(PartiallyPolitics.com) – In the past few years, many schools have started to add personal finance classes as part of the requirements for high school students. This has led to some financial literacy activists hoping that financial literacy was finally going to be given the attention it deserved.
A Next Gen Personal Finance tracker has shown that in 2020, personal finance courses for high schoolers were only available in eight states. However, since then the number has increased to 25 states, with eight of those having fully implemented financial literacy courses in their classes.
FitMoney executive director Jessica Pelletier has argued that it appears like the states are just starting to take notice of what has been happening over the last few years. She further speculated that the COVID-19 pandemic might have boosted the efforts by parents and educators to include these teachings in the curriculum as the economy plummeted and many households struggled to make it financially.
Experts have argued that these classes were not just about writing checks. As Pelletier pointed out the current conditions have resulted in legislators taking notice of educators and parents pushing for these programs to become available in schools.
The American Bankers Association (ABA) Foundation executive director Lindsay Torrico argued that they had doubled the number of people who were seeking access to their financial education resources since 2019. She added that last year they had launched a new effort to have more banks engaged in financial education and that so far the response has been very positive with around 816 banks having joined.
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