In recent years, one of our editorial board members has had the privilege of teaching financial literacy to young people living in a Toronto youth shelter.
The workshops have focused on helping youth appreciate how seemingly small expenditures — like a Starbucks drink or Uber Eats order — can become costly as regular habits. They teach youth to be intentional about spending decisions, to set life and financial goals and to develop plans to reach them. And they unpack the ins-and-outs of financial topics such as credit cards and credit scores.
Ensuring young people have essential life skills — such as the ability to intentionally manage money — should be priorities of our early education system. As Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs tells us, it’s difficult to reach one’s full potential if you haven’t first met your basic needs.
And so we have been encouraged to see innovation in provincial curricula lately that aims to equip young people with real world skills that underpin healthy lives, healthy households and robust communities.
Ontario, for example, is overhauling its high school diploma requirements for the first time in 25 years. Its new curriculum will include a financial literacy course and modernized home economics course. The financial literacy course aims to ensure “students graduate with financial competence and a competitive edge to succeed in their life and career.”
Saskatchewan has also been innovating. It is following in Manitoba’s footsteps by introducing a new volunteerism credit. The program enables students to earn a high school credit for spending 100 hours volunteering in their communities. The aim is to assist “students in building pathways to the workforce while strengthening their communities,” a government bulletin says.
Saskatchewan is also planning to launch an oil and gas course, which will include 50 hours of online theory and a 50-hour work placement. A course like this would not be suitable (or politically palatable) in every province, but it’s a practical way to prepare young people for jobs that are in high demand within that jurisdiction. In this sense, it’s similar to Ontario’s proposal to better incorporate skilled trade apprenticeships into high school diploma requirements.
As we wrote last week, we see this focus on real world skills as particularly valuable now, as it is clear that many young people are struggling.
Nineteen per cent of young women and nine per cent of young men reported having a mental health disability in 2022, up significantly from 2017. And a full 30 per cent of Canadians aged 12 to 17 were overweight or obese in 2022, up three per cent from the year before. Social isolation, anxiety, depression and loneliness are problems common to many young people — and drivers of some of these concerning mental and physical health trends.
The curricula changes noted above are of course not a panacea to these issues. But an emphasis on getting young people into their communities, interacting with others and exploring practical applications of their skills could be an important mitigant of many of them. Work and volunteering — and the interaction that comes with them — gives many people a sense of purpose and community.
These curricula changes also speak to an underappreciated aspect of Canada’s federation: provincial control over local matters. In many cases, provinces and local governments are best equipped to evaluate the needs of their constituents and communities and develop responses to them.
We applaud the provinces that are taking steps to equip their young people with a broader range of foundational skills. Without them, young people may be hard pressed to succeed in all senses of the word — emotionally, physically, relationally and professionally.
