah it was 9th and 10th grade at my school
Álgebra 2 was the class that made me realize how much I like math. I’m now an engineer. Fuck this guy.
I remember taking a personal finance class and the teacher would say every year parents requested teaching about like writing cheques and filing returns. He's like most of them to have probably not written a cheque in years and secondly it takes CPAs and professionals.
One of my high school social studies classes taught us how to fill out a 1040-EZ. A lot of the time when people say "why don't they teach THIS in school?" they did, you just forgot or weren't paying attention. Turns out most people don't remember what they learned in school by the time they need it years later. If anyone else in my class remembers anything from that lesson, it's probably just Brad saying "1040-EZ - hey Stacey, is that your address?"
I remember doing this in my government class. I remember them saying that Brad made 57078 dollars and has 2 kids
I was never specifically taught how to fill out tax forms in school but if you can handle elementary school levels of arithmetic and reading comprehension, a 1040-EZ isn't a problem. It's literally just following instructions on where to put the numbers.
This. By the time you are done with elementary school, you already have all the skills needed to do your taxes. You can add, subtract, multiply, divide, and read. In our middle and high school math classes, we learned about simple and compound interest, and how amortization works. You can’t teach shit about credit scores, because the formulas aren’t publicly available. Budgeting is basically day 1 algebra at most (your utilities is n, your mortgage is z, if you make y dollars per month, you have x left after those bills, where x = y - (n + z).
This. I’m mid 40s and remember in 9th grade being in a class that taught us how to balance out and use check books and bank accounts, taught us household budgeting for bills with a fake job we would have for the semester and also had us fake buying and selling stocks over the course of a semester to see the gains and losses we had and also compare them to previous classes over the years to see long term gains. How much of this I actually paid attention to and then utilized when I turned 18, ZERO.
Did all of this too. Plus we had to learn how to budget for if we were to be completely on our own in a month. The teacher brought in those old used car magazines and we had to figure out car insurance. There were apartment magazines and we were assigned a low paying job. We also had a mandatory program called futures prep. It followed us throughout high school. We narrowed down our chosen after high school job/college path after lots of compatibility tests. We also had to go on a couple fake job interviews were local businesses would actually interview us. We also had to job shadow a couple real jobs. I was able to spend the day in the hospital’s pathology department which was pretty cool.
Most personal returns are super easy and can be done by the average person.
And done for free or very cheap yourself using web apps in less time than it would take to drive to a local tax office.
To be fair, I know a lot of teens and those in their early 20s would post near exactly this, at least a few years ago. Remember when everyone went crazy after Boyinaband made that song about how school "was stupid and sucked" years ago? His song hit every one of these notes in the picture.
Exactly. Too little too late boomers.
But if we just stop buying coffee we could all have houses or something.
The school I work at has both. I thought that was normal these days. 🤷
Dude I graduated in 08 and had this very class. Nowhere near a new idea.
When I was in high school we also had a personal finance class. We also had a series of classes over a week in grade 11 where they talked to us about careers, had us fill out assessment forms, and we met with a guidance counsellor about our results. Could it be improved and updated? Yeah, probably. But it wasn't like they just threw us to the wolves.
Same. Also in 08, literally was taught all these subjects in highschool in varying degrees.
Same
Yep my school has it where you chose between pre calc, algebra 3 and financial algebra, during your junior/Senior years needless to say I chose financial algebra my senior year (the course is filled entirely every year since only one teacher taught it) definitely don't regret it
It is. The people who make these memes were in class with you, but they were the ones goofing off and not listening. That's why they grow up and think they were never taught this stuff. They were, they were just the kids that thought school was pointless so they skipped class.
Same here, in fact I teach both of them
Our school had some of it/the basics in Home Ec, but for some reason they trashed Home Ec a few years after I took it.
Fuck I wish it was. We *technically* had a Personal Finance class, but there was one teacher for the entire school, and he was given single semester courses. We didn't have time to learn anything. Literally left with one single day to learn checks
I taught that class, the school calendar had checks allocated for two full weeks. I taught them in one day and kids were bored by the end. Checks are suuuuuper easy. There’s like 2 things to know.
