The personal finance course is a waste of time. Yup, one of the only things in school that can try to prepare us for life after high school is a waste of time.

Schools should take responsibility in teaching their students the majority or all of the information within the personal finance course, otherwise there is no guarantee students will actually learn and value the material. I’m sure we can all name at least one person who paid someone to do theirs or was paid to do someone else’s.

The school’s administrative staff is well aware of this issue, as it’s probably occurred as long as the course has existed. To address this, starting next school year RHS plans on making everyone take the final exam of the course on school grounds while being monitored by a staff member. However, this does not address the main issue – that in its current format, students do not learn from nor place value on the course meant to teach them crucial life skills.

Considering a sizeable chunk of the student population didn’t even do the personal finance course, they must not find it important enough to be self-motivated.

If I’m being honest, even as someone who did take the course, most of the information I took from it didn’t make all that much of an impact. All I can remember is that you shouldn’t put more than 33% of your income into rent. That’s pretty much it.

If my life depended on explaining the four chapters of the course to you, I genuinely don’t think I’d be able to recall more than a few sentences worth.

And yet, I do remember that it took me nearly seven hours to complete the course, which really isn’t all that realistic when you think about the fact that a large portion of the student population has to go to work most days of the week and have actual homework to do from their classes at school.

They don’t have the time to spend on a course that does not even teach the material in an effective way.

If the school implemented the content from the personal finance course into the classes we’re already required to take, we wouldn’t have to punish kids for trying to weasel out of doing it, or make it intimidating for the years of students ahead.

Or, maybe we could cut half the content out of the course and just plop the rest of it into Government and Economics and span it over a week-long lesson. This way no one would be cheating to pass and everyone still gets the same information.

Otherwise, students will continue to not value the course and the apathy towards it will prevent students from being prepared when exiting high school.