Literacy?

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters: "CNN has a rather disturbing confirmation of what many of us have already seen in practice. In a recent literacy study it was found that 'more than half of students at four-year colleges -- and at least 75 percent at two-year colleges -- lack the literacy to handle complex, real-life tasks such as understanding credit card offers.' The literacy study took a look at three different type of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents, and having basic math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips."

I guess this would be true for most people out here as well. One argument put forth was that most people are simply too lazy to read things like credit card agreements (which are in a language that no sane person would want to read anyway). But going by the number of "improve your credit rating" spam that I get, it looks like many people have no idea about how to keep their finances in check. It's one thing to take a planned loan for a house or for education, it's quite another to fall into a credit card debt trap. For me a card is simply a convenient way to pay, as compared to carrying wads of cash around. And since all my cards are now "free" i.e. with no annual charges, they ain't making any money from me directly.

I'm rambling, but I'd put up a similar post some time ago, with the same title. I believe this points to the fact that education imparted today is not quite relevant, why can't schools have classes on how to interpret credit card offers, bills, how to use ATM cards, what are the personal tax laws of the land, and such other things? I learnt these the hard way and I am still not comfortable with investments and savings and spending. I see people paying hundreds of bucks to tax consultants to fill out their income tax return forms, when all you have to do is fill out a few numbers from another piece of paper (in most cases).

I would also like to see classes on what the Internet is all about and how to navigate it properly, what are the online services available including banking, share trading, how to search, how to blog (and whether to blog at all, for that matter)... These are skills that would be of much more use than knowing how to read log tables and learning about prehistoric geography (which most people seem to forget anyway). What's more, I think the first lesson in a CS degree course at the college level should be on typing!