Why high school kids are financially illiterate

cawacko said:
This is getting away from the financial literacy aspect but I was talking with my partner at work who has a son in 10th grade. He said his boy gets out of school at 3, does cross country until 5, does homework from 5 to 8, dinner with the family for an hour, and then homework from 9 to 11. This is his daily routine. He said his son doesn't have time to listen to music, watch TV, talk to his friends etc. He thinks it's way too much.

My (work) partner said he's taking an AP History class and the teacher said there will be two hours of homework each night. I think he said his son had five classes total. Can you imagine if each class said that?

So part of me likes that this kid is having to work hard but part of me is thinking there is more to life and more to being a teenager than spending five hours a night doing homework every day including weekends. What do you others think?
Click to expand...

I am a veteran school teacher and I say we have to allow good kids time to be kids. I am a strong proponent of sports programs both school sponsored and otherwise and have worked in both...and continue to...because I see the importance of lessons taught outside the classroom. Math teachers are notorious for giving lots of work for kids to do at home. I really make an effort for the kid to have no more than 20 - 30 minutes of work at home...and there's more than one reason for that. I agree with you cawacko, I see parents pushing their kids to the brink all the time trying to get them ahead, and while that is admirable on the surface (you know, wanting better for your kid), I have seen what the underlying effects can be...burnout, rebellion, even suicide. Again, I am off the thread topic here but this is an area that I am very passionate about. I could talk all day about common sense education reforms....now if only someone would listen. ;)
 
cawacko said:
This is getting away from the financial literacy aspect but I was talking with my partner at work who has a son in 10th grade. He said his boy gets out of school at 3, does cross country until 5, does homework from 5 to 8, dinner with the family for an hour, and then homework from 9 to 11. This is his daily routine. He said his son doesn't have time to listen to music, watch TV, talk to his friends etc. He thinks it's way too much.

My (work) partner said he's taking an AP History class and the teacher said there will be two hours of homework each night. I think he said his son had five classes total. Can you imagine if each class said that?

So part of me likes that this kid is having to work hard but part of me is thinking there is more to life and more to being a teenager than spending five hours a night doing homework every day including weekends. What do you others think?
Click to expand...

It has gotten completely out of hand. Two hours of homework a night for just one course? Ridiculous.
 
This conversation is silly.

I graduated high school over 30 years ago and was taught zip about finances in school.

It's largely common sense, which is unteachable.
 
No, not really. . .


Well, Thinking about the educational needs of the country, and what I consider ideal, I want to see public education specialized towards merit and performance.


Looking at the idea that teachers teach to the tests and to the mediocre, we should be teaching instead to their levels of performance.

The high achievers go off to their own classes and less able to their own classes. We separate them so that they might receive more individual attention and better cater to their needs. Entering high school we should be encouraging children to choose a school where they can learn their careers, and provide schools capable of training student in these ways. Not every child needs to go to college. Some will have a more hands experience for skilled labour while the higher performers should receive a more intense course. All children would essentially be encouraged to pursue their own interests, but we reward those who achieve and provide job skills for those would rather not learn 'something they will never use in the real world'.

Ideally. I have had a few discussions and there are of course some concerns raised, but in a world where we should be judging people based on merit we need to start with the children and encourage them to achieve. People are 'unique', and we need to teach children so.
 
It's not too hard to teach... At a very young age our children understood a balance, what it meant to be overdrawn, what debt was...

We used marbles and a glass jar, each marble worth $0.25, when they finished a chore they got the amount of marbles that chore was worth into their jar. When we were out they could spend their "marble money"... They learned quickly to keep track of their marbles and not to overspend. One even saved up over $300 so she could buy a dog.
 
I Love America said:
It has gotten completely out of hand. Two hours of homework a night for just one course? Ridiculous.
Click to expand...

