Citizenship, Social and Economics Education

Volume 11 Number 3 2012

www.wwwords.co.uk/CSEE

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens:

what kind of responsibility, equality and engagement?
CHRIS ARTHUR
Department of Education,
York University, Toronto, Canada

ABSTRACT Financial literacy education is often assumed to be a form of technical and/or

hermeneutic training that assists citizens as well as consumers make responsible financial decisions. As
a form of civic literacy education, financial literacy education is often framed as promoting civic
responsibility, equality and engagement. This article calls into question the seemingly common-sense
construction of financial literacy as personal money management for citizens and consumers and
charges that many of the dominant financial literacy education initiatives support civic irresponsibility,
inequality and disengagement. From a perspective informed by critical theory and pedagogy, the first
three sections of this article analyse the character of the civic responsibility, equality and political
engagement promoted in the dominant financial literacy education literature while presenting critical
alternatives for each. The analysis in these sections supports the claim made in the fourth and final
section of this article that a critical, emancipatory civic financial literacy is needed for a responsible,
engaged citizenry who can extend and protect more robust conceptions of freedom and democracy.

Financial literacy education initiatives are often justified on the grounds that they help consumers
manage the corporate and state individualization of economic risk and responsibility that results
from delayed retirement, the switch from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, higher
tuition fees, fewer impediments to capital flight and reduced unemployment benefits. The claim is
also made that a number of these initiatives not only aid in personal money management but also
improve citizens civic responsibility, civic equality and political engagement. This article questions
the purported civic benefits of many of the dominant financial literacy education initiatives by
examining the character of the responsibility, equality, political engagement and thus the type of
citizen they promote.
Borrowing from the distinctions between types of civic literacies elucidated by Henry Giroux
(1980), the dominant civic financial literacy initiatives and the dominant financial literacy education
research paradigm analysed here can be characterized as supporting a technical and/or
hermeneutic civic literacy. Giroux defines technical civic literacy as an instrumentalist literacy that
helps individual citizens solve problems within the world as it is given. It is a teaching of means
without considering the ends those means are put towards or the reasons why certain choices are
available and not others (i.e. why some students are not able to choose between taking on postsecondary education debt or attending tertiary education institutions that are funded through
progressive taxation).
The hermeneutic form of civic literacy found in some financial literacy texts goes beyond the
purely technical form by supporting analysis and dialogue about hegemonic production relations
and economic practices. However, these relations and practices are viewed as fixed structures and
activities to which we must accommodate ourselves through improved knowledge. Hermeneutic
literacy education helps us become freer only in the sense that it leads us to a better understanding
of the constraints limiting our actions. Thus, even as poverty and exploitation are brought up as
163

