In the 7th grade, our district has a three week unit on financial literacy. This was supposed to teach us about budgeting, saving, credit cards vs debit cards, and more. However, most of our class learned nothing about financial literacy because of the curriculum made by boomers.
What we did had little correlation to what we learned. We started out the unit with learning about tax, and the different types of it. We spent multiple days calculating income tax on people's income(which the hourly rate was far below the minimum wage, proving how out of date this curriculum is). Once, we were asked to calculate the Net Monthly Income(NMI) of this unfortunate student Jamal. He works at the recreation center 15 hours a week after school(just so you know, he is a high school student who goes to school 8 hours a day with homework and works 3 hours extra every day M-F). His hourly wage is $8.75/hour. He makes $431.37 after tax and working 62 hours. This is the type of task we had to do, something that related to what we were taught but not something that actually helped us apply our knowledge.
We had these "Finance Park" workbooks to do our work in. They were useless. All we did in them was do stupid tasks. For example, we were asked to calculate the budget of someone(I forgot the name). There was no context, like at all. There was a "their parents pay for the phone bill". I just talked to my friends instead of wasting my life on this. I already know this!!
At the end of the unit, we had a field trip at the local high school to practice making a budget and spending properly. I was excited, not for the field trip but for the fact I did not have to go to any of my classes. We started the trip by riding a bus for 30 minutes while people were singing Christmas songs and getting into the holiday sprit. This was the best part of it. After the ride there, I was hungry and demanded a snack from the worker who restocked the vending machine. Unfortunately, I was denied access to the food. I was then forced to climb four flights of stairs to reach the section of the school converted to a mini shopping mall for all sorts of things. I asked for the WiFi Password because there was a network for the parent volunteers shown on the entrance. Denied. Again. We watched a presentation about what would happen - blah blah blah. We got disgusting tablets to do the simulation on. If we were doing this simulation online, why the hell do we need to spend thirty-minutes on a bus just to use a tablet when we have $830 phones. The thing was practically growing mold. I would have rather used the school chromebooks, than that piece of s**t.
What was worse is that I was put into a group with none of my friends. During the trip from hell, we "learned" about different parts of spending(phone bills, health insurance, etc). There was two minutes for each one. It was a "Hi, nice to meet you." and then over. By the time we got to use the tablets we still had no f****** clue about any of the stuff we were supposed to learn about. Who thinks two minutes is enough to learn about health insurance. Why are these boomers in charge of our country and our school system?! Let us use our phones at lunch! Let us have no work at home. School is already an eight hour job. Why do we need to complete an EXTRA two hours at home. We have lives and we are not 24/7/365 working machines. It was a bust. By the end of it, I was grateful to be home.