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« Skeptics' Circle #26 The RantsCarnival of the Godless #32 »

A Little Something We Like to Call "Job Security"
2006.01.22 (Sun) 00:12

Now this is just sad.

More than half of students at four-year colleges and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers, a study found.

The literacy study funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the first to target the skills of graduating students, finds that students fail to lock in key skills no matter their field of study.

The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.

Without "proficient" skills, or those needed to perform more complex tasks, students fall behind. They cannot interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.

These are the complex tasks?! Balancing a checkbook, calculating a tip, interpreting those little tables on exercise equipment, and understanding credit card offers? Another version of this article also mentions comparing the per ounce cost of food. Hell, these aren't complex tasks, they are extraordinarily basic tasks. Each of them requires two things: the ability to parse and comprehend what you are reading, and the ability to do elementary school level math. What the fuck is wrong with these people? This isn't differential calculus, it's simple addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication — skills that were taught in grade school. Fuck!

Now, we're reasonably sure that most of the people who failed these basic tests knew how to do the math involved, so we have to assume that they simply didn't know how to apply what they know to the situation at hand. But frankly, that's pretty staggering as well. To us, this isn't a statement about lack of education, it's a statement about lack of basic intelligence. What the heck can be done about that?

Of course, this is the same apparent stupidity that spurs calls to stop credit card companies from offering credit cards to people under 21. Some people would mandate parental consent, or even parental co-signing for the card, while others would ask for demonstrated income sufficient to pay the expected monthly bills. Others would require classes in credit management, and still others think that if you're under 21, you just shouldn't be able to have a credit card at all.

First of all, it's important to note that not all excessive credit card (or other) debt is due to stupidity. There are many valid reasons that intelligent and responsible people end up in debt with no way out. However, there also seems to be a segment of the US population that has no comprehension of how credit works, and as a result they end up in massive debt for the rest of their lives, with a credit rating in the toilet to boot. It is this latter group that we are talking about here.

The idea of protecting people from their own stupidity is nice, but when it infringes upon the rights of the non-stupid, it becomes harmful. If someone is not a minor, then insisting upon parental consent (or co-signing) before a credit card can be issued is placing an undue burden on an adult. The same goes for mandating a credit management class — this isn't rocket science, and many people are capable of figuring out how credit cards work all by themselves. Finally, demanding demonstrated income sufficient to pay the estimated monthly bills is just plain crap — if the monthly payments are estimated based on the spending habits of the more moronic credit card holders, then few people with full-time jobs would have enough income to pay that assumed bill, let alone college students. Of course, if you are responsible in your credit card use, then you don't need much income at all to pay your monthly bills, now, do you?

But this problem isn't limited to credit cards and restaurant tips — our guess is that this mass stupidity is behind the wild popularity of evolution denial in the United States as well. Yes, we know that religion is a big part of that movement, but without an underlying lack of intelligence or proper education (or, more usually, both), these people would eventually realize that Creationism and Intelligent Design were nothing but unscientific bullshit, and they would move on. For our dime, it's the combination of religious indoctrination and basic stupidity that creates a Creationist — one without the other just doesn't do it. We just have difficulty believing that an intelligent person to whom the theory of evolution has been explained, and the evidence has been presented, could ever deny the simple fact that evolution is real.

Whether the particular statistics detailed in this study are shown to be accurate or not, it's clear that there's a problem in this country, and to us, that problem appears to be one of intelligence; as far as we can tell, no amount of income or remedial math classes can solve it. Sadly, we don't know if anything can.


— • —
[  Filed under: % Business & the Economy  ]

Comments (18)

Dikkii, 2006.01.22 (Sun) 09:12 [Link] »

Hi folks,

G'day from Melbourne. I found this most illuminating, given that we've just started a program here in Oz to improve peoples' Financial Literacy. They've even started a government taskforce to deal with the problem.

Link is here

Of course, what this "solution" aims to address is aimed more at savings and wealth creation - that is, for example, managed funds, share-ownership, superannuation etc. - than everyday stuff like credit card debt.