http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/csee.2012.11.3.163

Chris Arthur
issues for discussion, a hermeneutic paradigm naturalizes the capitalist constraints within which
questions and conflicts about these issues can take place (Giroux, 1980, p. 385).
Most financial literacy research is conducted within a technical and/or hermeneutic paradigm
and concerned with questions of methodology (how to measure financial literacy), pedagogy (how
to teach financial literacy) or statistical analysis (the compilation and evaluation of financial literacy
data). This article instead joins the few studies that have called into question the picture of the
world and ethics promoted by financial literacy education initiatives and/or its efficacy (Erturk et
al, 2007; Lucey, 2007; Williams, 2007; Lucey & Cooter, 2008; Willis, 2008; Pinto & Coulson, 2011;
Arthur, 2012a, b; Carr, 2012; Pinto, 2013). These heterodox approaches to financial literacy
education vary in their goals and approaches, but they all acknowledge, as have others with regard
to economic literacy (Humes, 2002; Agnello & Lucey, 2008a, b), that financial literacy is a political
practice.
The marriage of financial literacy and citizenship education should make the political nature
of the former obvious but too often it fails to do so. Instead, the expansion of the scope of financial
literacy into the field of citizenship education supports depoliticizing a greater number of political,
economic issues.[1] This integration does expand financial literacy educations scope beyond
individual consumption practices thus supporting the potential for a less individualistic and
consumerist reading of economic issues within the discipline but this article, from a perspective
informed by critical pedagogy and critical theory (Marcuse, 1968; Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1980; Freire
& Macedo, 1987; McLaren & Farahmandpur, 2005; Carr, 2012), argues that many civic-oriented
financial literacy education initiatives simply present economic and political issues from the same
technical, hermeneutic and individualistic perspective.
This is not only unfortunate; it is dangerous. As consumer and public debt rises and citizens
are forced to acquiesce to ongoing austerity measures, the continued economic crisis provokes
reactions from the social half of Polanyis double movement (Polanyi, 2001), giving rise to Occupy
and other movements that carry the potential to limit or reverse the continued neoliberalization or
marketization of society (i.e. the continued retrenchment of the welfare state, privatization and the
replacement of the citizen with the entrepreneurial consumer-citizen) as well as openly reactionary
movements (e.g. Greeces fascist Golden Dawn) that seek racist, anti-immigrant and antidemocratic solutions to economic problems. As always, but certainly in times of crisis, citizens
committed to democracy require more than a technical or hermeneutic civic financial literacy
enabling consumer-citizens to act within a fixed political economic paradigm that will only
continue to produce crises; they require a critical, emancipatory civic financial literacy that
supports deliberation and civic engagement aimed at altering a political economic system which
constrains our actions so as to make crises all but inevitable.[2]
The first three sections of this article analyse the character of the civic responsibility, equality
and political engagement promoted in the dominant financial literacy education literature while
presenting critical alternatives for each. The analysis in these sections supports the claim made in
the fourth and final section of this article that rather than technical or hermeneutic civic financial
literacy education texts, which support civic irresponsibility, inequality and political
disengagement, citizens require the critical, emancipatory civic financial literacy that will create a
critical citizenry able to responsibly protect and extend democracy.
Civic Responsibility
Citizens who live in democracies are ultimately responsible for the character of their democracy.
To help citizens take up this responsibility, civic-oriented financial literacy initiatives teach them to
prudently consume financial products for the benefit of themselves and their democracys
economy. The argument is not new: Adam Smith, one of the more famous extollers of the supra
individual benefits of self-interested behaviour, argued, it is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own
interest (1776/2003, p. 23). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), updating Smiths argument, posits that financially literate consumers will improve market
stability because they will demand financial products more responsive to their needs ... [and]
encourage providers to develop new products and services, thus increasing competition in financial
164

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

markets, innovation and improvement in quality (OECD, 2005, p. 35). The role of financial literacy
educators, according to the OECD, is to teach self-interested consumers/investors how to purchase
the right financial products, an act that will lead to good financial products being created by
financial corporations and thus improve the economy. In short, citizens qua responsible consumers
are to regulate and improve the economy through their private, self-interested, civic
consumption.
In addition to purchasing the right financial commodities, civic financial literacy education
initiatives often define being responsible as becoming a self-sufficient, self-reliant citizen-monad.
In the words of the heads of the Canadian Financial Literacy Task Force, if individuals make the
proper financial decisions, they will be less vulnerable to job loss or the financial impact of
accidents or illness and thus fewer families will require welfare or other social assistance
programs (Stewart & Mnard, 2010, para. 10). Reducing the burden on social programs is
increasingly important as government deficits and debts mount, populations age and social
programs are increasingly placed on the chopping block. In this era of austerity, continued
profligate spending cannot be tolerated, either by individuals or governments; we cannot live
beyond our means has become the new mantra. Thus, mismanaging ones finances and relying on
scarce collective resources is even more morally irresponsible than it was during times of economic
growth. As in the first example, citizens duty towards their fellow citizens has been turned inward
so that they are only responsible for taking care of themselves and making sure they do not bother
or need to rely on others. Through their aggregated private consumer action, these consumercitizens positively contribute to the character of their economy qua democracy.
In addition to indirectly helping others, those who have achieved financial success through
investing effectively are in a position to take up a largely voluntary civic responsibility and help
others through acts of charity. This optional civic duty surfaces in the Ontario financial literacy
working groups report on financial literacy education, which links financial literacy to
compassionate global citizenship:
Being financially able, being able to provide for ourselves and our families, also puts each one of
us in a position to help others. The worlds disasters are a glaring example of the need for some
to come to the rescue of others. (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010, p. 18)

