Personal Finance for Teens Unleashed : Financial Literacy: Do high school classes make a difference?

April is National Financial Literacy Month: Do high school classes make a difference?

In 2011 President Obama proclaimed April as National Financial Literacy Month. In his proclamation he stated, “Our Nation's prosperity will ultimately depend on our willingness as individuals to empower ourselves and our families with financial knowledge. “

Fast forward to 2015, one thing that we can all seem to agree on as parents and educators is that an understanding of financial literacy is important to our children. What we can’t seem to work out, according to Hank Coleman of Daily Finance, is who will teach the courses; how will school districts fund the new courses; and how will these courses fit into already overly crowded curriculums?

In addition to these logistics problems, Professor Julie Heath, director of the Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati, reports that teachers feel unqualified to teach financial literacy. “Eighty-two percent say they are not prepared to teach these concepts," she says.

One of the reasons for this uneasiness may be that some school districts rely on math, science, home economics and technology teachers (among others) to incorporate financial literacy lessons into their curriculum instead of offering a separate personal finance course.

The good news is that financial literacy classes in high school do make a difference. According to an article in USA Today (by Hadley Malcolm), a study of 65,000 college students showed that – “first-year college students required to take a financial literacy course in high school are significantly more likely than their peers who didn't take a class to be financially responsible.”

The study revealed that, “students who took a class did better on the survey’s financial knowledge questions, were found to be more averse to debt, more likely to pay credit card bills on time, and less likely to go over their credit limit.”

If you have been asked to incorporate financial literacy into your curriculum, and are at a loss of where to start, try these FREE introductory lessons with your students.

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