By Helen Thorp, Staff Writer
The long list of class options for your next year of high school fills the registration sheet. Suddenly a new course catches your eye: Economics and Personal Finance. Will it be painfully boring? Or completely empowering?
It might not sound exciting, but this course may actually be one of the most important classes you will take in high school, teaching skills you will need for the rest of your life. Some students have been graduating with a high school diploma and entering “the real world” – but they don’t know how to write a check, stay out of credit card debt, or other vital knowledge they need to be successful adults.
“As the public education system says, it’s kind of our job to pick up that slack,” economics and personal finance teacher Amanda Robinson said.
When people think about economics, their mind immediately goes to money, but this class teaches much more than just how to deal with money, write checks and stay out of debt.
“How decisions are made as far as prices, as far as how businesses are set up. We talk about scarcity of resources and what that means and how that impacts your decision making,” Robinson said.
Robinson believes that what makes this class so important is the decision-making skills that it teaches: the idea that every life skill involving money revolves around sound decision-making.
For years, economics and personal finance lessons were combined with civics, and the push to separate the two classes only happened a few years ago. Junior Katie Bryson believes that the economics part of the combined class was mostly forgotten.
“Civics focuses mainly on the government and how it runs, but barely includes how the money in our government is transferred around and how to manage our money,” Bryson said.
Separating these classes was a controversial topic for the North Carolina Board of Education even though Virginia had made it mandatory five years prior. Junior Kenya Lopez believes that the split was ultimately a good thing because she enjoys learning about the economics aspect of civics.
“It was separated so that we can go more in depth about the economics and finance part of the civics class,” Lopez said.
Even though some students may not share Lopez’s opinion, Robinson hopes to make the class captivating so that students want to learn about personal finance.
“I’m really looking forward to being able to go into more detail with economics and especially spending time with personal finance and individual planning,” Robinson said.
Junior Helen Thorp can be reached at 24thorphe91@daretolearn.org.