The high-profile Canadian non-profit financial literacy education organization, the Investor
Education Fund (IEF), also points out the charitable benefits that can arise from financial success in
one of its popular financial literacy texts used in teacher workshops:
When an entrepreneur is successful, the business usually generates financial rewards to the
owner, benefits to the consumer, and jobs for all of us. Sometimes entrepreneurs donate large
portions of their fortunes to hospitals, universities and other charitable organizations. (Kelly et al,
2006, p. 112)

We can add to this list the United Kingdoms Department for Children, Schools and Families
resource, My Money: Citizenship teacher handbook, which also emphasizes charity as a civic
responsibility (Personal Finance Education Group, 2009, p. 8). In these three examples the citizen is
more active and directly impacts the lives of others but only through private action aimed at
alleviating the symptoms of the problem; his or her actions have no effect on the systemic
conditions, which place individuals in need of charity.
Going beyond simply occluding the need for collective, political action aimed at systemic
change, the United States Foundation for Teaching Economics in its lesson plan on sweatshops
(Foundation for Teaching Economics, n.d.) explicitly states that citizens should not even attempt to
collectively alter their economic practices and relations. The lesson plan informs us that not only
will collective, political action backfire but that the conditions, relative to the alternative options,
are not as exploitative as we think a fact made clear, the lesson tells us, because those who work
in sweatshops chose to do so. Instead, all we can do is lower taxes and reduce barriers to trade so
that hopefully increased productivity will bring about a greater standard of living for those working
in sweatshops (Foundation for Teaching Economics, n.d.). This, we are told, is the only path to
development though one assiduously avoided by economic powerhouses such as Britain,
Germany and the United States (Chang, 2002).[3]

165

Chris Arthur
In these civic-oriented and consumer-oriented financial and economic literacy texts, we do
not, as citizens, appear responsible for our economic system and the poverty and inequality it
necessarily generates.[4] Our interdependence appears insignificant; we are only minimally
responsible for the conditions that influence the failure or success of others through the aggregate
of our private acts of saving and financial consumption. The result, I argue, is a depoliticization and
consumerization of the citizen and his or her responsibility for the character of the economy.
Elizabeth Warren, elected to the US Senate in 2012, pointed out that nobody ... got rich on
his [sic] own and because capitalists rely on public education, the police and public roads to help
them hire competent workers, defend their property and transport their goods, they ought to give
something back (Madison, 2011). However, her impassioned speech does not highlight the full
extent of our interdependence and thus the responsibility we have for the condition of others.
While Warren is correct, our interdependence goes much deeper, and even if capitalists paid for
their own roads, ran private schools to educate their future workers and hired their own police
they would still share responsibility for the financial outcomes and financial risk others face. This is
because the economic system within which capitalists reap deserved rewards is socially
constructed, could be otherwise and its very dynamism its creative destruction (Schumpeter,
1942) impoverishes some, while benefiting others.
The economy is socially constructed in the sense that capitalism and each particular type of
capitalism (neoliberal, welfare, corporatist, workfare and state) do not rest upon some unassailable
natural or just foundation. Contrary to those who, like Adam Smith (1776), view capitalism as an
outgrowth of our propensity to truck and barter, its rise was not inevitable (Thompson, 1980).
Workers who were divorced from the means of production and who had no other option but to
sell their own labour were created by political, not natural acts (McNally, 1993). Likewise, land was
not created already subdivided and ready to be cordoned off by some to the disadvantage of others.
Finally, and most obviously, the state and the laws that support the continuation of this economic
system are political, not necessary creations. In short, we could have a different economic system if
we so chose, and citizens in a democracy ought to choose and be held responsible for their choice.
Citizens, for example, ought to be held responsible for an economy in which choosing to accept a
50% wage cut to avoid being thrown out of work from an employer who posts substantial profits
(Macaluso, 2012) is not only allowed but is in many cases dictated by the structural requirements of
capitalism: a competitive system which induces capitalists to cut costs and treat workers as just
another input in production.
The discourse of meritocracy, which underscores the financial literacy project, occludes that
capitalism is an economic system that guarantees inequality and poverty alongside massive wealth.
In place of a vision of a world that appears to provide individuals with the means to succeed if they
work hard enough, I argue that we live in a world in which the possibilities for success for many
are limited.[5] Given that workers are treated like commodities that continually must be devalued
in order to be competitive, many will necessarily fail to retire comfortably, procure the resources
they need to live comfortably or at all or have a sufficient amount of free time. In such a situation,
citizens are responsible for the effects that derive from the continuation of capitalism and those
who benefit more from capitalism are more responsible for its negative effects than those who
benefit less.
Against those who would argue that a robust civic responsibility for the economy and its
distribution of wealth, opportunities and risks impinges upon individual freedom (Nozick, 1974), I
argue that it makes little sense to say that those who succeed deserve what they worked for
because their deserving is completely reliant on the choices that the system makes available,
supports or allows. Simply because one can amass massive amounts of capital and economic power
over others does not mean that he or she deserves this capital or economic power outside of the
practices, morality and laws of the system in which it was procured and is seen as deserved. A monarch
who ruled justly, increased the productivity of his lands and even worked alongside peasants in the
field does not deserve the wealth of his kingdom outside of his system of feudal relations. The
same logic applies to capitalism.
Clearly, the robust responsibility I argue citizens ought to take up a responsibility for the
economic choices and outcomes others face is contingent upon the existence of an alternative to
neoliberal capitalism. As much as neoliberals might like to think that there is no alternative to
further neoliberalization [6], history is not over and even within capitalism there are possibilities for
166

