Short Piece on Financial Education in Texas

This is a short article I wrote for the local newspaper about a study that I conducted at the local university:

As Financial Literacy Month comes to a close, the value of savings, credit, and budgeting have become more salient to the average American. Responsible money management affects a household’s ability to secure employment, to pay taxes, and to raise a family. While many parts of the country struggle to promote this subject, Texas stands out as one of the few states that require public high schools to include financial literacy lessons in their curriculum.

Unfortunately, there has been speculation that this standard is not being upheld at every school. Last month, North Texas Area United Way conducted a focus group study at Midwestern State University to investigate these claims. Undergraduates who attended public high school in Texas were questioned about the financial education they had received as well as their attitudes towards money and other financial issues.

Shockingly, the majority of participants reported that they had received little to no education regarding personal financial literacy during high school. The deterioration from state mandate to local implementation can be explained by a shortcoming in the legislation. In 2003, Governor Perry signed House Concurrent Resolution 15, which instructed the State Board of Education “to implement the inclusion of elements relating to personal finance among the essential knowledge and skills in the required public school curriculum, and to adopt and promote a personal finance education program that provides public school districts with textbook selections to assist in the program’s implementation.”

Despite this strong language, the resolution failed to include any system of measurement. To this day, there is no statewide evaluation of financial literacy teachers in Texas, nor is there a statewide examination of high school students’ financial capabilities. Until these assessments are in place, the state’s so-called requirement is effectively meaningless.

State and local statistics verify this legislation’s inadequacy. Texas ranks 39^th in financial literacy among states and 44^th in financial behavior. In Wichita Falls, 43% of consumers have a subprime credit score. Confronted with this evidence, Texan families must decide if they are satisfied with a public school curriculum in which financial education is prescribed, but not standardized.

My Socialist Awakening

My sister and I went to the same college, and we did a lot of the same things. We were both English majors, we hung out in the same crowd, and we lived together during our final years. But we were not identical. Her passion for serving minority groups and the less fortunate was something I admired, but could not seem to emulate at the time. For much of her career at William & Mary, she was involved in the Tidewater Labor Support Committee and participated in a student campaign petitioning the college to pay their staff a living wage. She got the Anarcho-Syndicalist flag tattooed on her arm, would talk at length about LGBT rights, institutionalized racism, how the government was bullshit; and during this whole time I did not really catch on to what she had wholeheartedly embraced.

I struggle to understand why I did not investigate the teachings of socialism earlier. I worked at two restaurants while in school, and many of my coworkers were from low-wealth backgrounds. There were many times when they confided in me the hopelessness of their situations and the challenges they faced on a regular basis. Their cries did not fall on deaf ears - still, I did not know how to help, and at the time I did not believe that I could really do anything for them.

When graduation approached, I began to realize that I did not know what to do next. It was my adviser who suggested non-profit work, and I followed his advice and became an AmeriCorps VISTA, ending up in Wichita Falls, TX to serve as the Financial Stability Coordinator for North Texas Area United Way. My primary responsibility was to help run the Volunteer Tax Assistance Program; since that did not start until January and I got there in July, I had months to conduct research, and my supervisor encouraged me to start my own projects.

I discovered the Bank On model and decided I would try to set up a coalition in my city. I made phone calls to upper management officials from different financial institutions, and, to my surprise, they listened and agreed to meet with me. My position as a United Way representative gave me a sense of agency and purpose that I had never felt before. Now that I knew I could have an impact, I increasingly felt more responsible for the well-being of others.

The more I studied wealth inequality and the methods of addressing it, the more I began to question the financial education projects I had started. Something felt wrong about teaching people how to better manage their money when they did not have any money to begin with. I knew this from the start, but like most people I understood poverty and financial misfortune as a sad but inevitable part of American society. Even though I did not believe it was their fault for being poor, by promoting financial education I was insinuating that it was their fault for staying poor.

Fortunately, my curiosity (and the internet) led me to great socialist writers like Noam Chomsky, Helaine Olen, Chris Hedges, Robert Jensen, among many others. Granted, I still have not made it through Das Kapital, but I have read enough to believe that it is the capitalist system that creates poverty and that fighting for workplace democracy is the only way to ensure financial security for every American household.