That was my thought as well. What if every teacher felt that way? He would have ten hours of homework a night. The dad told me he went to the school counselor just to talk about it and the counselor thought it was out of hand as well but said there wasn't a lot he could about it. Lovely.
 
leaningright said:
I am a veteran school teacher and I say we have to allow good kids time to be kids. I am a strong proponent of sports programs both school sponsored and otherwise and have worked in both...and continue to...because I see the importance of lessons taught outside the classroom. Math teachers are notorious for giving lots of work for kids to do at home. I really make an effort for the kid to have no more than 20 - 30 minutes of work at home...and there's more than one reason for that. I agree with you cawacko, I see parents pushing their kids to the brink all the time trying to get them ahead, and while that is admirable on the surface (you know, wanting better for your kid), I have seen what the underlying effects can be...burnout, rebellion, even suicide. Again, I am off the thread topic here but this is an area that I am very passionate about. I could talk all day about common sense education reforms....now if only someone would listen. ;)
Click to expand...

lr, the dad I work with felt all this homework (including hours and hours on the weekend) was going to burn his son out.
 
Rana said:
This is just what a kid needs if he wishes to get into a good college. AP classes are suppose to be college level courses. It sounds like this is the life the kid wants, or he wouldn't be working so hard!
Click to expand...

well... but there are some theories that just more homework doesn't help kids learn; and piling on workloads like this can lead kids to abuse ritalin and other substances. Two hours of homework every night for one class seems excessive. I didn't do that much homework in college.
 
Dionaea said:
No, not really. . .


Well, Thinking about the educational needs of the country, and what I consider ideal, I want to see public education specialized towards merit and performance.


Looking at the idea that teachers teach to the tests and to the mediocre, we should be teaching instead to their levels of performance.

The high achievers go off to their own classes and less able to their own classes. We separate them so that they might receive more individual attention and better cater to their needs. Entering high school we should be encouraging children to choose a school where they can learn their careers, and provide schools capable of training student in these ways. Not every child needs to go to college. Some will have a more hands experience for skilled labour while the higher performers should receive a more intense course. All children would essentially be encouraged to pursue their own interests, but we reward those who achieve and provide job skills for those would rather not learn 'something they will never use in the real world'.

Ideally. I have had a few discussions and there are of course some concerns raised, but in a world where we should be judging people based on merit we need to start with the children and encourage them to achieve. People are 'unique', and we need to teach children so.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree with all of the above. That's why I wanted you to elaborate ... I surmised from your "specialize schools" this was the direction you might be thinking. Thanks for taking the time.
 
cawacko said:
lr, the dad I work with felt all this homework (including hours and hours on the weekend) was going to burn his son out.
Click to expand...

Is he a Senior? Is he taking AP courses? I can see letting kids be kids, but by your Senior year, you better stop playing and get serious.

This makes me shake my head, letting kids be kids use to be the argument of the left, now it is cawacko and leaningright making the argument.

Must be opposite day!
 
Dionaea said:
No, not really. . .


Well, Thinking about the educational needs of the country, and what I consider ideal, I want to see public education specialized towards merit and performance.


Looking at the idea that teachers teach to the tests and to the mediocre, we should be teaching instead to their levels of performance.

The high achievers go off to their own classes and less able to their own classes. We separate them so that they might receive more individual attention and better cater to their needs. Entering high school we should be encouraging children to choose a school where they can learn their careers, and provide schools capable of training student in these ways. Not every child needs to go to college. Some will have a more hands experience for skilled labour while the higher performers should receive a more intense course. All children would essentially be encouraged to pursue their own interests, but we reward those who achieve and provide job skills for those would rather not learn 'something they will never use in the real world'.

Ideally. I have had a few discussions and there are of course some concerns raised, but in a world where we should be judging people based on merit we need to start with the children and encourage them to achieve. People are 'unique', and we need to teach children so.
Click to expand...


High achievers DO get their own classes - "gifted and talented" programs, AP classes, etc.

I do think we need to invest more heavily in vo-tech programs for those kids who don't want to go to college.

