I have been listening to people in my industry, the industry we politely refer to as Financial Literacy, for so long about our inability to get this invaluable information into our schools, where most adults feel it should be, that I’m quite sick of it. So sick of it that I’m going to start calling our lack of financial literacy education in schools ‘child abuse.’ Not child abuse in the usual sense, but abuse non the less.

Yes, I do feel it has to start at home, hence my book, The Ultimate Allowance, but the next step is to teach the basics in school. The question is, WHY ISN’T it being taught in schools? For those of you IN the school industry, you probably already have a good idea. For those of you on the outside, let me make it plain and simple for you.

1) Because schools don’t care about the kids. Now I did not say that individual teachers don’t care. I said SCHOOLS don’t care about our kids. How do we know this? Because it they really cared, they would teach kids things they needed to know to grow up happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. But they don’t. They fill their heads with all sorts of useless information that the child will either quickly forget or never use as an adult. And for the most part, kids I talk to are so bored in school. What is wrong with this picture?

So you’re wondering what they DO care about. Glad you asked! They care about the following (and don’t blame me for the irony here).

(NOTE: this is a generalization of course. Some schools DO teach their kids about money. It’s just so rare that we have to deal with the majority here).

1) They are concerned with test score. Test scores lead to teachers remaining employed. Test scores lead to schools continuing to receive money from governments. Test scores lead to advancement (and not necessarily advancement of the teachers who got the scores). Test scores lead, they think, to a higher percentage of kids that end up going to college.

HELLO! Last I read, a college degree doesn’t make one employable. And it certainly doesn’t give one the skills one needs to creative financial freedom in one’s life. If you do any research on very wealthy people, especially entrepreneurs (Bill Gates comes to mind), you’ll see that many of them never went to, or finished college.

2) They are concerned with what percentage of their high school graduates go on to high school. Again, I implore you to ask yourself if college is really necessary to become financially free. It’s not. I went to college, got all A’s. Even got on a Dean’s list here and there but the one class I needed was the one they don’t teach…What to do with our money to make it grow so you don’t always have to work for it! Most adults wish they’d taken that same class.

3) Financial literacy isn’t taught regularly in schools because teachers aren’t knowledgeable in the subject. But it goes deeper. Money is a subject laden with taboo; it’s a subject that people make mean something about themselves. Think of it this way…if you were a substitute teacher and someone told you you had to go teach geometry for a week and you didn’t know geometry, you’d go look it up, learn the lesson and go teach it.

But, if someone said you had to go teach kids how to save and invest and not use credit cards and not spend money you didn’t have on Piddlycrapâ„¢ (Piddlyjunkâ„¢ for those of you with delicate stomachs) and how to create passive income by buying assets so you can bring money into your life without always having to work for it, you’d freak out completely! After all, are you DOING this? Can you teach something that you don’t understand? There’s so many levels here I can’t even begin to get into it!

3) They say there’s no money. Bull! There’s plenty of money if they stopped spending it on stuff they didn’t need. Stopped paying a bunch of administrators to determine what the kids needed to know in order to pass the stupid tests so that the administrators get to keep their jobs. There’s so many people running the show that no one really knows who’s running the show.

Am I pissed off? Yes! Why? Because if someone had cared enough to teach me about money and investing and saving early I would be further along this road to becoming financially free than I am.

The benefit? I wouldn’t be spending my days doing something I am so passionate about it seeps from my pores. I wouldn’t have spent the past 7 years creating a program that is unlike any other in terms of showing kids there is another way. I wouldn’t have spent the past couple of years writing The Ultimate Allowance so that parents everywhere have a system to teach their kids how to move out and stay out.

If you’re reading this, I know you care. I know you agree with most of it because I have conversations with people everyday about this. We ALL feel like it should be in the schools but why isn’t it? Why do we not take back the schools? Why do we allow ‘them’ to dictate what our kids learn and don’t learn?

This is my suggestion: Next year (2009) in the spring when your child’s school (or if you’re a teacher, have the guts to refuse to do it and do what’s right for the kids…that’s what the people who founded this fabulous country did) tells you they will be doing the standardized testing, tell them your child will not be participating. Tell them that you’ll be homeschooling them during that time, taking them to work to see what you do, finding them mentors to learn something valuable. Anything but take those stupid tests.

It’s not until we take control back from the schools will we get it INTO the schools where it belongs.

It’s time. Want to help? Pass this blog entry along and get everyone you know with kids to keep them home. Let’s change this once and for all and tell the federal government that their “No child left behind” act has left its last child behind!