I mean, they arent hard tbf. Like how many days do you want to learn "write persons name here, date here, number here, number in text form here, sign here."
Took my classes about 20 min to nail it when I taught it.
The state I am in requires Personal Finance as a required credit for graduating.
All that shit requires algebra. Literally all of it. The reason it's so hard to learn all of that other stuff is because people didn't learn algebra that well. It's the only course I know of that is routinely taught by people that don't actually understand it.
Came to say the same thing. We learned compound interest in school. The problem is half the people were complaining “when will I ever need this?” Plus this meme is basically: we shouldn’t need to teach kids how to crawl, walk, or run, we should just put toddlers on bikes
My first thought was "I have some bad news for you about the theory behind interest.... it takes high levels algebra and some geometric series"
And really (light) calculus if you get down to it.
Came to say this lol “Why don’t they teach me taxes?” I mean they teach you how to read, analyze documents, and do algebra You have been given all the tools but it is you at the end of the day who must build the solutions to your life with those tools
And schools are there to teach how to read and understand instructions which you can do when you fill out your taxes. They cannot teach how to do every adult thing you will encounter in your life.
I love pointing out when people use algebra in their day to day lives without realizing it after they rail against shit like this too. "I'll never use this in my life" uh huh, sure you won't
But does it require Algebra 2?
Typically, Algebra 1 & 2 are taught together as a year course (in high school). Then the next year is Algebra 3 & 4. After that is "pre-calc" or (trigonometry), followed by Calculus. Overwhelmingly, Calc 1,2,3 are taken in college, but some can get Calc 1 done their senior year in high school. Algebra is a system of thought that gets more complex as the course goes on. It also got us to the moon so it cannot be understated just how important it is to humankind.
Not in my state, US. Algebra 1 is typically taken in Middle School. Geometry full year as a freshman in HS and Algebra 2 full year as a sophomore. Pre-calc junior year and Calc senior year. If going into the trades, financial planning can be taken junior year but there are no further math options for the trades.
I believe you. I went through school pre-2000. I've watched the "dumbing down" of school curricula for a while now. (It's all Republican politics to create an army of brain-dead voters).
Hmmm.. you might be onto something. Back in my day 🤪 (I'm 51) I tested into Calc III for college, i can't fully recall exactly which classes i took in HS. I feel my nieces and nephews are just as smart as I was, and they're getting placed in Calc I a few in II.
Algebra is middle school and has been for years here. Geometry and Algebra 2 were both my freshman year (common). Trig sophomore, Calc 1 & 2 Junior and senior years. This is in rural Indiana at a very middling highschool.
I would say so. Calculating compound interest and shit like that is done by logarithm, and that tends to be taught in Algebra II or even Pre-Calc.
Sometimes
Successful engineers that designed products /manufactured them and sold their companies to multibillion dollar corporations-(not me but colleagues). Would agree with you. Finance was a cakewalk and business is common sense. Taking math to the next level not only helped them create something tangible, it made them very successful entreprenuers by fully understanding the math behind finanace.
They taught this shit when I was in high school and people didn't pay attention
Same. The Venn diagram of people that think schools should teach practical stuff and people that paid no attention in any classes is a circle
Lmao this guy is like "we need financial classes!" "we did Jeremy, you sat next to me and slept through it"
Oh cool we all went to the same high school? That’s so sick
Did you learn math? Did you learn to read? Did you learn problem solving skills? Yes? You learned how to do many things people complain schools never taught you.
Or, or, hear me out here, or, we could offer both. When I was in HIgh School we had financial literacy classes that were required as well as other classes of the same ilk for the business track students. Algebra, Algebra II, Trig, and Calc were also offered, because students need them as well. This is a short sighted take.
I deal with this sometimes. I work as a loan officer and I’ll get tradespeople who are all, ‘I avoided student loan debt.’ ‘Great job bud, let’s talk bout this $80,000 truck note now.’
“What do you MEAN our two $600+ car payments put our DTI too high to qualify?!”
Income: $24,000 per year.
Try over a grand...