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

expanding the limited choices and altering the outcomes people face: there are better and worse
forms of capitalism. Citizens should not be forced to accept the world as it is by being encouraged
to take up a disempowered, consumerized and depoliticized responsibility that ultimately is
irresponsible as it lets us off the hook for supporting an economic system and an individualized risk
management strategy that will only ever benefit the few at the expense of the many. Financial
literacy education, if aimed at creating and supporting responsible citizens, should enable us to see
that treating macroeconomic issues (e.g. what type of economy we should have and what forms of
risk management we should support) as individual, consumer problems is an irresponsible
abandonment of our global civic duty to create relations of production, distribution and
consumption that offer the possibility of universal freedom from scarcity: a goal predicated on the
equality of human beings.
Equality
The desire to improve citizens equality through financial literacy education is endlessly repeated.
The Deputy Director of the Bank of Italys plea for greater financial literacy is paradigmatic: Today
more than ever, citizens need to be financially aware, to know the characteristics and risks of
financial products, to choose correctly. It is a matter of equity, it is a need for stability, a help for
competition (Tarantola, 2010, p. 1). Echoing Tarantola, Canadas Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty,
argues that financial literacy education will help those who are at a competitive disadvantage vis-vis their fellow citizens become more equal in ability (Flaherty, 2008). Continued widespread
financial illiteracy will only worsen inequality laments Flore-Anne Messy, the Principal
Administrator for the OECDs Financial Education and Consumer Protection Unit, who concludes
that because financial literacy levels are correlated with socio-economic status, inequalities are
reproduced and amplified overtime (Messy, 2011, p. 3). Failure to become financially literate is
frequently painted in the starkest terms; John Hope Bryant, the vice chair of the US Presidents
Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, for example, warns, if you dont understand the language
of money, financial literacy, and if you dont have a bank account, you are just an economic slave
(Bryant, 2010a, para. 12).
While helping those who are economically disadvantaged or economic slaves is
undoubtedly a just goal, it is important to look carefully at the proposed solution particularly the
character of the equality being sold, the economic practices it supports and its impact on our social
capital (Putnam, 2001). The quotes above signal a concern to alleviate at least two types of
inequality: inequality of outcome and inequality of opportunity. The explicit assumption upon
which technical and hermeneutic financial literacy initiatives are founded is the belief that you can
reduce the former through reducing the latter. Obviously, however, we should be concerned not
only about whether or not individuals can equally attempt to succeed financially but also about
whether or not the conditions in which they act will allow them to succeed.
While neoliberals are concerned with the conditions under which individuals exercise
opportunity, the conditions neoliberals desire and foster, rather than alleviating, actually worsen
outcome inequalities.[7] This is partly because, implied along with the neoliberal notion of equality
as equal inequality (Foucault, 2008), the states role is reduced to fostering conditions of
competition and ensuring that its citizens are trained as gladiators who are able to compete on
equal footing against others and garner international capitals attention. Solutions that aim to
collectively manage economic risk and directly improve equality of outcome through expanding
public pensions, creating new relations of production, providing a living wage or producing
necessary goods and services (healthcare, education, daycare, housing and food) outside of the
markets logic are viewed as inefficient, if not unjust (Arthur, 2012a).
Despite continued rising inequality as a result of neoliberal policies, many financial literacy
advocates and texts imply, if they do not state outright, that greater financial literacy education in
the face of crumbling collective supports will reduce income inequality and improve
intergenerational income mobility. It is, however, not the case that, as Donald Johnston, the
former Secretary-General of the OECD claims, greater consumer financial literacy will help solve
the major imbalances of wealth within nations (Johnston, 2005, p. 2). First, education has already
proven ineffective in creating well-paying post-Fordist or knowledge economy jobs to replace those
167

