28. Educating the Next Generation

28. Educating the Next Generation

Don’t give answers. Let the child think it through. Plan your own decisions, bear your own consequences. In 20+ years of teaching, I have encountered too many family stories distorted by poverty. The most common is not “poor people have no money” but: once poverty reaches an

extreme, the family’s energy gets compressed inward, eventually erupting on the weakest member — the child, the spouse, the elder. Every time I see headlines about domestic violence, or a father killing himself together with his children, I am struck by intense empathy — the root of these tragedies is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the compound of “chronic deficit + anxiety + no way out.” This is why I keep saying: financial education is not just a survival skill — it is a weapon against social injustice. A child who grows up understanding compounding, capital, and the value of time will, as an adult, hold a completely different field of view when facing life’s choices. He won’t fall into the consumerist trap from short-sightedness; he won’t be harvested by the finance industry from ignorance; and he won’t lose his dignity to poverty — nor will he let his own children repeat those tragedies under poverty’s pressure. Yet schools don’t teach personal finance. This isn’t any single school’s problem; it is a structural defect of the entire education system. From kindergarten to college, the curriculum has language, math, physics, chemistry, history, geography — but never “how to deal with money.” We’ve already analyzed why: the modern school system was born in the Industrial Revolution, designed to train obedient, punctual, instruction-following labor, not independently thinking capitalists. Laborers need to know how to work, not how to get rich. If everyone understood personal finance, no one would show up at the factory. Since schools don’t teach, financial education must be carried by families. But there’s a paradox: most parents don’t understand personal finance themselves — they were trained by the same system into laborers. The most they can pass on is the old narrative: “Study hard, get into a good university, find a good job.” Nothing intrinsically wrong with that narrative — but it omits the most critical part: work is only one way to earn money, and the least efficient one.

So what should we teach the child?

First, teach them to understand compounding

Find a calculator and compute with the child: if you save $100 a month at 12% annualized, what is it in 40 years? When the child sees the surprising number, a brand-new, heart-felt awe for “time” is born. That awe will protect him countless times in the future — when he wants to impulse-spend, when he wants to chase short-term jackpots, he’ll remember: time is the most valuable thing.

Second, teach them to understand capital

Tell them: money can buy things, and money can also “make money.” You don’t have to always trade your labor for income — you can let your money work for you. The earlier this concept is planted, the earlier the child escapes “tenant-farmer thinking” — the mindset that life’s entire possibility is “go to work, draw a salary.”

Third, and most important — teach them to think independently

My daughter once complained: “Dad, you never give me the answers.” I said: “Right. Why should I give you the answer?” In my philosophy, the most valuable thing isn’t the answer itself but the

process of seeking it. Plan your own decisions, bear your own consequences — that is the ability the child really needs. I often discuss with students one observation: we are all products of our era. Today’s education system is force-feeding — the brain only receives information; it isn’t thinking on its own. When everyone receives the same information, says the same things, considers the same things correct, who still stops to ask: “Does this even make sense?” So in my education of the child, I repeatedly emphasize: even if your conclusion is wrong, it’s fine — but you must think for yourself. Don’t assume what Google searches return, or what the textbook prints, is necessarily right. The U.S. education system has a feature worth borrowing: it encourages trial and error. Wrong is fine, bear the consequences, learn from it. This culture produced Apple, Google, Tesla — companies that changed civilization. East Asian force-feeding mostly produces highly obedient excellent laborers — smart, diligent, disciplined, but rarely daring to challenge existing paradigms to create the genuinely new. You alone can’t change the education system, but you can change your own family’s education. Starting today, discuss money with your child — not “how to save your pocket money,” but the operating logic of capital. Let them know “study hard, find a good job” is not the only option in life, perhaps not even the best. Let them, from young, observe the world with “capitalist thinking” rather than “laborer thinking” running on predetermined rails. A child who from young understands compounding won’t be scared by short-term market swings as an adult. A child who from young understands capital won’t bet their whole life on one paycheck. A child who from young practices independent thinking won’t easily be carried away by the finance industry’s pitches and society’s inertia. That is the power of education — it doesn’t just change one person’s fate, it changes a family’s fate across generations.

Key Points

One, financial education is the most-ignored most-important class in family education. The school won’t teach, because the system was designed to train laborers, not capitalists. Parents must take it up. Two, teach the child three things: compounding (the value of time), capital (money makes money), independent thinking (don’t blindly follow authority or the mainstream). The earlier these three are planted, the larger the child’s life-option space. Three, break the single narrative of “study hard, find a good job.” That story produces obedient laborers, not independent individuals. You can’t change the education system, but you can change your family’s education.