Financial literacy and entrepreneurship, taught as subjects
Most people leave school without ever being taught what interest is, what a business does, or how to tell whether something is worth the money. It's a strange gap, and it isn't there because the material is hard.
Here money and business get their own time on the schedule, taught from the start rather than offered as a club to whoever signs up.
What the younger years cover
Where money comes from and what it's for. Earning it and saving it. Why the same thing costs different amounts in different places. What it means to want something now instead of something better later, which is a lesson about character before it's a lesson about money.
Simple record keeping, done by hand. A child who has written down what came in and what went out understands a balance.
And a stand of their own, early. What the lemons cost, what to charge, how many people walk past, and what's left over once the jug is empty. A six-year-old can run that.
What the senior years cover
Interest, and why it works for you in one direction and against you in the other. What a business is, what it sells, and the difference between money coming in and money kept. Pricing something and finding out you got it wrong.
By the senior grades it is something that runs for longer than an afternoon, with books they keep themselves. Never a simulation with pretend money in it.
Why it is a core subject
Because almost every adult needs it and almost no adult was taught it.
It sits alongside the other things a person needs: how to build and fix, how to look after a body, how to make a case and change your mind, and how to work with people you didn't choose.
Questions about Money and business
Isn't this too young for financial literacy?
Five-year-olds already know that things cost money and that you can't have everything. Building on that is easier than undoing twenty years of nobody mentioning it. A Grade 1 running a stand for an afternoon has met profit, pricing and stock without any of those words being used.
Do students actually handle real money?
In the senior grades, yes, within a real venture with real records. That's the part that makes it stick.