Reading, writing and financial literacy
Denish wants financial literacy as HS requirement
Most high school kids can tell you how much their iPods cost. But ask them how to balance a checkbook, qualify for a mortgage or why a credit score is important and you just might think the earphones are in and the volume on that iPod is on extra loud.
State Rep. Antonio Maestas, an Albuquerque Democrat representing Albuquerque’s West Side, authored a bill (HB1205) that passed the Legislature last year mandating that New Mexico High Schools offer a financial curriculum.
Now Lt. Gov. Diane Denish wants to take it a step further. She wants to make financial literacy mandatory for students to graduate from high school. Denish made her wish known during the second annual Lt. Governor’s Summit on Financial Literacy, held Monday in Albuquerque.
Denish told participants, including educators, bankers, mortgage specialists and financial planners, that while it won’t be easy to require students to take a financial literacy class, the benefits of that type of mandate would eventually mean big rewards for the state.
Jumpstart of New Mexico and the New Mexico Coalition for Financial Education, two nonprofit groups supporting the curriculum, tried for about 10 years to get the state to require schools to at least offer some financial literacy classes.
Maestas’ bill did the job. New Mexico is the first state to require that schools offer financial literacy classes.
“Education should include all the information our students are going to need to have to thrive in society,” Maestas said. “Financial literacy is one of the most relevant. If they are conscious of their credit scores now, maybe they’ll buy a house or open a business in their 20s and not wait until they are in their 30s or 40s.”
Poverty is the underlying force in so many other social issues, he said. The current subprime mortgage crisis is an example of how many people may have been duped because they lacked knowledge about the ramifications of balloon payments and second mortgages.
“The world market place has joined New Mexico, not it’s time for New Mexicans to join the world market,” he said. “We always talk about how New Mexico is 48th or 49th in everything important. Well we’re first to get financial literacy in schools, and I’m confident that in 10 years New Mexicans will have the financial literacy skills to rival any other state in the country.”
Comments:
Posted 05/03/2008 11:24 with
Would this replace the Economics class you have to take as a senior in HS? And if so, I wonder if this would keep people from doing the AP Macroeconomics that we did instead of it (so we all know what sunk costs and externalities are but not how to balance a checkbook).
Posted 05/03/2008 12:36 with
lead says “Gov” Denish?
Posted 05/04/2008 22:35 with
Excellent billl (HB1205). It’s refreshing to see New Mexico take a lead role with financial literacy. I strongly support this becoming a requirement in High, Middle and even Elementary Schools.