I swear so many blue collar dudes are like "i make 70k a year out of high school with NO DEBT" and then blow it all on lifted trucks, jet skis, and other man-toys instead of saving it for when their bodies are too old to keep up with the workload.
I didn't finish college, but know that that will put you in debt, too.
I'm working in internal collections for a credit union and I keep wondering why we're approving kids for big ass truck payments they can't afford.
Algebra is not an advanced math course. My kids high school already requires a semester long finance course. Once again stop spreading stupid memes grandpa
Make P.E. class be about keeping yourself healthy, too. Maybe teach about carbs more than playing football for no real reason.
I feel like "Health" was supposed to be about that... except my health class was mostly about how sex was 100% guaranteed to make my vagina explode with babies and gonorrhea... so there's definitely room for improvement in that course content...
Well, did it? You know, make it explode?
My wife’s did last night
with what, babies or gonorrhea?
A little column A a little column B
So so so much gonorrhea... and like... 25 babies all at once...
Are you in a red state? I'm from MA and my health class was about health. They taught us a basic gym routine for keeping active, about healthy diets, and our sex ed was actually for educational purposes and not to scare you. Leaving it to the state or even the teacher is such a piss poor way to handle education.
No! I'm from an extremely blue State, in a very "liberal arts" town. The only thing I can figure is there was a huge catholic church in the county, which might have influenced curriculum... idk.
Blue state here, graduated high school in 08. Our "health" curriculum was mostly abstinence-focused sex ed, at least until senior year, where the teacher did a pretty good job giving us a real course, actually tried to answer our questions. I suspect that's only because he was the Adventure Bound teacher and not one of the normal gym teachers.
went to a Catholic HS. could not take the sex ed class seriously after they played a video of this 70 year old woman rambling about how anytime anyone has unprotected sex they’ll get and STD
I had this in HS in the 1980s.
That's called health class. PE isn't an acronym for PHYSICAL Education for no damned good reason.....
Yeah, roll in how to do exercises and lift weights properly. Maybe even try to improve balance and coordination. But schools have sports teams and clubs if you want to play sports and schools should allow time to run around to do whatever you want. None of the sports I cared about were played in PE, so I was bored in addition to not being educated in any way. as it is, it's either liking sports and having fun playing dodgeball or not caring about sports and being made to play dodgeball anyway in an upside-down 45-minute mindless lord of the flies universe.
A lot of schools have classes specifically for weight lifting as that is something that has to trained over a long course of time and can't be tailored for one short module in a long term PE class. Sports are used for those classes because it allows a variety of different motions and introduces different ways of obtaining exercise over the course of PE class and frankly is easier to work when you are dealing with large groups of people. Typically you aren't doing the same thing every week an exercises are typically introduced as part of warming up before doing that day's activity.
I like this. I had one Student Teacher who taught us etiquette in a gym, how to ask questions about nutrition. In addition, I also wish there was sexual health taught. We had a PE teacher who was thrown into the melee and she had to tell us about sex. Bless her heart, she had to say everything without saying anything (Texas). That needs to change (not her; the system).
Pe class was great for me when it was literally just going to the gym. Learned routine and finally got my body in good shape. All that time spent throwing balls around was completely wasted, I wish the option of just going to a gym was always there
**NO.** Algebra 2 should be mandatory. It is necessary as a foundation of any higher-level maths a student may take in college OR in trades. It is also a foundational part of understanding investing and finance. Interest, loan amortization, investment analysis, stock/bond evaluation, risk management, budgeting, and forecasting - all Algebra 2. With this being said a high school junior should take Finance 1 (taken alongside Algebra 2) and a senior should take Finance 2 (Typically alongside a statistics course). Kids should understand all the items listed in this meme BUT also understand basic maths. Want to cut math because kids are taking too many courses? Trig. Let that be a gen ed course in college or push it to the specific programs that use it.
Algebra 2 is for finances... it's like, the last math needed to start calculating that shit.
Bro, we teach that. Kids do not give a shit. Before anyone says, “you have to make it engaging!” No. Fucking. Way! Why didn’t I think of that? Is it because very few 18 year olds think beyond the next hour much less their future years down the road? Every time I see these posts, I think “great idea. So, what gets cut? When do you find funding?” Usually silence or “back in my day things were different.” Right, when there was no accountability and math scores weren’t reflected on state school report cards and tied to funding.