My personal thoughts is that it's an education problem - kids get taught how to perform things of a mathematical nature at school but nowhere do they get taught how this is going to be relevant to them.

Example, I learnt about matrices and linear algebra at school, but I can't for the life of me work out how an algebraic function involving a matrix can be applied to everyday life. I had to have a mate of mine tell me that it took him till the final year of his electrical engineering degree before he worked it out. And even then, he can still only see how it relates to his chosen discipline.

I think that you're being unbelievably lenient on secondary school educators if you're suggesting that the problem is fully stupidity related.

Having said that, if I were given a piece of paper like a credit card application and I didn't understand what it meant, I think that I would be being pretty stupid in signing the goddamned thing in the first place.

Good article.



Ford, 2006.01.22 (Sun) 16:27 [Link] »

I blame it on mtv.



jay denari, 2006.01.22 (Sun) 18:58 [Link] »

Looking at the survey's website itself, I think this story is an example of ONE element of the research blown out of proportion. As AIR's summary itself says:

Students about to graduate from college have higher prose and document literacy than previous graduates with similar levels of education; for quantitative literacy, differences between current and former college graduates are not significant. (emphasis mine)

In other words... THIS IS NOTHING NEW.

There have always been a few boneheads who get pushed through college without the requisite skills because they can play sports well, have influential families, or something similar.



DummyPlug, 2006.01.22 (Sun) 20:07 [Link] »

The same goes for mandating a credit management class - this isn't rocket science, and many people are capable of figuring out how credit cards work all by themselves.

Even if I agree with you that parental concent is not the way to go (since it wouldn't solve anything), I don't see how credit management class would be considered to "infringes upon the rights of the non-stupid" if you "impose" it on everyone.

If this ABC article is any indication, it seems that it is rocket science to a big chunk of the population...50% of 4-year college students can't handle the simple tasks required. That's pretty bad.

I guess forcing everyone to take the class could be considered a bit excessive, but requiring all potential credit card holders to demonstrate their capacity to handle the credit seems like a good idea to me. And if you can't show you know how to handle credit, then you have to take the class.

Kind of like driver's licenses: if you can't pass the test, you don't get your license. If you really want it, you go take classes until you can pass your test.



The Two Percent Company, 2006.01.22 (Sun) 22:20 [Link] »

Dikkii

We certainly agree that the education system is, to put it mildly, incomplete and not particularly comprehensive. The thing is, we're looking at something much more basic and simple than matrices and algebraic functions — we're looking at plain old arithmetic.

As an example, here in the US, typical gratuity for restaurant wait staff is anywhere from 15% to 20% of the total bill (not including tax, though some restaurants attempt to pull that crap). We can determine how much we want to tip in, literally, a few seconds: simply dividing the tab by 10 (just moving the decimal point over), and then adding anywhere from one half to the full amount of our result to itself — to get 15% to 20% of the tab, depending on how deserving we feel our waiter was. So we're talking division by 10 (which is a pretty simple form of division in the internationally common base 10 system), division by 2 (which is also pretty simple, just cutting something in half), rudimentary estimation, and addition. No teacher ever taught us this process as it applies to calculating a tip — it was just really, really obvious. This is the kind of thing that causes us to lament general intelligence rather than just decrying the state of education. This stuff is just a simple extrapolation of basic arithmetic skills. Could teachers explain these practical applications of arithmetic in grade school? Sure. Should they have to? We don't think so.

Now, when we get into linear algebra and matrices, for example, we're usually talking about mathematics which apply to situations in which many (if not most) folks will never find themselves. (Yes, there are some more common uses of matrices, but that's what spreadsheet applications are for!) In these cases, it could certainly help if the teacher presented real-world scenarios to which the more complex skillset could be applied. But as an aside: if the teacher explained that a certain skill would only be useful for those students entering the fields of engineering or biochemistry, might the job of educating the students actually be made harder by putting off those who had no interest in (or saw little hope of entering into) such fields?

Maybe we are being too lenient towards the educators — maybe they could make the practical uses of math more obvious, and maybe it would help. But frankly, with scenarios as simple as calculating gratuity (simple division and addition), balancing a checkbook (addition and subtraction), or figuring out the per ounce cost of food (division), we don't think they should have to.

