Yes, you CAN have your cake and eat it too!
I live in a small mountain town named Rightwood, so named because everyone in the town thinks they are right, including me! We often meet friends, neighbors, and acquaintances in the minimart, post office (no home delivery), and hardware store. So I was picking up the mail and Marilyn (a friend) ran up to congratulate me on the passage of AB 2927, claiming that all of my good work had finally paid off. She knows that I have been working on Economics for Empowerment most of my career. She explained that she was delighted that students would be able to learn about money as opposed to the stuff she learned in her boring, irrelevant, theoretical and highly abstract economics college course.
Now Melissa is not one of the Great Unwashed. She has a pretty good grasp of Economics. So I told her to hold on for a minute. Let’s look at what California Assembly Bill 2927 does and doesn’t do. The Bill requires high school students graduating by 2030 to successfully complete a one semester course in personal finance… I think. It retains the one semester high school economics course requirement…sort of. It allows students who take the finance course to opt out of the econ course…kind of. It forbids a combined econ personal finance course…maybe. It’s a little confusing!
So I kind of went off. “Listen Melissa,” I said,” If districts interpret the bill to be a call to end the Economics requirement, they will be robbing their students of a life-changing opportunity. As opposed to the course that you described, the high school Economics course that is well taught, following the California Standards and Framework, will help students use benefit cost analysis for all major decisions including financial decisions. Students won’t have to worry about managing their finances if they don’t earn an income and they are unlikely to earn an income if they don’t develop their skills, knowledge, experiences, and personal qualities…their human capital. Economic reasoning will help students apply the principles of demand and supply to investigate the potential for earning an income in particular industries. It will help them recognize their financial opportunities and challenges in the current and future macroeconomy. It will help them understand the impact of domestic and international policies on their financial standing and prevent them from supporting policies that violate their self-interest. In short, it will help prepare them for success in the 21st century global economy.
“A few examples of ways in which economic reasoning informs financial education. Once students understand benefit cost analysis they can use it to make decisions concerning the best combination of school and work, buying with cash or credit, buying and maintaining a car or using public transportation or depending on the family car, life after high school – work or training or community college or four year college or some combination of their options, budgeting money and budgeting themselves (their human capital), and any other financial decisions they make now or later in life.
“Can students make informed decisions about product(spending) and labor (earning) markets without understanding the connections between the two? Do they know that a decline in one product market means a decline in the related labor market which means that workers will lose their jobs, that planning a career in industries where supply and demand conditions are going to limit employment opportunities may toss them into the ranks of the unemployed? Do they know that voting for a particular candidate may lead to policies that violate their financial self-interest?
“Ideally, students would start in Pre-K, learning about both economics and finance. Then, at each grade, teachers could scaffold the instruction to apply economic reasoning to increasingly sophisticated human capital development and financial issues. They could have their cake (economic reasoning with personal finance icing) and eat it too! The reality is that most students get a one semester course in Economics in the 12th grade. Regardless of standards or frameworks, this is their only shot at learning the economic rules of the game. Do we really want to throw them into the economic waters without teaching them to swim?” Melissa, economic reasoning is not an important skill; it is a survival skill.”
At this point, Melissa was looking a little offended. We were drawing a crowd in the post office which is never a good thing. She just looked at me and said, “Well, that all sounds fine but that is certainly not the course that I took, nor is it the course that most of my friends took. So Mr. Professor (she doesn’t usually call me that) good luck with the econ course you are describing. It sounds much too sensible to ever become law!”
And then she stomped out…sort of!