Chris Arthur
lost to technology and overseas competition (Brown et al, 2010). Second, income inequality and
intergenerational income mobility are impacted by numerous factors more important than
financial literacy such as income tax rates, income distribution, minimum wage rates, unionization
rates, quality and cost of daycare, access to affordable healthcare, financial regulations, job
qualifications, unemployment rates and the types of jobs available. Given the failure of education
tailored to a knowledge economy to reduce inequality and the complexity of the causes of wealth
inequality, it is unlikely that personal money management tips aimed at helping students calculate
interest and understand the difference between needs and wants will have much impact on income
inequality.
To be fair, I am not arguing that all or even most financial literacy advocates believe financial
literacy education alone will bring about greater income equality: the heads of Canadas Federal
Task Force on Financial Literacy, for example, argue that financial literacy is not a panacea,
though it apparently has benefits too numerous to count (Stewart & Mnard, 2010, March 15,
para. 9). I am arguing that even the advocates weaker claim misses the fact that consumer financial
literacy education is not even a small part of the cure for inequality: it is part of the disease. It poses
as a solution to the inequality generated by neoliberalization but supports neoliberal measures that
will only worsen inequality: the individualization of economic risk, the spreading of market
relations, the destruction of social capital (Putnam, 2001) and the constitution of an
entrepreneurial ethic (Arthur, 2012a).
Wendy Brown (2003) argued almost 10 years ago that we were in an interregnum in which
neoliberalism borrows extensively from the old regime to legitimate itself even as it also develops
and disseminates new codes of legitimacy (p. 47). Today, financial literacy advocates pay lip service
to the old liberal regimes goal of equality of outcome but at the same time depoliticize and
privatize the path to greater income equality. As the means to achieve greater equality of outcome
are recoded, the aim of wealth equality is devalued as a common good and we shed the last
vestiges of what 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney calls an entitlement society
in favour of expanding the logic of a purely opportunity society (Rucker, 2011). What worries
Brown and should worry those concerned to promote substantive forms of citizenship, democracy
and the necessary accompanying social capital is that neoliberalism drains liberalism of its capacity
to generate concern for issues such as income inequality and increasingly has little need for the
liberal justificatory mask so that arguments for equality of outcome or social rights fall on deaf
ears. Through the spread of equality as equal inequality, a social right to an equality of outcome
becomes increasingly delegitimized: an entitlement to be derided. Under neoliberalism you
deserve the equality of outcome and rewards you win in the economic arena.
Financial literacy educations privatization of economic risk and delegitimization of collective
economic risk management solutions is particularly troubling in a context of massive wealth
inequality as it decreases the likelihood that citizens who can provide for their needs through the
market (private policing, transportation, healthcare and education) will feel responsible for the
conditions faced by those citizens who cannot afford the services or same quality of services that
the better off receive. In fact, those who cannot afford to provide for their needs in the market will
increasingly appear as irresponsible parasites that are a drain on our collective resources or objects
of pity who can only hope for charity. After all, having been given training on how to spend and
save ones money (which is assumed to provide one with the ability to amass wealth and manage
economic risk), those who fail to succeed in the market have only themselves to blame (Willis,
2008).
Outlining neoliberalisms moralizing of economic action, Wendy Brown writes:
In making the individual fully responsible for her- or himself, neoliberalism equates moral
responsibility with rational action; it erases the discrepancy between economic and moral
behaviour by configuring morality entirely as a matter of rational deliberation about costs,
benefits, and consequences. (2003, p. 42)

Financial literacy education texts and advocates too often promote a neoliberal equal inequality,
justifying the financial outcomes of the winners and the losers without subjecting the (neoliberal)
capitalist system, which restricts the possible outcomes in advance of the contest, to any critical
scrutiny.