Having said that, if I were given a piece of paper like a credit card application and I didn't understand what it meant, I think that I would be being pretty stupid in signing the goddamned thing in the first place.

Bingo.

jay

We agree — this is nothing new. In fact, that's a big part of the problem.

In addition, the numbers here seem to be way too high to just be caused by jocks that are in college only to play sports. When we're talking about 50% to 75% of college students, we aren't just talking about those who participate in revenue sports. And when we're talking about two year colleges, we can rule out almost all top athletes as members of the sample group since those top athletes are generally at four year schools.

To us, this is a much bigger problem than athletic recruiting and nepotism allowing people who shouldn't go to college to attend anyway. In fact, the underlying skills in question were taught to these people as much as ten years before they entered college, and even the dumbest athlete or the most sheltered son of an alumnus has no excuse for not possessing these skills.

DummyPlug

There's one huge difference between mandatory driver certification and mandatory credit management certification: if you screw up your own credit, you have put a dent in your own financial future; but if a driver screws up, someone can die (and quite possibly not the one who screwed up). That's why we agree with one, and disagree with the other.

Hey, we do like the idea of offering credit management courses to young adults, in high school and in college. Make them electives and we're all for them. But forcing an entire segment of the population that simply doesn't need the class to sit through something so boring and obvious (as such a class would be to them) is just not called for.

To us, it's like those stupid freshman writing courses that many of us had to take, no matter which college we attended. For those who already knew how to write, it was nothing but a colossal waste of time that took up a slot in which we could actually have been learning something. Adding more such nonsense to the mandatory class list serves no purpose but to further water down the American education system. Again, make it an elective, and we'll applaud the offering; but make it mandatory, and we'll call it what it is — an unnecessary waste of time for those who aren't in need of a class teaching them how to connect the dots.

Ford

Don't forget Keanu Reeves movies. And PlayStation. (Damn, now we need to go play another round of Spider-Man 2.)



Jesse, 2006.01.23 (Mon) 14:30 [Link] »

I made a purchase recently at a cafe. The total was something like $4.36 (I dont remember the exact number so that one will do).

Anywhoo, I hand the cashier a 5, and start to fish around in my pocket for a penny. the cashier rings through the 5 before I got the penny out, I try to hand the penny to the cashier, so I get an even 65 cents back rather than 64, who wants 4 pennies? I dont.

The cashier refused, saying they wouldn't be able to figure it out and the machine (register) tells them exactly what to give back.

This person could not figure out that by me giving them 1 extra penny, my change would increase from 64 cents, to 65 cents.

I was flabbergasted.



Crosius, 2006.01.23 (Mon) 14:50 [Link] »

In highschool, part of my curriculum was a course called C.A.L.M. (Career and Life Management). Most of the students called it "nap time."

The course material covered by CALM boiled down to two broad topics:
1. How not to get pregnant until it's the "right time."
2. Tests of the guidance-counsellor, what-do-you-want-to-be, type.

As teenagers, we just treated that course as an easy A. We should have been demanding the course include useful information like:
1. How to apply for a mortgage.
2. Buying a car - Buy, Lease or Installments?
3. Equity - what it is, why you'll need it, how to get it.
4. What the heck is a Pension Plan?
5. Debt, Trap & Tool

That way, we would have left CALM with some real carreer and life management skills.



The Two Percent Company, 2006.01.23 (Mon) 20:52 [Link] »

Crosius, that curriculum does sound like it would be more useful than most electives we took in high school. Since the problem areas are primarily math-related items, maybe an even broader elective on applying math to the real world would be a nice single marking period class (we had certain electives that lasted only a quarter or a third of the year, and this would seem to fit that mold). Such a class could cover all of these topics, plus general banking, investments, and any number of items. If it covered a sufficiently wide range of topics, perhaps more people would find it applicable and decide to sign up.