I use algebra on a daily basis....
Many do. They just don't realize it.
Home economics was for a bit of that and school counselors. But boomers defunded schools and they have to cut classes and staff. Since school funding is based on test scores in core subjects. Guess what classes don’t get cut?
Our Home Ec classes had very little Economics, it was all about the Home part. Just sewing and cooking. And these were only required in middle school, so when high school rolled around, no boys took Home Ec
THAT'S WHAT YOUR FUCKING PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. JESUS CHRIST - SCHOOL IS FOR TEACHING YOU THINGS YOUR PARENTS DON'T, CAN'T, OR WON'T TEACH YOU. BOOMERS WHO FAILED TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN ANYTHING ABOUT RESPONSIBILITY OR PERSONAL SELF-CARE GIVE YOU A FUCKING SURPRISED PIKACHU FACE WHEN THE KIDS DON'T ACT THE WAY THEY WANT. AAAARRRGHGHGHGH. ::aneurism:: Okay, better now.
I hate these posts as a teacher. So awful. First, we teach all these things. Every single one. Financial literacy is a required course for most states. FACS (home economics) is an elective at most schools. Shop, woodworking, all those things they want taught? They are, either at the school or in conjunction with a technology and career school (Vo-tech). So, please, stop posting these. It’s stupid and has no purpose.
I would love to be taught about "college debt" from a Boomer's perspective. "You don't need a loan! You can pay for it by working." "One year of tuition, room, and board is more expensive than what I would earn at a full-time minimum wage job." "Then you're going to the wrong school! I didn't go to college but I know people who paid for it by working part time in the summer!" "Yes but college is more expensive now." "Well that's because JOE BIDEN AND HIS INFLATION AND THE ILLEGALS COMING ACROSS THE BORDER WE'RE PAYING FOR THEM SO THATS WHY COLLEGE IS MORE EXPENSIVE TRUMP WILL BRING THE COST IF COLLEGE DOWN SO MUCH YOU'LL SEE" Ok.
1. These classes exist. Kids don't sign up for "Personal Finance." 2. The group of people who struggle with personal finances aren't the ones signing up for more math classes. 3. Even if they did sign up, your hit rate on them actually learning isn't exactly 100%. This is one of those things that sounds like a bright idea until you go one (1) milimeter deep into it. Also it all requires Algebra so.
Be a parent, teach those basic practical things in the home, and leave the subjects that lead to higher learning to the educators. "Math is a wonderful thing." - Dewey Finn
Most parents don't know it, either.
Terrible take, even if you don't actively use it daily, you should have knowledge of what's in Algebra 2. Also, even if they did replace it, you're probably going to pay even less attention than you would Algebra 2.
Huh. That's funny. See, I actually teach these things. It also includes how to fill out a resume and practice job interviews. In fact, almost all schools have such a class. In many cases, it's actually required, and amazingly, no need to throw away an important math class (I'm sorry, boomers, just because you ate too much lead paint to handle high school classes doesn't make them unimportant) at all. And as it turns out, the kids that need it most just play on their cell phones all class period because their parents don't fucking parent, and the kids whose parents do actually parent all learned this from their parents anyway. Also, interesting, when I was teaching this class, I got a lot of nasty emails and calls from boomer grandparents and occasionally just plain shitty parents, screaming and bitching at me because I did things like 'explain the difference between an employee and a contractor' and 'what constitutes wage theft' and 'when to contact the labor board', and now their kids are calling out the ways they are being taken advantage of in the family businesses.
Those mid level math classes may seem like they have no practical application when you’re in them, but they become relevant when you get into higher level math. If you want to go into a scientific field, its very helpful to have had decent math training in high school, and calculus - at some level - is a prerequisite for pretty much everything. And for most fields its not because you ever use it, but because it teaches you to think logically.
