In today’s world. schools are the place that teach and prepare children for their lives ahead. As most families have working parents, schools are the place the families rely on for developing their kids. However, traditional schools predominantly stick to academic studies, and in some cases, extra-curiculars, such as sports, music, etc. However, handling finances is an aspect of life that is usually not taught in schools. Yet, ironically, kids are thrown to real life where they are expected to make responsible financial decisions right after graduation. As soon as the school ends, kids are viewed as responsible adults who are expected to have jobs. But in today’s world, where everything is extremely expensive, one will run out of money before the month ends, if they don’t have control or idea of how to manage the expenses and how to save. For example, one needs to have insurances for their safety, but the terms of insurances are extremely intertwined and complex. So, one may fall prey to fraudulent investments, if not cautious. Same goes for loans, bank accounts, savings, etc.
Additionally, earning money is not enough, if you don’t know how to maximize it. You need to have a strong grip on how you can invest your earnings. Other than that, one can only be an employee, with limited incomes. Even for a small side business, you will have to calculate how much to invest, how much to operate, how much to keep in hand for emergency, etc. Without proper knowledge of finance, one may not be able to turn their ideas into reality. Schools can play a pivotal role in this by laying the paving stones of finance handling for the students.
On the flip side, there is a limit to how much schools can teach. In addition to science, geography, history, arts; life skills, such as surviving financially may add extra stress to the children and they may be overwhelmed. And also, they may get over-excited and make serious financial mistakes at an young age. Therefore, schools should carefully cater the syllabus, according to the level of the students. But we have to keep in mind that something is better than nothing. Just making children familiar with the basic concepts may also go a long way. It may be debatable how much to teach children, but it should be beyond debate that it is necessary to educate children on real-life skills, such as financially surviving, alongside traditional academic education in school.
Hence, to summarize, I truly believe that schools should try to teach children how to survive (and thrive) financially. There a proverb in Bengali that says bookish knowledge and borrowed wealth are of little use in times of need. Meaning that to survive at the times of need, one will need survival skills on top of their academic knowledge. Hence, schools should carefully introduce finance handling in their curriculum for better prepare children for the life ahead.