Still, it's sad, but if we made your suggested class mandatory, it might actually present the opposite scenario from the one we've been complaining about: rather than subjecting intelligent people to lessons they don't need, it could easily subject unintelligent people to lessons they can't understand. Just look at Jesse's cashier — how could someone who can't even figure out math involving a one cent difference possibly understand the lessons in your hypothetical course curriculum? Again, while we would have found the class you suggest useful, it leaves us to wonder what the (apparently) average American would get out of it (other than a headache and a C-).



DummyPlug, 2006.01.23 (Mon) 21:33 [Link] »

if you screw up your own credit, you have put a dent in your own financial future; but if a driver screws up, someone can die (and quite possibly not the one who screwed up).

Point taken. It still doesn't mean we should not try to educate or at least limit the damage one can do to oneself with credit, particularly in light of the articles you mentioned: seems credit management is not the "easy skill" I always believed it was.


Hey, we do like the idea of offering credit management courses to young adults, in high school and in college.

Crosius pretty much illustrates where I think credit management could be taught: Home Ed. But what I'm really interesting in is not really the "mandatory class" but the "required knowledge demonstration".


Make them electives and we're all for them. But forcing an entire segment of the population that simply doesn't need the class to sit through something so boring and obvious (as such a class would be to them) is just not called for.

I think this is where we have our misunderstanding: I agree that "forcing an entire segment" is wrong. What I'm talking about is forcing anyone, regardless of age or income, who can't demonstrate the minimum knowledge required to handle credit, to take those classes before a credit card is issued to them.


To us, it's like those stupid freshman writing courses that many of us had to take, no matter which college we attended. For those who already knew how to write, it was nothing but a colossal waste of time that took up a slot in which we could actually have been learning something.

If you could have taken an exam at the beginning of the semester that would have exempted you from that writing course if passed, would that have been better?

I wouldn't have a problem with someone who can, without taking the class, demonstrate the proper knowledges required for credit management getting a card issued to him. But if you can't calculate how much your monthly payments are going to be giving some simple hypothetical, you have no business getting a credit card... and the credit card company as no business issuing it to you.

That's why I used the driver's license as an example: in my neck of the wood, if you can pass your theoretical and practical driving exams, they issue the license: they don't give a rat's ass if you took classes or not. You pass, you get your license.


Again, make it an elective, and we'll applaud the offering; but make it mandatory, and we'll call it what it is � an unnecessary waste of time for those who aren't in need of a class teaching them how to connect the dots.

Your right. Making the class mandatory is not what I'm really aiming for.

Making the class mandatory if you can't demonstrate the proper knowledge of credit management is more what I have in mind... and that's for everybody, not just young adults.

If you can't show you can manage credit, then the class should be strongly suggested... and you won't get the credit until you pass the test, so the classes could be a good idea.


That said, the US education system as some bigger fishes to fry right now... like ID.



The Two Percent Company, 2006.01.23 (Mon) 22:59 [Link] »

We agree with most of what you're saying, DummyPlug. If we're not on the same page, it at least appears that we're in the same chapter.

Should we try to educate people so that they don't screw their own credit? Sure. Would a certification test like the one you suggest weed out a good number of people who don't know enough to utilize a line of credit without doing damage to their futures? Yes again. But does the government have the responsibility to protect people from their own stupidity in this way? No, not in our opinion. So here, it's less about forcing intelligent people to pass a test (which we agree isn't anywhere near the burden that taking a mandatory class would be), and more about whether the government should or should not step into that arena in the first place.

But if you can't calculate how much your monthly payments are going to be giving some simple hypothetical, you have no business getting a credit card... and the credit card company as no business issuing it to you.

We absolutely agree. But should that be a law? That's where we diverge, it appears. We also think that if you're seriously ill, you should visit a doctor instead of a naturopath, but we don't support making visiting a naturopath illegal (as stupid and harmful as seeking treatment from one for a serious illness can be). To us, it's the difference between "should" and "must," and that's an important distinction. As odd as it may seem, we'd rather let people make their own stupid mistakes than have the government protect all of us from our often-incorrectly-assumed stupidity. What initially shocked us in this report was the apparent depth of that stupidity.

That said, the US education system as some bigger fishes to fry right now... like ID.

On that, we couldn't agree with you more.