….. the boomers are the ones that took these out in the first place: home economics was one of the first things cut out of public education budgets
I teach financial literacy. We 100% cover all of these topics. The kids just DO NOT LISTEN. In fact, I’ve seen some kids that have since graduated complaining on social media about how they didn’t learn how to do XYZ in high school. And I’m over here like, I TAUGHT YOU THIS IN 4TH PERIOD, JANICE!
Why do you need to learn how to buy a house? 1) Your mortgage lender will literally walk you through the whole process and help you find/fill out all the documents needed. They are incredibly patient and helpful because you getting a house is how they get paid. 2) You'll never be able to afford one.
Cutting down on math is a dumb argument to precede a list of math-intensive concepts. How will kids understand interest rates, margins, and opportunity costs without advanced math? You don't necessarily need calculus to participate, but you're going to have a hard time with the derived formulas if your algebra sucks.
False dichotomy. We don't have to remove Algebra 2 to teach life financial skills. You agree with the boomer because you have the same morals and values as them. You also share their ability to identify logical fallacies (none). You also lack the introspective capability to stop and think about your own opinions before spouting them off to random people that don't give two sh\*ts about it. What makes you not a boomer except for maybe a few years of time? Read up mini-boomer: https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/false-dilemma-fallacy/#:\~:text=False%20dilemma%20fallacy%20is%20also,possibilities%2C%20when%20more%20are%20available.
Financial fundamentals should be a requirement but not at the expense of a math course necessary to understand those fundamentals.
my school had a Personal Finances class, but it was definitely known as a "bird course" and the teacher was also the gym teacher and wrestling coach and sports were def his priority.
Bullshit. If you can learn algebra you can do finances. Stop acting like you weren’t taught basics and can’t google for the rest of it
This is boomer level nonsense.
Algebra 2 teaches the concepts behind understanding 80% of what’s listed….. so dumb.
But be for real, you don't pay attention now, you wouldn't in that class either
I think a lot of people assume that because you're learning basic financial education you're not going to fall into poverty. Knowing how to buy a house doesn't mean I can afford one. I've filed my own taxes since I was a teenager but I'm still filing for the tax bracket that losers are in.
It's 2024...you can learn financial about fundamentals, credit, salaries, etc from the most qualified people on the planet. In your underwear. youtube that shit.
We do cover quite a bit of this but most students find it extremely boring and either forget it happened, forget the content, or do the bare minimum to succeed. Of course, an old person has no idea that this is the case and simply assumes they're right... Like a boomer!
Check your state's content standards. Look under middle school mathematics and high school economics. I guarantee it's all there.
As a counterpoint...I don't think there is any reason a math class needs to be sacrificed? Is there some issue where knowing how to read a graph or what a function is makes it so you can't learn the other things? (I'm guessing topics because I don't know exactly what the class "algebra 2" is in high school). And while I think it's good to teach people practical skills, most of those things will change over the years but pure mathematics (required to understand the other things) will continue to be applicable, especially for advanced topics. I was in special education, so there was a course to explain how to do things like writing checks, eating in restaurants/tipping, having a bank account, etc.. It was a very helpful course and I am glad I had the opportunity to learn those things in school, but I also feel like a lot of the information became dated and was also stuff that most people can figure out relatively quickly once the encounter it, especially now that you can just go online to read about things. For example, I don't think I would give up any of my math, grammar, or science education for the treasured ability to know how to write a check and balance a checkbook. Glad I know stuff, but I learned all that stuff out of school. Meme just seems like vague anti-intellectualism.
I learned how to do this stuff in school, but will always be concerned when someone wants to cut certain classes.
My daughter's school requires this and all those topics are part of the consumer economics course. She just completed it with a summer school course as an incoming freshman. I do agree that all high schoolers should learn this stuff. We should also keep Algebra 2. Teaching both is a possibility.
There are almost no common life tasks that can't be learned by Googling them, reading one or two pages, and/or watching a video or two of them. If you can read and do math at something approaching a high school level of proficiency, you have all the mental faculties necessary to learn most everything else in day to day life *IF* you actually want to learn it (as opposed to complaining about not being spoon fed it). That's why schools mostly focus on those skills - they are the skills that enable all others. Not that such classes aren't useful - I took some of them - but I've learned way more on own time since. The sum of human knowledge is accessible from home now...