Charting this personal history, it should be clear that my socialist conscience and capacity to act derive from being placed in a position of power. Not much power, for sure, but enough to be heard and enough to be taken seriously. There is no reason why anyone should be denied this. It is the cornerstone of citizenship, labor, and life.

The major employers of Wichita Falls include Wal-mart and AT&T, both notorious for their unfair labor practices. Only three unions exist in the city, and there are no socialist or workers’ rights groups of any kind. My service year ends in July. Will I be able to make a difference for workers here in that short window against those odds?

Although I did not know how to respond to my restaurant coworkers when I was younger, I hear their voices more clearly every day. I cannot ignore them anymore. I am ready to join my sister and rage against the forces of injustice. With or without hope, I’m ready to fight.

Vegan Trials and Tribulations

When I became a vegan, it didn’t take too long for me to start feeling pretty damn good about myself. I made the change because I wanted to act according to beliefs I held about the ecosystem, animal consciousness, and economics. Achieving this kind of authenticity was deeply pleasing, and this strange and powerful satisfaction rolls over me every time I eat, every time I see a restaurant, every time I even think about food. Over the course of several months, it has grown into a monolithic self-image.

Surprise - I find myself judging other people for not being vegan. People have told me, “I really respect how you don’t preach or judge anyone else, you’re just focused on yourself.” If only they knew. If only they could feel the cruel sentiments that boil in my brain when I watch a piece of meat being consumed.

Now let me clarify quickly that when I say judge I don’t mean I actually give credence to those angry thoughts. But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I wrestle with them on a daily basis.

It turns out that the pleasure of being proud of myself has its costs. You might say that there’s nothing wrong with a little self-appreciation, a little self-respect. I do not mean to devalue these attributes. Rather, I want to reiterate that self-perceptions can be belligerent.

Finding new definitions for ourselves means rejecting old ones, and this process is not confined to the individual. I have not met another vegan since I made the switch, so every person I meet is a reminder of my former lifestyle. I am constantly shown how much more convenient eating could be, and I remember what it was like. My vegan side, in an effort to resist and sustain itself, resorts to judgement. No, it tells me, you’re better than them.

I do not think I have to beleaguer the point that thinking of one’s self as superior to others is dumb and unproductive. What I do want to address is how we can regulate our identities as vegans in a way that preserves feelings of camaraderie with our fellow human beings as well as empower us to grow and better ourselves as responsible citizens and stewards of this world.

The key, I believe, is awareness of opportunity. Sure, it took some courage for me to choose to adopt the vegan lifestyle, but I also happened to be at an auspicious point of my life for making that decision, all thanks to a privileged background. I was living by myself for the first time, so I did not have to endure playful or sincere harassment from roommates or family. On top of that, there was a grocery store nearby that offered vegan options, and I knew about vegan community sites like /r/vegan. I had the privilege of being white, male, and educated, which increased the probability of me being hired as an AmeriCorps VISTA, which in turn increased the likelihood of me reading books like The Necessary Revolution by Peter Senge and I am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter (both greatly influenced my decision). I was fortunate enough to be raised in a very supportive family and am currently engaged to a very supportive young woman. Assuredly, this list of conditions is not exhaustive, but you get the point. Marvel with me at the role of sheer coincidence in our lives. I am vegan by choice, yes, but that choice could not have been made had I not arrived at an opportune juncture.

Thinking of yourself as a vegan, a vegetarian, a donor, a volunteer, an environmentalist, a socialist, a caregiver, a good person - can be dangerous. When you take on a new identity, even if it is positive, it is difficult to abstain from judging others for not being like you. Unfortunately, this sort of judgement hampers self-growth. I take courage from those around me. Judging someone based on one model, like veganism, prevents me from seeing other manifestations of love, compassion, and bravery. Every person has access only to the opportunities that their life circumstances have delivered, and we owe it to each other to be aware of that diversity as we strive to be more awesome human beings.