Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
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This isn't to exonerate all of the poor for any responsibility for their situation - plenty of poor are addicted to expensive and terrible habits (e.g. nicotine/alcohol/crack/whatever), take little responsibility for their own lot, have extremely poor parenting skills (not to mention family planning!), etc. But I think many of the poor who are just barely scraping by but work their asses off would be greatly helped by some improved financial literacy and quantitative education.


It's not such a great comment on our public schools that teaching these things is not part of standard classes. People assume kids learn these things at home, but look at the number of middle or even upper income adults who have crippling debt, lost their homes to foreclosure, or aren't prepared for retirement at all. Being financially illiterate isn't just reserved for poor people.

<Years ago, I learned about household budgeting, meal planning and nutriton in Home Economics. It was "easy" for me because my family had been teaching me that stuff since I was tiny. But there were no boys in Home Ec back then, they took Accounting or Shop. My own boys learned at home and through Boy Scouts, the merit was called Personal Financial Management or something like that. In elementary school they all went to a Junior Achievement interactive called Busy Town, but it was only two days and not graded....>