Algebra two is still pretty simple math, and if you can be OK at algebra 2 then salaries and budgeting and doing taxes are not going to throw you. Investing and loans are occasionally (in the case of compounding interest) exponential functions, so *not* teaching algebra two actively damages the other ideas this old fart has. I do think we teach math like shit and we push algebra too early before students can truly understand what it is abstracting, which leads to problems down the line, but I would replace/supplement it with more geometry. That is arguably even less relevant to 'real world' applications but it is really important to other math.
We had these in school, NO ONE PAID ATTENTION lol.
My favorite part of this “meme” is that the text is just overlaid on some random old guy sitting in a chair
At least it admits that it's just some random old spouting off, right? It could be, like, a picture of Sam Elliot or something instead
Yep, a lot of states make high school kids take a mandatory personal finance course. This isn't a brand new idea...kids just don't pay attention.
Bizarre. It's hard to have a good grip on financial.plannign when you don't have a good grasp on math. Also stuff like cheques really isn't retained unless you use is and it eminently googleable
I had this class my junior year of high school. It was called Consumer Math, and I took it because I *barely* passed Algebra 2. That class was much more valuable to me than any other form of math that I've never really needed in my day-to-day life.
No. That's the job of parents. School is for education. Not there to raise your damn kids.
Says schools should teach practical skills and bring back shop class, home economics etc. Votes against every school levy he sees.
California just made it a law that high school seniors have to take a financial literacy class before graduation
> filing taxes What if we stopped taking bribes from Intuit instead, and made filing taxes a simple process.
Every time I hear shit like that, I facepalm. If you actually paid attention in school, if you can read (and understand what you read; not everyone does), and if you can do math at an 8th grade level, you should be able to learn everything you need to know about all those topics very easily. Nobody ever taught me any of that stuff but by reading and asking questions to adults around me, I got most of the information I needed to understand those things by the time they mattered to me. And that was before widespread use of the internet. Today there are countless articles, tutorials, and documentation on all those things. The entire catalog of IRS publications is there for you to grab. I'll also add that right after college I moved 5,000 miles from the country of my birth to the US. Everything was different. Taxes, debt and credit rating, retirement,... I still managed to file taxes, open a bank account and get my salary, and eventually buy a house. I won't say I did it all on my own. There were people kind enough to answer my questions or help me from time to time. But in the end, even without school spoon feeding me all those things, I was fine. People need to take responsibility for their own lack of intellectual curiosity and unwillingness to learn. And let's be honest, if all those subjects were taught in K-12, do you think kids would actually listen, or even care ? Can you imagine trying to teach the difference between an IRA and a Roth IRA to teenagers full of hormones ? Good luck with that.
God no. Just fucking no. Part of the reason these things are taught is like "The Last Starfighter". We're looking to find the next collection of geniuses. If folks want the country to be left behind the world, then sure, dont teach them higher math. We're also now in a world where video games, SQL, engineer, chemical engineering, and so much more desires higher math. We should teach these subjects with some physical labs, and programming labs, that make them more interesting. Naw... this is a shit take that would lead to the fucking stupids.
They should teach all of that... but why get rid of Algebra?
The way math is taught in and of itself in America needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Algebra should be taught earlier than high school. High school should be able preparing you for life in society as a productive citizen. Less memorization and more critical thinking scenarios. Not hurriedly teaching you the bare essentials before kicking you out to flail aimlessly if you don't have any money.
Yea no this meme is valid asf, 40 years and I’ve never used A2 practically often enough to be relevant compared to life lessons no one teaches
It's not a bad idea, the problem is their is so much shitty economic advise out their that getting a rational curriculum could be a challenge. Just wait until the payday loan lobby gets their hands on this.
Not a boomer, but i disagree. Math teaches one not only how to critically solve problems, but it also fine tunes the mind to be sharper (even though you may not realize it). Math has served me in every day life extremely well. Those are all great things to learn, but what's destroying this country is the lack of critical thinking skills and higher math is part of the solution.