168

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

Moreover, many financial literacy initiatives and texts support a further disempowering of the
citizen and a profound inequality between elites and citizens, mirroring the insulation of central
banks and the removal of much of the economy from popular control under neoliberal capitalism
(Dumenil & Levy, 2004). In the financial literacy literature, the individualization of economic risk is
often presented as a fait accompli ruefully offloaded by technocratic elites who argue that given the
state of the economy, globalization or the demographic reality of an aging population the
individual has no choice but to adapt and become a neoliberal entrepreneur. There is rarely any
indication that these are political problems and that the proffered solution of risk devolution is only
one among many political solutions.
The preface from Ontarios new financial literacy curriculum document, which addresses a
citizen who is encouraged only to react to world economic forces by altering his or her
consumption is a case in point (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2011). The citizen in this texts
preface does not politically intervene in order to create new economic forces or new relations and
forms of production, consumption and distribution. The minimal citizen portrayed in Ontarios
financial literacy curriculum text does not even advocate for collective measures to alleviate the
worst effects of world economic forces. He or she is a passive consumer-citizen who leaves the
available macroeconomic decisions (which are also fairly limited) to his or her periodically elected
leaders. This mirrors other texts (e.g. Rabbior, 2007) which reproduce two levels of decision
making (a substantive one for elites and a reactive one for citizens) and highlights the profoundly
anti-democratic neoliberal belief that elites must be insulated and protected from popular influence
so they can preserve a specific form of freedom, acerbically characterized by C.B. Macpherson as
the freedom of unlimited appropriation of others powers (Macpherson, 1973, p. 23).[8]
Civic Engagement
Financial literacy education is also frequently lauded as supporting empowered civic engagement,
despite the fact that, as illustrated above, it often presents the citizens sphere of action as limited.
Law professor Gail Pearsons book chapter, Financial Literacy and the Creation of Financial
Citizens, is emblematic:
The financial literacy project offers education for choice (or freedom) and education for civic
virtue. Responsible participation in the market combines choice and virtue. These become
attributes of the financial citizen, the ability to make an informed virtuous choice. The citizen is
no longer simply a political participant and creator of liberal democracy but also a participant in
wealth creation and economic progress/development. (Pearson, 2008, p. 25)

This form of hermeneutic civic engagement harkens back to arguments from the early twentieth
century, which assume that business and consumers work together in a symbiotic relationship to
bring about continued economic progress for the benefit of all. The home economist Christine
Frederick highlights the reciprocal relationship between consumers, citizens, business, capitalism
and progress in her book, Selling Mrs. Consumer, writing, the merchandising system of today is in
itself a great consumers club, and the members vote in broad democratic fashion at great popular
elections, the polls being open every day at a million or more retail stores (Frederick, 1929,
pp. 322-323). For Frederick, the diligence with which American women carry out their consumer
duty is a mighty makeweight in the balance of progress in America, both for individual health and
happiness and for business (Frederick, 1929, p. 335).
Echoing Frederick, Pearson believes we become empowered citizen-consumers by tailoring
our consumption so that together with business we have control over what is produced. Our goal
is essentially to become better cogs that can fit into and improve the existing economic system.
The citizens duty to call into question how we organize the production, distribution and
consumption of the fruits of our human labour is replaced with a duty to improve the functioning
of the given economic system by conforming to the processs needs or telos (i.e. by becoming
informed consumers so that market demand helps rather than hinders economic progress defined
as the production of increasing utility). Within this vision, democracy is improved if the range of
consumer choices grows and the consumer is better able to choose that which he or she would
desire were he or she a fully rational consumer.

