This link has been bookmarked by 9 people . It was first bookmarked on 23 Jul 2008, by harry palmer.
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23 May 10
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it is pretty horrible news to learn that so many older people are ill-equipped in the basics of saving and investing.
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The good news is that economics is being taught much more in high school now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
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According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”), 9 of 10 high-school students said they were exposed to some economics education, up from 1 in 4 in 1982. According to the National Council on Economic Education, 17 states now require students to take an econ course to graduate, up from 13 states in 1998.
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So how’s it working? Not very well. According to the latest annual survey by the JumpStart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, “high school seniors correctly answered only 48.3 percent of the questions,” down from 52.4 percent a year earlier.
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if perhaps unsurprising — split in the population: “Those with low education, women, African-Americans, and Hispanics display particularly low levels of literacy.”
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what good is it if high-school students learn about Flaubert, biology, and trigonometry if they don’t learn how to take care of their money? One bright side to the increasingly dark economic news these days is that more and more people will learn (albeit the hard way) Rule No. 1: Do not buy what you cannot afford.
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Was there ever a time when financial literacy was better taught in U.S. schools? (I believe that “home economics,” back when it was born, included some home-finance component, didn’t it?)
A: Some type of consumer education has been present from the early years (1930’s and 1940’s). Between 1957 and 1985, 29 states adopted legislation mandating some form of “consumer” education in secondary schools. Fourteen states specifically required coverage of topics relevant to household financial decision making, from budgeting and credit management to balancing checkbooks. Yet, if you read the results from the JumpStart Coalition Survey of Personal Financial Literacy, financial knowledge is very low in high school and not improving.
Because of this evidence, some have argued against teaching financial literacy in high school (and against financial literacy education in general). In my judgment, this is premature. In fact, this evidence can be interpreted as showing that we need to improve the way in which we teach financial literacy in school.
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in fact, some financial literacy can be integrated into mathematics), but should be added into the curriculum with the same high standing.
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Among the barriers about teaching financial literacy in school are 1) lack of resources and financial support (and we need well trained teachers); 2) the fragmentation of the legislation (most of the decisions about curricula are done at the state and local level); and 3) the lack of consensus about what to teach (many institutions, including banks, are devising high school curricula and there is a wide spectrum of curricula out there).
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10 Nov 09
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13 Oct 08
Abigail LundyThis blog, published by Stephen Dubner, talks about financial literacy among high school students, and the problems in a dangerously low financial literacy level. He also helps diagnose financial literacy by offering a series of questions to test the reader's own financial literacy. It is a very useful article to use not only in studying the financial literacy of America, but also to diagnose yourself on your own financial literacy. The comments posted on the blog are also very informative of the reactions to the freakonomics blog.
freakonomics Stephen Dubner financial literacy Financial Aliteracy AL1200
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23 Jul 08
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Those three questions are the ones that Lusardi, along with Olivia Mitchell of Penn, have been inserting in a variety of major U.S. surveys. In a new working paper titled “Financial Literacy: An Essential Tool for Informed Consumer Choice?” (abstract here, download here), Lusardi writes that among respondents age 50 and older, only half of them got the first two answers right and only one-third of them got all three answers right.
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22 Jul 08
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