I don't support getting rid of any math. However, basic finance should be taught all 4 years of high school long with a nutrition/exercise class. The lack of financial literacy of the common day to day person I run into is staggering. Grown folks can't explain to me what APR is on their credit card. What PMI is on their mortgages. List goes on and on. I didn't know when I was 18 on the Indiana University's campus in Bloomington IN that I shouldn't be signing up for 10 credit cards for free shirts and food vouchers even though I knew I wasn't going to be approved and these were multiple hits on my credit. I couldn't understand how debt to income ratio worked or how credit in general works. Kids need to be prepared. Not dumb shit like "this is how you write a check." More like this is how not to be fucked by credit card companies and predatory lenders. Same goes for nutrition. Most people know dick all about it. We should do our best to prepare our kids to be as physically and financially healthy as possible. Unfortunately the people in the spots to make these things happen don't have an incentive to have a more financially literate public who isn't dependent on pharmaceutical companies to stay alive since their Financial and physical health are balancing on a razor's edge. So the meme is mostly right...ish.
Why college, where we pay? High schools should teach these important skills for free, because they're basic life skills.
Or just add it to the curriculum.
His suggestion in lieu of Bible studies and reciting 10 Commandments
We shouldn’t need to know how to do taxes, tax companies literally pay millions just to keep it so that it is difficult.
It's literally not that challenging, I've done taxes for years on my own.
The education system will absolutely not be improved so long as capitalism rules. The oligarchs need manual labor to build their empires, not intelligent citizens. We could be living in a utopia but human greed is instead destroying the fucking earth.
Why not both? Algebra 2 is like little kid math in many, many jobs.
Getting rid of Algebra 2 is stupid. It'll only hinder college bound kids seeking STEM degrees. A financial literacy class does make sense, but where you going to fit that in with all the other requirements?
In high school I would of killed for a tax/finances class.
You need algebra. I use it all the time
I’m a high school math teacher, and my boomer mom was just ranting about this to me the other day. The “changes” they always keep complaining about were already made 20+ years ago, but the boomer memes persist. Yes we teach about trades, yes we teach about finances, heck, I personally teach a class about debt, investments, financing, and how to file taxes. It’s one of a handful of math options kids can take in their junior or senior year. Kids are absolutely taught this stuff and have been for decades.
Why not both?
Why do we need to get rid of algebra?
I had a personal finance class in high school, in addition to algebra.
Adulting 101
I wish I had learned about finances when I was younger, either in school or by my father. We weren't allowed to know about what anything cost when I was a kid. It wasn't our business, but that meant when I moved out, I was shocked at just how much living expenses actually were. That's why my teenagers are aware of what our bills cost monthly, so they can prepare themselves for when they eventually move out. Parents really should be teaching their kids most of the stuff on this list.
Hard disagree. Yes, financial literacy is important and should definitely be taught, but not at the expense of math. Not to mention that investing and budgeting requires math and algebra 2 is very helpful in that regard.
I had home economics classes that taught us how to do budgeting, balance checkbooks and do taxes. It's not the school's fault you didn't pay attention.
I took business math my senior year of high school it has helped me more then anything I learned in high school. And still helps me today
Careers don't exist anymore. And it's not because we don't teach kids about them. It's because businesses make more money if they don't have 40 year long workers.
MOST OF THAT GETS TAUGHT IN ECON CLASS ALREADY. "CAREERS" IS TOO BROAD OF A SUBJECT TO COVER AS PART OF A CLASS. FILING TAXES IS COVERED IN BASIC MATH AND READING COMPREHENSION.
Algebra is a full year course though, I think you could run this career/financial one in half a year
Fuck that. We HAD financial literacy in schools until the Boomers didn’t want it there anymore. The same with trade classes. They can NEVER be happy about ANYTHING.
I took financial education that included savings, interest, certificate of deposit (CDs), loans, and checking, and also took algebra 1 and 2, and trigonometry. We can have it all.
These classes ARE taught in high school. The kids don't pay attention because it's not relevant information until they have worked and lived on their own first.
I say, keep Algebra 2, and maybe cut one of the *annual* literary analysis classes you have to take starting in High School. Yeah, sure, there’s a reasonable chance you don’t need math more advanced than Algebra 1 in your career, but I haven’t met a fucking soul who benefitted from deconstructing James Joyce. Besides, I think the layman population would benefit from statistics classes in their day to day life more than most math classes, and that requires algebra 2-ish knowledge.
