Introduction
The process of selecting the courses to pursue in high school may seem to be a challenging task yet very important. It is one of the key determinants of the life of a student after high school. This is especially the case with courses that are not necessarily compulsory in the student’s curriculum, but those that teachers and other stakeholders consider important in the lives of the students.
One such example is a course in finance. Deciding on whether a finance course is relevant to high school students may prove to be rather controversial because introducing the course in high school will have both positive and negative effects on the students. This paper is therefore, a classical argument on whether a finance course should be introduced in high school, based on the weight attached to both the positive and negative effects.
Positive effects
A finance course in high school has more benefits to the students than demerits. This is because in the contemporary life, people juggle several activities in order to live a better life. Financial knowledge is, therefore, important. It is a usual phenomenon to see finance students with jobs. Some of the finance students can be described as student entrepreneurs.
This therefore implies that a finance course in high school will give the students the necessary skills to have a more fulfilling college life. Thus, students who have financial knowledge are likely to be more successful student entrepreneurs while in college than their counterparts who do not take finance courses.
From another perspective, every person requires financial knowledge to live a successful life. After high school, in college, at home or in working environments there is need for financial knowledge.
For instance, one needs to know how to budget his or her finances in order to ensure that he or she does not have excessive expenditure that will render him or her bankrupt or broke. It is also imperative that a person draws up a savings plan, guided by financial management principles, to be financially stable.
A person needs the knowledge on how to balance checkbooks, carry out bank reconciliations, and even prioritize expenditure to ensure that he or she is continually generating revenue through investment. Although it is possible for a person to learn these things through experience, this is more costly, and thus a finance course being offered in high school will be very helpful to the students in this aspect.
When offered in high school, the students are expected to excel in the finance course. This means that students will have the incentive to research more on finance-related issues because they want to pass their examinations and graduate.
This will help the students acquire financial knowledge that will prove resourceful later on in their lives. A student who joins college to specialize in finance will indubitably, find the course easier if he or she has taken a finance course in high school.
Such a course will also help some students to develop a passion for finance. After developing a passion, the students may go ahead to study finance at the university or college, and end up being successful finance scholars and professionals. Teachers may even woo students to major in finance by explaining the various finance-related courses and careers that one can take during the high school finance course.
Sometimes all one needs is the confidence that he or she knows the principles behind a given field in order to do well in it. A person who has never been in a finance classroom will not have the confidence to deal with simple finance-related issues such as bank reconciliations. Such a person is likely to seek the services of experts who will charge commissions for the services offered.
A finance course offered in high school will again give students the confidence that they are familiar with issues of finance. This will make them to learn more finance-related issues that were not covered in class as they encounter them in their life experiences.
In addition, unlike most courses, students undertaking a finance course are not obliged to attend classes. This means that the classes may not be a requirement. As such, information on finance is found almost everywhere, with most literature being found on the web. This is not the same case in courses such as biology and chemistry among others where there are practical sessions that the students should attend.
Negative effects
Every good thing has its dark side. The same will apply to finance courses introduced in a high school setting. One of the main challenges that students and teachers are likely to encounter in having finance courses in high school is that the school curriculum may be so tight that introducing another course would overwork the students.
This is a significant challenge considering the fact that concentration levels and the degree with which students understand the contents of a course is dependent on whether the students are overworked or not. Introducing such a course in the school is also likely to affect the performance of students in other courses, which is obviously undesirable.
Another disadvantage is the fact that a finance course in high school can only be elementary, thus, it will not cover the most beneficial topics in finance. Therefore, students will spend their precious time being introduced to finance, and by the end of the course all they will have is basic knowledge. This means that students who do not further in the finance course, or at least, research on their own to advance their knowledge, may not benefit much from the finance course.
Personal position
Despite thenumerous challenges that a high school may face because of introducing a finance course for students, the course is of great value to the students. A finance course should therefore, be a requirement in high schools. Students should be required to attend finance classes, sit for, and pass finance examinations before they are allowed to graduate.
Such a course should include a topic on the state’s requirements for registration of professionals in finance, details of courses that a student may choose to pursue in college in order to become a finance professional and even basic finance-related topics like insurance, budgeting, bank reconciliations and checkbook management. This will equip students with knowledge on how they can specialize in finance. It will also give them basic financial skills for use in their later lives, in case they do not major in finance.
Conclusion
Sometimes it is difficult to make administrative decisions because the administration normally has many things to consider for implementation. The administration of a certain high school may for instance, consider introducing one among a variety of courses due to certain constraints.
This is, perhaps, the reason why most high schools do not offer some specialized courses like finance. It will be wrong, therefore, to argue that the reason for the absence of such courses in high schools is their irrelevance. A finance course is, particularly, relevant to high school students, and it can help transform the lives of students. It is thus of essence that a finance course is offered in high schools even if it is offered as an optional course.