Don't school kids in personal finance - Why Not?!

I am a little surprise with the opinion expressed by a reader’s letter to BT’s Mailbag yesterday: “Don't school kids in personal finance”

Here is the letter (in blue color again) and my personal comment:

I REFER to your editorial, 'Lessons from the Mini-bonds saga' (BT, Oct 30). I have to disagree with your suggestion 'to teach the most important basics of personal finance to our children in school ...'
Me too, but on yours. :-)

My reasons are that first, personal finance is not a subject that can be taught to children in their early teens as it requires a certain level of maturity.
When a person is matured then it will be too late to mould the financial behavior!

Second, a little knowledge may be dangerous.
Yah, but no knowledge is even more disastrous!

And third, it is likely that instead of developing the likes of Warren Buffet, we may end up creating a 'greed is good' mentality.
The objective of personal finance education is not to ‘develop the likes of Warren Buffet’ and it should never be. I did not realize that personal finance education is to instill ‘greed is good’ mentality?!

Therefore, the teaching of personal finance should be deferred until the children reach the tertiary level.
How many of Singaporean never reaches tertiary level? Some not even secondary! Why are they being deprived of personal finance education? Personal finance is affecting the life and living of themselves and their family for whole life!

In the schools, they should be taught fundamental human values which can lead to the building of a caring and sharing society.
We should not just repeating the fairy tales and not explaining to them how their parents able to afford and put food on the table!

Personal finance is not about teaching kids how to trade forex with margin leverage, but can be as simple as instill disciplin to keep extra pocket money into piggy bank.

Please start early!