Why We Must Teach Financial Literacy in Our Schools
There are structures built into our education system that are outdated, yet they remain so deeply embedded that changing them feels nearly impossible. The school year calendar is a classic example. There is also plenty of speculation about who owns the major curriculum providers and textbook companies, and even theories about what kind of citizen our schools were originally designed to produce. I will set all of that aside for now.
What I can say with certainty, drawing on my experience as a student, a teacher, an administrator, and now a consultant, is that regardless of what you believe, we need to teach financial literacy in schools. For Muslim students, this need carries an extra layer. We are not just trying to build financially capable adults. We are trying to build adults whose financial behavior aligns with their religious values. If we are not teaching students about money in the classroom today, we will keep producing Muslims trapped in an endless cycle of riba, and we will fail to grow the leaders who could actually change the foundation of these systems.
What This Could Look Like at Every Age
Financial literacy should not be a single unit tucked into a high school elective. It should grow with a student from elementary school through adulthood.
In elementary school, this can be as simple as learning what money and currency are, how transactions work, and how to stay safe with money.
In middle school, students should start learning how to budget, how income can come from entrepreneurship as well as a paycheck, and how to save with intention.
In high school, students should be learning the basics of the tax code, how borrowing works, and what types of investing exist.
By the time students are choosing a career or a college path, they should also understand how to turn a skill into a side hustle, how to start and grow a business, and what government resources are available to help them do it. They should know the difference between franchising and building an independent business, how to invest in other ventures, how credit actually works, and how to legally reduce what they owe in taxes. They should understand the basics of setting up an LLC or an S corporation.
As students grow into adults, the learning cannot stop there. We need courses that address our relationship with money, how money is handled within marriage, how to build a legacy and generational wealth, and how to give. We need to teach people how to create a will, how to plan an estate, and how to prepare for the practical realities of death. What does it actually cost to die? Why are so many of us left to figure this out entirely on our own, building our own ilm about money in isolation? And for those of us who have already learned these lessons, why are we keeping that knowledge to ourselves instead of passing it forward?
The Questions We Rarely Ask in the Classroom
Why has the nine to five become the only path anyone is taught to consider? Entrepreneurship, portfolio careers, and side hustles are just as valid a future, yet almost no one is taught how to build one.
Students deserve to understand the difference between an LLC and an S corporation, how to build a tax strategy, and how real estate compares to stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, dividends, and interest rates. For Muslim students in particular, they deserve to understand how to be free of riba, how to calculate zakat, and how to weigh a decision like leasing a car against buying one. They deserve a real understanding of retirement, including Medicare, 401k plans, Social Security, pensions, an IRA, a Roth IRA, and a backdoor IRA. These are not niche topics. They are the financial reality every adult eventually has to navigate, usually without ever having been taught.
Moving From Frustration to Action
Naming the problem is easy. Building the solution takes intention. Here are three steps schools and communities can take to start closing this gap.
1. Build a financial literacy scope and sequence, not a single unit. Financial literacy should be mapped across grade levels the same way we map reading or math standards. Elementary schools can introduce money basics, middle schools can introduce budgeting and early entrepreneurship, and high schools can introduce taxes, credit, and investing. Schools do not need to wait for a state mandate to start building this sequence into what they already teach.
2. Bring in community members who already hold this knowledge. Many parents, business owners, and community leaders already understand budgeting, halal investing, zakat, and entrepreneurship. Schools can invite these individuals to lead workshops, mentor students, or co teach units so that financial literacy is grounded in real, lived experience rather than a generic textbook module.
3. Create ongoing financial education for adults, not just students. The isolation so many of us feel around money did not start with our children. It started with us. Islamic schools and community organizations can offer regular workshops on topics like riba, zakat, estate planning, and retirement so that parents are learning alongside their children instead of being left out of the conversation entirely.
Financial literacy is not an elective. It is a form of protection, a form of leadership development, and for many of our students, a form of faith practice. If we want to raise a generation that is financially free and firmly grounded in its values, we have to start teaching it on purpose.