And for the record, if we were able to test out of our freshman writing course, we would have taken that test in a heartbeat! Hell, we would have gotten up at 6AM on a Sunday for that test. [We would? — Ed.]



Michael Bains, 2006.01.24 (Tue) 08:07 [Link] »
No teacher ever taught us this process as it applies to calculating a tip — it was just really, really obvious.

I LOVE you guys! lol

But that little technique, as simple and efficacious as it truly is, is about as obvious as pickin' out the constellations on a semi-cloudy night for a nouveau star gazer. YOU get it easily. Great! It took me quite a while cuz I am emotional! I'm not stupid but I've done tres stupid things (two marriages come to mind...) I'm not dumb but that little bit o' mathematic simplicity took me years to habitualize.

As Dikkii and y'all talked about, if you don't have an interest in the subject (be it matrices & LM or History or GYM for FSM's sake!) you're not gonna get it.

Math Panic is common and treatable. It's just that no one wants to admit to an emotional disorder either from shame or, as you strongly suggest, idiocy.

I've known too many other otherwise intelligent people who've made incredibly stupid mistakes for me to intelligently conclude that intelligence is the real problem here.

And, no, I'm not tellin' y'all to "take a pill already!" LOL! The Rant was great! I just feel the need to point out that your final conclusion - most people are basically morons* - is off the mark. People are scared and, what's worse, they're scared to admit that when they can more easily replace or smother the fear with acting out (cc spending, druggin'/drinkin', workaholicisizin'! LOL!) or dropping out as in goin' homeless or religiously ascetic.

Education does indeed need to continue evolving. Understanding of Human Psychology needs to get up to Objective, Scientific speed before you'll see those 50% financial illiteracy numbers fall appreciably though.

I don't see that happening much sooner than a nationwide abandonment of belief in the supernatural though. They are empirically too closely related within the human brain.


* Pardon the hyperbole. I think that's a fair paraphrase. Eh???



The Two Percent Company, 2006.01.24 (Tue) 14:32 [Link] »

We've all done lots of stupid things in our lives, so you certaintly aren't alone there, Michael. As far as we're concerned, that doesn't mean we're stupid, that means we're human.

Since we know that you are an intelligent person based on our experience with you, perhaps we need to take another look at this.

People solve daily problems by rote because that's the way they learned to solve them. In math class, we recall teachers talking about the shortcuts that got you to the answer. In fact, many of them spent more time on demonstrating the shortcut than they did on explaining those underlying issues that were the reason that the shortcut worked in the first place. For our part, we never bothered with the shortcut. Instead, we worked to understand the concepts, and did a problem in the way that we found most efficient. Sometimes it was the shortcut that the teacher showed us, sometimes it was a different shortcut that we derived based on our understanding of the process, and sometimes it was the "long way" that the teacher basically told us not to bother with. However, just because we chose to do this it doesn't follow that everyone did, and we agree that the teacher should have focused on the essential concepts more than the mechanics of a shortcut.

Skip forward past high school math, and those same people who mechanically copied what their teachers demonstrated are the ones who can't take that extra penny from Jesse (and who hand back singles when we try to pay $21 for a $16 purchase specifically so that we can get a $5 bill back). They could very well just be doing it because they learned a process for making change, and they follow it blindly without ever understanding the foundational mathematical concepts behind it.

Look, we admit it — we're good at math. We don't always love math, but we've always excelled at it. As a result, in our minds, it's hard to conceive of basic math being difficult for anyone — it just seems so obvious how to calculate a tip, or compare per ounce costs of food (we freely admit that interest rates can be more complex than those examples, by the way). As a result, we may have overestimated the ease with which some of these tasks can be picked up — point taken, and you're absolutely right.

All that said, this study reveals more than just what we touched on. For example, while we focused on the math side of this study, there was also a non-mathematical side that tested prose and document literacy. The tested students didn't do so well there, either. Granted, reading comprehension can be much more subjective than math (two plus two is consistently four, but words and phrases can have different meanings in different contexts), which is why we've never considered it much of a sign of intelligence or education; but it's still a decent indicator. In addition, the prose and document literacy tasks used as examples really weren't all that subjective or difficult. The same goes for the quantitative literacy questions. Let's take a closer look at some of the aspects of the study.

