Comment by triceratops 4 days ago
> Where do you send your money to invest?
If they had taught you that in high school 10 or 20 years years ago, it would be outdated by now. People used to save in savings accounts. Then 401ks. Then individual brokerage accounts with index funds. Now crypto or whatever is hot using some fintech app.
> What is a stock?
That's fair. It can come up in basic economics but not always.
I think an understanding of why those systemic changes happened would go a long way in preparing for what’s next.
> it would be outdated by now.
It's way easier to update the tail end of knowledge you have and practices you've learnt than to start from scratch when you have no time.
Likewise, if the only stuff we could teach in grade school was stuff that would never become outdated, then we wouldn't even be able to teach more than the highest level of recent history, math foundations, super basic geology and physics, which is a pathetically low bar. Things change, it's the way it is, we should have a higher standard.
Kids won't otherwise get early exposure to learning how to start a business unless their parents did so, or investing unless their parents did, which means they probably had a surplus of resources at home and the cycle of a widening class divide continues.
The most powerful type of compound interest is early exposure to anything; an idea, a sport, money, business, computers, art. If your parents did it, you're off to a great start, but if they didn't, you're automatically set back at least a decade if not two for any of those, and public school should aim to smooth out those bumps.
> If they had taught you that in high school 10 or 20 years years ago, it would be outdated by now.
That's a fair criticism, but I don't think it's enough to outweigh the benefits. I think I learned how to write a check in second grade. It was useful information.