169

Chris Arthur
This is the form of depoliticized politics promoted by financial literacy organizations such as
the influential international organization Junior Achievement, which, according to one of its
chapters presidents, has as its goal the educating of financially literate citizens who can contribute
positively to the local and national economy, improving peace of mind and national stability
(Moore, 2008, October 8, para. 7). Within this depoliticized frame the challenges facing workers in
a globalized and increasingly neoliberal economy are frequently portrayed as inevitable. Gary
Rabbior, the president of the Canadian Foundation for Economic Education, for example, writes in
his financial literacy resource, Money and Youth, that there has been a somewhat disturbing trend
toward good jobs and bad jobs in Canada, the skewing of incomes, and challenges to our past
successes in raising our overall standard of living (Rabbior, 2007, p. 69). However, this trend is
described as though it was a natural phenomenon and our ability to deal with the somewhat
disturbing trend is reduced to individual measures (e.g. continual training, investing and pursuing
a nomadic lifestyle). In the place of Junior Achievements goals of peace of mind and national
stability and Rabbiors naturalization of political economic issues, civic financial literacy ought to
be a political literacy that supports a critical analysis of the instability, insecurity and precariousness
upon which our national stability and peace of mind rests. Instead of fostering a hermeneutic civic
literacy and engagement that stabilizes the current neoliberal, common-sense order, we need
citizens who can call it into question and destabilize it.
While Francis Fukuyama appears to have belatedly realized that history is not yet over
(Greider, 2012, January 18), too many financial literacy advocates have yet to catch on. John Hope
Bryant, for example, argues that everyone should have a right to a bank account at birth and that
this should be seen as no different than them having the right to vote at birth (Bryant, 2010b, para.
12). While voting and using a bank account certainly have their benefits, civic engagement ought to
be more than voting or buying the financial products that are in ones interest. Citizens ought to
be actively involved in the continual and conflict-ridden (re)creation of societal relations and
practices (Mouffe, 2005). The anti-political nature of financial literacy educations civic
engagement, however, is overlooked when focusing solely on providing limited political rights so
that one can be better integrated into neoliberal capitalism.
The philosopher Jacques Rancire (2010) provides a helpful distinction between politics and
the police that is of use in highlighting the problem with financial literacy educations promotion of
an apolitical, consensual and consumerist civic engagement. Using Rancires framework, we can
characterize the above financial literacy education initiatives as seeking to reproduce the police
order. Police, for Rancire, refers to the complex of codified material and symbolic practices,
resources, subjectivities and spaces that reproduce the current vision and division of the world.
Rancire describes politics, on the other hand, as action that disrupts the present vision and division
of the world by supplementing it with a part of those without part, identified with the whole
community (Rancire, 2010, p. 37). Citizens, in this account, could represent a part of those
without part by refusing to act as consumer-citizens and instead acting as equal participants who
have a duty to democratically influence economic relations and practices. Financially literate
citizens, if they are to be citizens rather than consumers, ought to challenge the current police order
by attempting to create a new partition of the sensible (Rancire, 2010, p. 36).
Claudia Ruitenberg provides a succinct explanation of the difference between the police order
and politics as one in which police citizens seek to resolve single issues within existing hegemonic
relations, [while] political adversaries [i.e. citizens] seek to establish different hegemonic relations
altogether (Ruitenberg, 2008, p. 280). Following these agonistic theorists, what we need is a
financial literacy education that supports the creation of adversarial citizens who seek to create new
subjectivities, practices, spaces and resources through promoting dissensus, rather than a consensus
that reproduces the neoliberal police order which reduces citizenship to spectator consumerism.
Political dissensus is a practice that does not rely on a particular space such as parliament but can
take place anywhere. It is a practice that seeks to alter the space in which it is practised and the
manner in which the participating subjects are viewed such that spaces thought previously private
and off bounds to political interference are turned into public, political spaces and those
considered to be unequal claim their equality.
A critical financial literacy education is necessary if we are going to support citizens who are
a capacity for staging scenes of dissensus (Rancire, 2010, p. 69).[9] The school can do its part by
becoming a place that fosters a sense of equality that is empowering and helps citizens understand
170