First off, we see that there was no time limit at all given to the participants, and that they all chose to participate (to be fair, they were college students and there was a small financial award for volunteering). In addition, they were given a calculator for the math segments so that they didn't have to worry about calculation, just applying the right concepts.

In order to score a "Basic" understanding of quantitative literacy, the student was asked to do the following:

• locating easily identifiable quantitative information and using it to solve simple, one-step problems when the arithmetic operation is specified or easily inferred

The sample task they provide is:

• comparing the ticket prices for two events

To score an "Intermediate" understanding on the quantitative test, the following criteria applied:

• locating less familiar quantitative information and using it to solve problems when the arithmetic operation is not specified or easily inferred

And the sample was:

• calculating the total cost of ordering specific office supplies from a catalog

For a "Proficient" understanding in math, the problem is more complex, and the sample is:

• computing and comparing the cost per ounce of food items

We understand that many people have what we agree is an ineffective math education, and we also understand that some people suffer from math anxiety (including some people we know personally). However, given a calculator and an unlimited amount of time to solve these fairly basic problems, we still don't understand the apparent prevalence of low scores.

As a note, the prose and document literacy tasks were equally basic, and contained items like "using a television guide to find out what programs are on at a specific time," and "consulting reference materials to determine which foods contain a particular vitamin."

Yes, we agree that we didn't put enough emphasis on the educational aspects of this problem, but we also still think that intelligence has to be a significant part of it. Do we think that most people are abysmally stupid? No, not as such — but when we see data like this, it certainly makes us wonder.

Looking at the list of sample tasks above, it boggles our minds that the average American truly cannot perform them, even with no time pressure and using a calculator (though we're talking about more than the math section now). And if they really can't do these things by the time they're in college, then how can they ever be expected to understand investing, retirement planning, debt reduction, credit cards, mortgages, pensions, stock options, mutual funds, income tax, and the other more complex issues that they will need to deal with throughout their lives? And, more importantly, what can be done to change this?



Michael Bains, 2006.01.24 (Tue) 16:36 [Link] »
(and who hand back singles when we try to pay $21 for a $16 purchase specifically so that we can get a $5 bill back).

Doh! LOL! I needed that!

Thanks for the examples and I hope I'm clear that I know there is a serious problem in this country. I also strongly aggree with y'all that the issue is perpetuated by insufficient educational experiences. Maybe we can chalk that up to the budgets for our low-priority school systems. I think you'd agree that $uch is far from all there is to it.

While I find that I appear to see many social issues much more clearly than the average loop-di-loon, and I do often mentally equate such folk with imbeciles, the main thrust of my mini-rant (if such it could be called) was that I believe - based on observation and (oh oh!) personal experience, that this problem is far more psychological than it is intellectual.

As you say, we're all human. To me, this unavoidable (and frankly generally pleasant happenstance) is riddled with emotional detritus obfuscating my desire to Know what are sometimes the simplest of things.

This is from the Math Academy site I linked earlier:

Multiplication is vexation, Division is just as bad; The Rule of Three perplexes me, And Practice drives me mad.

— Old Rhyme

What one Earth is simpler than practicing something you know in order to become proficient at it? Stumbling blindly on a whim and prayer, maybe. Though I think it'd take far more luck than common sense to utilize that survival technique in any society, much less our emminently Capitalist country.

Here's my bottom line: I really do Appreciate this Rant of yours. Yes, I had a slight problem with the emphasis you put on Intelligence because I think it's a bigger emotional/psychological impetus for such clear signs of the lack of intelligence. Let me assure ya'll, your reply is doubly appreciated because A) it was quite detailed as to why you focused as you did and B) you didn't have to explain so well but this kind of reading is exactly what I need to wrap my head around at such times in my life.

It is never easy knowing one's person is an emotional wreck. It's not always how I am, but on days such as today, when I was simply whacked for a number of work-related and personal reasons, spelling out the reasons really helps me to resolve the wreckage.

Thanks for your a-little-more-than-2% contribution to my resolution!



