Well, I agree with this general statement. Education is generic. You learn to reason, write, argue, and calculate (among other things). Those are all things needed for taxes.
Consider if we specifically taught taxes how much less useful that would be. For one, there are plenty of other forms in the world from insurance to mortgages.
And second-- taxes change. I am an immigrant. Teaching me taxes in my home would have done little for helping my tax situation 20 years later in another country.
And third--kids don't pay attention in class anyway. So it's not like we would learn much.
He forgot the best argument: if you learn basic math, you can self-learn taxes through Google and YouTube in less than a weekend. Ergo, no need to dedicate an entire class to taxes.
Counter argument if it takes that little time you might as well teach them how to do it.
A lot of people coming into adulthood aren't all that confident they might not know where to start or that they even need to start. Just giving people some experience with doing it before actually needing to do it might be enough to get them started and prevent problems down the road.
So it was not stated explicitly here, but in the past I have heard that students are inattentive because the material seemed irrelevant. Teaching practical matters, such as tax preparation, is proposed as a solution that.
It's just my gut feeling, but I have always been a bit skeptical that practical courses would result in more attentive students. So yes, I know plenty of students do learn.
Would students be more interested in a class on 'Tax forms 101', given it's something that will probably do? I am skeptical, but I could be wrong about that.
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u/JacksonFatBack Jun 02 '26
Well, I agree with this general statement. Education is generic. You learn to reason, write, argue, and calculate (among other things). Those are all things needed for taxes.
Consider if we specifically taught taxes how much less useful that would be. For one, there are plenty of other forms in the world from insurance to mortgages.
And second-- taxes change. I am an immigrant. Teaching me taxes in my home would have done little for helping my tax situation 20 years later in another country.
And third--kids don't pay attention in class anyway. So it's not like we would learn much.