Our Schools/Our Selves Against Teaching Financial Literacy Chris Arthur Who could argue that teachers should

not teach students to be financially literate? Seemingly no one, or no one who deserves to be taken seriously. It is an uphill battle to contest financial literacy proponents claims that financial literacy, as it is proposed, will be effective and beneficial. However, as with most questions, the above rhetorical question assumes we all have a similar conception of what it is we are talking about. This often, however, is not the case. While students need to have basic money management skills, this goal is already undermined by advertising before teachers even begin their financial literacy lessons. Even if financial literacy in Ontario was a subject unto itself rather than being integrated into other subjects, it is more than likely that the ubiquitous message to value yourself by what you consume will overcome teaching that extols the virtues of saving. The pedagogical environment extends beyond the classroom and if we are serious about promoting saving, we must curb advertising that promotes consumption as a way of life. A teacher incorporating financial literacy into math or social studies cannot compete with the billions spent on advertising and the concerted efforts of psychology professionals hired to hone the incessant message to buy. What is little understood is that financial literacy does not merely advocate saving, but promotes the purchasing of financial commodities. According to such radicals as Alan Greenspan, financial literacy enables banks to better reach the unbanked or the underbanked and sell their wares. Much is made of the donations for financial literacy that financial institutions make, but there is little written on the fact that public money is being spent on persuading individuals to buy the products these good corporate citizens are hawking. Aside from this dubious use of public funds, one worry is that many of these financial securities are much riskier and less understood than they are presented in the financial literacy literature. It defies belief that elementary or secondary school students can critically assess the risk of financial securities that mystified economists from the most prestigious universities in the world. Instead of promoting critical thinking skills, financial literacy is constructed to incorporate more individuals into the speculative financial system and increase the scope and depth of devaluation when the next speculative bubble bursts. Citizens should also be concerned that instructional time in schools is going to be used to promote a distorted picture of the economy where poverty is able to be overcome through financial literacy. While this is true for some, it is not the case for most who are in poverty. Poverty is a much more complex social and political issue than presented in most financial literacy literature. Already financial literacy groups such as the Investor Education Fund have teamed up with education specialists from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto to create financial literacy resources

Fall 2011 that laud the role of entrepreneurs in creating wealth and ask students what stocks they would buy with $20,000. Concealed in these resources, created by an organization whose president is one of the heads of the working group that will bring financial literacy to Ontario schools, is the literacy needed by the poor who do not have $20,000 and may require social assistance to survive. Concealed is the role of workers and unions in creating wealth and fighting for a more equal distribution of wealth. Financial literacy is not a neutral technical literacy but a deeply political literacy that gives us a certain picture of our economy. Given that income inequality is rising, taking the time to teach students that entrepreneurs create wealth leaves less time to look at the structural reasons why poverty and pronounced income inequality exist. Structural, rather than individual causes, are not a concern for financial literacy advocates who extol the virtues of personal responsibility financial literacy is supposed to bring. While individual responsibility should be promoted, this is not the whole story. In this age of austerity, governments looking to cut social spending programs and reduce taxes are only too happy to promote a financial literacy that claims to enable individuals to manage their finances and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. While financial literacy will help some better manage their finances, it will also support the shifting responsibility for economic risk from the government to the individual and then the blaming of individuals for their financial situation. This individualist financial literacy holds individuals responsible for causes (asset bubbles, off-shoring of jobs, etc.) that are beyond their control. Instead of financial literacy we ought to promote a critical financial literacy that helps us inquire, not only into the efficacy, but also the moral grounds for ascribing individual or collective risk strategies in various situations. It is, for example, unjust to always hold someone personally responsible for his or her financial situation in an economy where some are impoverished because of the wealth creation strategies carried out by others. Personal financial problems, emphasized in financial literacy and television shows such as till Debt do us part, are only part of the story but they are the part of the story we constantly hear. A critical financial literacy will help us see that some financial problems and poverty are caused by forces or events larger than the individual. For example, some of the strategies that are pursued to increase wealth and revolutionize production destroy outmoded forms of production and employment opportunities (i.e. off-shoring and technological change). This creative destruction, to use Joseph Schumpeters term, is an inherent feature of our dynamic economy. A critical financial literacy would enable us to see that we require, not only individual, but collective measures to protect those facing our economys destructive effects.