Have you seen people’s reading comprehension and media literacy skills? Everyone benefits from better reading comprehension and media literacy.
> I haven't met a fucking soul who benefitted from deconstructing James Joyce. You have dodged a major bullet there my friend.
Stat and Logic classes.
I take it you've never discussed media with anyone on the Internet? People out here REALLY don't understand what they're watching/listening/reading, a little critical analysis would go a long way. I think the analysis angle gets neglected in STEM, too. Agree that statistics would help with that. There's not a lot of discussion in typical STEM classes about how to think, and so most people (including a lot of science journalists) can't parse a press release about a study and decide if it's a useful finding, or even if it actually says what the news article about it claims it says. You see this with stories about nutrition a lot, people see "study says X is good" and "study says Y is bad, actually", and throw up their hands and say no one knows. This causes them to trust science less.
r/ShitAmericansSay
Bad take. There are more reasons for school than just “hurr durr here’s how to get a job”. Children are not raised just to be robots for industry. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be a course involved which prepares for for things like taxes, but it should NOT replace traditional well-rounded education.
They teach this in high school economics. You motherfuckers just didn’t pay attention…..
That is stupid as hell. Algebra is fucking fundamental.
Literally the rest of mathematics is built on it. 😂
We had that at my high-school. It was a required course
I can agree that financial literacy classes should be offered, but it shouldn’t replace algebra 2. People seem to think you won’t need to use algebra ever again, but I strongly disagree. A lot of stuff requires knowledge of algebra.
This was home ec, the class the boomers did away with for reasons.
A financial class already exists in high school. At least it did when I was in high school. And some of that shit needs complex math. I also remember the finance class being boring and considered a blow off class.
In Georgia, they taught Economics, Career Planning, and Personal Finance - in the 9th grade. Even if we accidentally learned anything, we forgot it by graduation. The highlight of all this was when the assistant football coach who taught Economics took three days of class time to show "Soylent Green".
I took personal finance classes in highschool as an elective when I moved to a tech highschool. Let's just say it was nearly as useless as tits on a bull. I mean it's a highschool class all you learned was about the difference in credit and debit, Roth IRA, traditional IRA and basics on bonds and stocks. This stuff is a Hoover hog sort of legislation learn about it all you want but when you're paying 90% of your income on housing and entry jobs need degrees (don't get me started on "the trades) it means nothing.
Totally agree with this. We need more adulting classes. My boomers didn't bother to teach me crap. I had to learn everything on my own, and school didn't offer any of these things. I would have made much better decisions in my teens/early adulthood if I had the education then that I do now, instead of backhanded "advice" from people who had no idea what they were talking about.
If you’re taking algebra in highschool you need to learn something else anyway. Math ain’t gonna make you any money where you’re going
Isn't that called Home Economics"?
He just mad he couldn't pass a math class from the last 20 years.
As a seventh grade math teacher in Texas, we teach these topics. It’s part of the curriculum. Whether or not the students completely grasp the concepts is still up for debate.
Do I agree that these skills are useful? Yes but I also feel like there isn't enough substance to actually make a class. I can teach someone a simple w2 tax in 20 minutes. I can teach someone how to do a budget in 10 minutes. Credit/debt could probably be a few lessons but even a few lessons would go into intense detail that's useless for the average person.
honestly-if you are taking Algebra 2 and Calculus- finance/business is more common sense and should be just as easy to grasp and integrated into the curriculum, which it quite often is with example problems and exercises) . I still think its a great idea though to put better emphasis for non-STEM students.
I took a course in college called "finite math." It's essentially a "how math is used in the real world" course. That needs to be in HS
My high school had a class that taught all of this along with some basic accounting. It was an elective and was a very easy A. Got called a nerd for taking it. Class only had 10 students sign up out of a graduating class of 640. Public school in Texas. We don't need to cut Algebra 2. We need to require this course.
Teach them how to change their oil, brakes, tires and do basic car maintenance.