Bob Jain: Can Young Students Learn About Financial Topics?

By Jennifer Marie Anderson


When it comes to the courses one would learn in grade school, a number of different topics can come to mind. Earth science and algebra may be just a couple of examples but you probably would have never thought about finance being something that an 11-year-old would be able to pick up on. However, it seems as though there is truth to this and Bob Jain will be able to say the same. With this in mind, how useful can a topic like finance be at such a young age?

There was a report posted on the Guardian that went into detail about how more finance-focused courses will start to become more commonplace in the English national curriculum. If you are curious about what the specific topics will be, everything from pensions to simple financial math problems will be taught. One has to wonder, though, if information like this will prove useful for those who are between the ages of 11 and 16. After all, it's easy to make the argument that these children are too young to concern themselves with such matters.

It seems as though this change in the school curriculum was made as a result of ongoing debt-related problems, which makes said change more understandable. If these problems persist, Bob Jain will agree that young men and women should be able to approach them with learned frames of mind. It's clear that most children do not know about the specifics tied to finance or even what it is that makes an effective budget. Details like the ones to be learned about in school, according to authorities like Jain, could prove useful.

From what I have seen, though, there are quite a few concerns amongst those who will soon start school and their parents. For many, they are confused as to why exactly they have to learn about these sorts of things at young ages. It's also worth discussing how a focus on financial matters could, potentially, take away from other subjects. If this means that there will be less of an emphasis placed on history or creative writing, I cannot imagine many students responding to it with positivity intact.

If you ask me, this story is nothing but an early report that we don't know all of the details about. How exactly are these classes going to impact the learning process in general? Seeing as how the school year is not going to begin for a while, all we can do is speculate and hope that they do not take away from the other classes that students have been primed to learn from. While I see the value in financial classes, I am of the opinion that they must be handled with care.




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