Fan-man, 2006.01.24 (Tue) 18:12 [Link] »

I've got a senior managment position with a major bank and I can tell you that stupid people are a billion dollar industry----for just my division: Sub prime mortgages. Pay your bills now, or pay me later.



The Two Percent Company, 2006.01.24 (Tue) 18:25 [Link] »

Hey, the last thing that we are is always right! That's why we're so keen on intelligent challenges to our Rants, and discussions like the one on this thread are a big part of why we started this site.

Over all, and as a result of all of the comments here, we agree that the factors behind this problem are likely split between education, intelligence, and psychology. What's the exact ratio there? It's hard to say, as far as we're concerned. But since we have no idea how to address a lack of intelligence (barring eugenics, which hasn't had such a great reputation since the Nazis started throwing it around), the best thing that can be done to approach this problem might be to address the educational and psychological issues directly. Frankly, elective high school classes on applying math to real life could be the most effective way to address both of these (by teaching the underlying fundamentals, we not only educate, but we also might alleviate the stress that many people seem to associate with math).

This still leaves a few other problems identified by this study unexamined, such as the non-mathematical issues (a class on finding out what's on TV tonight using the TV Guide seems like overkill, to us) — but it sounds like a step in the right direction.



PB27, 2006.02.02 (Thu) 16:28 [Link] »

Nice final summary of a well-critiqued point, 2%:

"...the factors behind this problem are likely split between education, intelligence, and psychology."

As you guys mentioned, intelligence is the most difficult obstruction to remedy here. The focus must first be placed upon education and psychology, and the most obvious immediate step is surely a focus on the interrelation of money and math in high school (and, also, classes on the basics of money in general).

Courses like C.A.L.M., as testified above, are notoriously boring to high schoolers, so it seems that educators must thoughtfully decide how to best implement math into the curriculum in a creative (different) manner. Humans, as all species, learn most efficiently only when necessary (when there's a will, there's a way), so it should come to no surprise that most young adults have not been taking the time to value the role of finances in their lives until they are knee-deep in post-college debt. I agree with 2% that government has no place in regulating these late-pubescent mistakes. However, I wonder if anything could be done (besides the forementioned education steps) to CURB the damage done by early-adulthood debt. We sure as hell don't need more "government services." Yet, I hate to see youth whose parents cannot adequately teach such matters forced into learning them from either 1) America's education system (that might as well be an inadequate parent when it comes to life/financial skills) or 2) a life-stalling experience of seemingly insurmountable debt (that destroys more than teaches).

I have personal ties to this one, I'm afraid. I harbor resentment for my parents' lack of teaching me the common sense "dos and don'ts" of the real world (which, mostly, involves money). I've gone to very nice schools at all levels and been instructed on money ZILCH. I've taught at schools where I've seen the math teachers hold as little understanding of the DEEPLY-ROOTED CONCEPTS as their students. Etc., etc. etc. I'll spare you guys the sob story.

Anyway, let me finish my overly-elongated rambling with a shout-out: I LOVED the comment on how kids must LEARN THE CONCEPTS in math class. Why, at some point in American history, did teachers agree that the subject of Mathematics is the study of skirting around what used to be Mathematics?!?!

It IS a sad reality. And solutions ARE NOT obvious.



Tom from the Two Percent Company, 2006.02.05 (Sun) 01:09 [Link] »

PB27: I recall a High School Calculus teacher who was putting the answer to a homework question up on the board. He was copying from the teacher's manual, when all of the sudden, one of the students pointed out that the answer book was wrong. The teacher paused, looked at the book, and agreed with the student. He proceeded to erase everything below the error — then he stared at the board for about 30 seconds before erasing the entire thing and mumbling something about moving on. As it turned out, it didn't seem that the teacher understood the concepts in this case.

The guy had no clue how to solve the problem without the answer guide, and yet we were expected to learn that very skill from him. Yikes!



roman, 2007.01.23 (Tue) 19:54 [Link] »

If you can't balance a checkbook you should not be allowed near money. I do believe that schools don't offer to much of what you may need in real life. Hands on experience is the best school.




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