On 11/01/2016 5:21 AM, Janet wrote:
>
> Nancy wrote
>>>
>>> They need to teach personal finance in the schools.
>
> I went to an all-girls High school in a small rural town in England
> in the late 50's early 60's, and that's exactly what they did. It was
> rather unusual then and I don't think it's done now.
>
> Disguised as the Arithmetic part of Maths, we were taught how to
> budget household accounts, how to calculate simple and compound interest
> on mortgage loans, how to fill in income tax returns, subtract every
> possible tax-free allowance and calculate the tax due: and how to fill
> in a cheque.
>
> Of course,at the time we thought it was duller than dust :-)
>
> Janet UK
>
Back in the 50s and 60s in rural Aust, girls were taught 'Home
Economics'. That included cooking, sewing and, as you've noted, family
budgeting, though not disguised within the maths subject. The boys, on
the other hand, did woodwork, metalwork, tech drawing and, in the case
of that particular school, agriculture. It was one of the few remaining
ag schools, after all.

These topics were electives but were taken up by all. I can only ever
remember one boy who took cooking and that was because he wanted to be a
chef. As it turned out, he became a baker instead and owns a number of
bakeries these days.

A couple of other electives were typing, which all the girls took, and
business principles, taken by both boys and girls. In later years, in
the era of computers, typing would be taken by both boys and girls.

In effect, personal finance, then, was taught as a discrete topic to the
girls and the boys received the training embedded into the topic of
business principles.

We may have had some 'home budgeting' in the maths topic but that would
have been more in the way of worked examples rather than as a discrete
sub-topic.

--

Xeno