Schools Are Right For Not Teaching Personal Finance.
Look at it from the government’s perspective.
Recently, I came across an article written by Bruce Flow on my recommendation feed. It was about “Personal finance lessons your school didn’t teach you”. It was an old article, written in 2018, but somehow Medium’s algorithm showed me his article. It nonetheless inspired me to write this particular article of mine that you are currently reading.
Towards the end of his article, Bruce Flow highlighted that the school system we have today is outdated and that it should have prepared students holistically for life.
His article got me thinking: “Why don’t schools actually teach students personal finance? Are they right for not teaching these things?”
Well… as you should have already guessed from the title of this article, my conclusion is: Yes, schools are right for not teaching personal finance to students.
Why I Think Schools Should Not Actively Teach Personal Finance
The role of the government is to ensure that the country’s economy continues to grow.
If schools were to teach personal finance, such as saving a great deal and investing in the stock market, everyone will dream of early retirement; everyone will work towards early retirement.
What happens next? The economy will take a big hit.
How? Well, one of the biggest drivers of the economy is consumption — which means spending money not just on necessities, but on luxuries as well. Every dollar spent by you and me is used to fuel and grow the economy. If everyone starts to save up and invest, the consumption rate would fall and in turn depress the economy.
Besides, if everyone retires early, in the long run, we would have fewer and fewer workers to run our day-to-day operations. That’s unsustainable.
Sure, entrepreneurs are great. We need people like Steve Jobs to invent iPhones so that we can communicate with one another faster and easier. We need people like Elon Musk to invent and scale the adoption of electric vehicles to combat environmental pollution that is partly caused by our usual Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars.
These people are a godsend to our society. They contribute greatly to human civilization. We need them. But we cannot only have them. We need an average joe to work for others, to work for the economy.
Therefore, schools should stick to teaching students to get a 9-to-5 job because the economy needs people like that.
Those who desire to be different, who desire to retire early, will find their way to it even without the school system teaching them.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments section.
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