The three Rs are necessary skills taught in schools: reading, writing, and arithmetic. They have been the keystones of education since the early 1800s.

Access to education with the three Rs has created broad advances in general well being over the past two centuries.

Especially reading. Books are constant friends, accessible counsellors, and wisest of teachers. Reading is how we become lifelong learners.

Charlie Munger said,

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.”

Literacy and numeracy have been the building blocks of prosperity for the past two centuries. They have proven their utility. We need more. We need to add some life skills to the subject matter.

It’s time to add fundamental business and money management skills to the three Rs.

Universal business education and money management skills could enhance prosperity and distribute social justice.

Economic growth drives prosperity, and social justice spreads that prosperity fairly. These two impulses seem at times to pull in opposing directions. It’s a false dichotomy. They overlap, and education is the key to promoting both.

Teaching children and adolescents how to succeed in a free market economy would lay a strong foundation for both social justice and economic growth.

Developing skills to create wealth and generating wealth protected and handed down will break poverty cycle cycles. What we do in our lifetime informs the generations that come after.

Business education should start no later than fifth grade and continue through 12th grade and beyond.

Fifth-grade students can start grasping the ABCs of business. Essential business functions rely on simple basic math. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are the only math required for most business functions.

Middle school students would find introductory accounting no more complicated than their other lessons. Accounting is one of the most useful subjects a person can know.

Warren Buffett said,

“Accounting is the language of business.”

We should all understand and speak the language if we are to get on in this world.

With this preparation, high school students could confidently handle courses in Finance, Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship puts all the business and money management skills together. It’s a systematic process for figuring out ways to help other people get results for which they will gladly pay you.

There is a lot of money in the world looking for someone who has a solution to a problem. Teaching entrepreneurship in school will unleash latent creativity and increase our chances of solving our pressing problems.

We can also teach the basics of how to handle money: budgeting, saving, and investing. Knowing how to manage money will help keep young people from incurring the burden of debt.

Consumer debt is probably the biggest obstacle to creating personal wealth. If you don’t know how to manage your money, you might still become rich, but you won’t stay rich.

Everyone would be far better off if they learned early on how to save and then prudently invest more of their earnings.

Universal business education could help many break free of the cycle of poverty and start a revolution of intergenerational prosperity.

The more we teach children about fundamental business principles, the more likely they will prosper as adults.

Universal business education would eventually foster a social contract that would produce more wealth faster and spread that wealth more efficiently and fairly than what we currently experience.

A strong economy and social justice are not mutually exclusive goals.

I am excited about creating something to try and address this gap.

We expect everyone to survive and thrive in this freewheeling system, but we don’t make the required skill sets readily available to learn.

I am taking my books MBA ASAP and The Way to Wealth and combining them into a basic text that covers these main topics with a free and inexpensive version so everyone can learn and become empowered.

I created these books to share what I know to help adults navigate the world. Now I want to make a simple curriculum available to all children, adolescents, and young adults.

It’s not the answer to everything, but it’s a step in the right direction. And sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

A world of citizens that are broadly capable empowered and enfranchised can course-correct policies toward social justice and equity. Prosperity can provide the economic surpluses necessary to provide a universal safety net and lend a helping hand to those facing difficulties.

Other life skills to round out the curriculum include conflict resolution, critical thinking, and meditation.

It’s our responsibility to future generations to strive to achieve the promise of that founding document.

This investment is in line with the ideals of the architects of the U. S. Declaration of Independence. It supports their commitment to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

One of the best investments we can make is in the stability and safety of our society. A secure social framework is a function of broad prosperity and social justice. A predictable, safe, and stable society promotes liberty, equality, and fraternity. This condition, in turn, allows us to pursue happiness.

Pursuing business opportunities and managing money are continuous endeavors requiring life long learning. Life long learning, and the application of the lessons, is the solution to many societal issues.

We owe it to our kids to teach them how to succeed in the real world. Universal education in the fundamentals of business and money management offers a wellspring of hope.

I’m interested in hearing what you think and any suggestions you might have.

If we take people as they are, we risk making them worse. But if we take them as they should be, we make them capable of becoming what they can be.

Let’s create a rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence.

We can’t change the past, but we can start where we are and change the future.

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