Comment by nosianu

You present a tiny fraction of the article and argue against it.

Most comments arguing against omit major points, they make zero mention of it: For example, the author points to the abysmal skills in very basic reading and math of a large part of pupils, and argues - rightly so I would say - that adding more and more on top when the very basics are missing!

I stand by my comment. A lot of people here argue on reflex or by picking some tiny piece of the whole. This is one of the more a terrible discussions on this site, for some reason I don't see.

IMO the author makes some really good points - especially when you take his whole argument, and not individual pieces. He also does not just criticize, he also has suggestions for what to do that are worth looking at.

The discussion reminds of the many voices saying "they need more training" after some police officer killed an unarmed suspect that was not threatening them. As if that would help, when in that case it is an attitude and lack of accountability problem, and in the case of this discussion it is incentives and human psychology and lack of the basics that overwhelm anything you could teach on the subject itself!

The author rightfully argues against this "needs more training" panacea for all human problems, ignoring much larger forces and how humans and their brains work.

He also does not at all argue that there should be no financial training! He argues that it has to take into account those other problems, and he makes suggestions for how it could look like.

On the other hand, I saw not a single one of those quick article-condemnation comments take any of the many points made in the article into account. All picking either just the general idea in one sentence alone, or picking one or a few sentences to argue against, disregarding all other points, even though they all belong together.