But this gets back to Prop 13 - with the funding cuts it caused, schools have trouble providing the basics, much less extras like financial awareness classes, vo-tech, etc.
 
Rana said:
Is he a Senior? Is he taking AP courses? I can see letting kids be kids, but by your Senior year, you better stop playing and get serious.

This makes me shake my head, letting kids be kids use to be the argument of the left, now it is cawacko and leaningright making the argument.

Must be opposite day!
Click to expand...

OK, Spongebob... ;)

I even think high school seniors shouldn't have to spend two hours of homework per night on a particular. They have, on average, 54 more years (according to what the Bible says ;)) to be adults even after their Senior year. Again, coming from a small community and having attended a small school, I can say that my Senior year was among the best years of my life. I have done OK since and didn't work myself to a frazzle that year. I mean, the option ought to be there for the student who desires it, but I have certainly seen the negative effects (more often than folks might think) of the parents, and subsequently the teachers, pushing too hard.
 
Rana said:
Is he a Senior? Is he taking AP courses? I can see letting kids be kids, but by your Senior year, you better stop playing and get serious.

This makes me shake my head, letting kids be kids use to be the argument of the left, now it is cawacko and leaningright making the argument.

Must be opposite day!
Click to expand...

He's a sophomore.

It was the dad who said let kids be kids (and he's from Portugal so he's on the left in America politically but that's really neither here nor there). I'm in the middle here. Kids need to work but at a certain point it becomes excessive and five hours a night and two hours for one class is excessive to me.
 
tekkychick said:
High achievers DO get their own classes - "gifted and talented" programs, AP classes, etc.

I do think we need to invest more heavily in vo-tech programs for those kids who don't want to go to college.

But this gets back to Prop 13 - with the funding cuts it caused, schools have trouble providing the basics, much less extras like financial awareness classes, vo-tech, etc.
Click to expand...

Definitely love the idea of investing in Tech Schools. College never was for everyone, still ain't, no matter what politicians say. And still, while there are some AP classes, in your average high school in your average town, more and more cuts have caused a shortage of teachers, which leads to a more streamlined schedule and fewer diverse classes. In 1996, I taught a group of kids in Applied Math, an algebra based math class for the non-college bound. I affectionately called them my "sweathogs" and they were a great class. We learned a lot of useful stuff that year. I was only able to do that because our school district could afford 2 secondary level math teachers at the time. Not anymore.

A couple of democratic governors and republican governors later, school districts are running on skeleton crews.

So what you end up with are kids who should be experiencing different educational paths crammed into one class....say, Algebra II. With such a difference between the top and the bottom, teachers are forced to teach to the middle in most Algebra II classes and the top kids fail to get challenged and the bottom kids are left behind, no mater what NCLB says.
 
cawacko said:
He's a sophomore.

It was the dad who said let kids be kids (and he's from Portugal so he's on the left in America politically but that's really neither here nor there). I'm in the middle here. Kids need to work but at a certain point it becomes excessive and five hours a night and two hours for one class is excessive to me.
Click to expand...

Interesting, in Alaska only Seniors are allowed to take AP courses.
 
Damocles said:
It's not too hard to teach... At a very young age our children understood a balance, what it meant to be overdrawn, what debt was...

We used marbles and a glass jar, each marble worth $0.25, when they finished a chore they got the amount of marbles that chore was worth into their jar. When we were out they could spend their "marble money"... They learned quickly to keep track of their marbles and not to overspend. One even saved up over $300 so she could buy a dog.
Click to expand...

Great stuff.

My mother was good at making lessons like that, which I in turn pass on.

Even when I was only 6 years-old she'd be driving the car along, explaining why you don't pass garbage trucks (you might hit the worker), or drive behind trucks with ladders on top (you're only safe as the guy strapped down the ladder was careful), etc. I guess it was a lot of thinking out loud, but it all sunk it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top