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

that equality can be more than equal inequality and that political engagement requires more than
casting votes or consuming financial products. In the place of a financial literacy education that is
too often a technical and/or hermeneutic civic literacy that supports an unjust economic system,
empowered citizens require a critical and emancipatory financial literacy education.
A Critical Civic Financial Literacy
Throughout this article I have argued for a critical or emancipatory literacy education to replace
the technical, hermeneutic civic literacy currently being promoted in many civic-oriented financial
literacy initiatives. This critical literacy shares a superficial similarity with hermeneutic education as
it aims to educate students to read the word and the world (Freire & Macedo, 1987). However, it
differs in that the world is seen as socially constructed and constituted by unjust social relations
requiring alteration. Thus, reading the world signals that students will not merely learn how to
read the world as it appears (as a world populated by self-interested consumer monads) but will
learn to read the hierarchical social relations we have created and daily recreate which benefit the
few at the expense of the many. From this perspective, the problems of poverty, insecurity,
alienation and economic crises are not simply caused by individual greed, financial
mismanagement or incompetence; they are problems which implicate our political and economic
practices.
The reader is reminded that these problems are not naturally imposed upon groups by
neutral capitalist forces. Capitalism is an economic and political system and as such the role of the
state in creating the conditions for economic crises and its shielding of some groups (banks and
financial institutions deemed too big to fail) from capitalisms crises while shifting its destructive
effects onto others (certain racialized and classed home owners, public sector workers and those
who require welfare state programmes) is important knowledge for both consumers and citizens.
Austerity is only a particular manifestation of the states role in the economy, one that visits groups
and individuals differently and in ways that have little to do with whether or not they can calculate
variable compound interest rates. The solution is not more government and less market; the
solution depends upon citizens, who, if they are to combat the xenophobic and anti-democratic
responses that arise in the fertile post-crisis ground of unemployment, political theatre,
humiliation and alienation, understand how our political economic practices, relations, institutions
and discourses are implicated in the ongoing crisis.
In supporting this effort in schools, students experiences ought to be the subject of students
critical analyses aimed at illuminating how their actions reproduce, negotiate or are devalued
and/or influenced by unequal social, political and economic relations of power (McLaren, 1997,
pp. 34-35). Thus the boundaries that limit technical training and hermeneutic inquiry are
continually questioned. This does not entail that the teacher imposes his or her reading of the
world on the students but rather invites a judgment by asking, what do you think about it?
(Biesta, 1998, p. 510). What is to be judged is not neutral but is influenced by what the teacher and
students think important to ponder, judge and act on. The importance of what is analysed is not
something that should be assumed but should itself be subject to critical inquiry. Teachers and
students need to ask: why was this issue chosen and not another? This is not a simple process, and
the violent nature of this critical inquiry, Biesta (1998) notes, is unavoidable given that the outcome
(altered subjectivity) and at times the questions asked are not desired beforehand by the students or
teacher.
In judging an issues importance, the critical financial literacy educator should be concerned
to question the ways in which we frame and materially support virtues, processes and states such as
civic responsibility, equality and democracy. Students are not to be filled up with how to properly
view and enact these concepts but are to be encouraged to think for themselves and question how
they view and recreate the social world. However, even this is not neutral because in the place of a
passive consumer-citizen the critical educator supports an active, critical citizen who is concerned
with the character of his or her democracy and the space and resources he or she uses when
carrying out political action (i.e. the means with which citizens alter the existing hegemonic
relations that promote a certain type of citizen and political action).

171

Chris Arthur
To support critical and active citizenship, the above technical and/or hermeneutic financial
and economic literacy curriculum resources can be opened up in much the same way teachers are
encouraged to create open-ended mathematics problems from textbooks that provide only closed
problems (e.g. changing the question 2 + 3 = __ to one asking what are the possible numeric
operations that could equal 5) (Van de Walle & Lovin, 2006). More open-ended resources that
encourage investigation of economic issues from a variety of perspectives, such as the National
Council on Economic Educations resource, Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics (Wight &
Morton, 2007), can act as exemplars for teachers in their critical reconstruction of technical and/or
hermeneutic resources. However, even open-ended resources that foster critical debate must
continually be critiqued for what they leave out. As an example, even though the resource Teaching
the Ethical Foundations of Economics facilitates critical discussion on economic justice and the merits
of progressive taxation using John Rawlss veil of ignorance, it leaves out the more radical position
on economic justice: that the capitalist system (in any form) is not one that should be chosen.
Reflection and debate over ethical political economic issues, however, are not enough.
Students must also act and so teachers should create or take advantage of existing opportunities to
enable students to exercise their civic capacities. Already existing initiatives in the United States
include the Service-Learning initiatives affiliated with various schools around the nation, which aim
to empower future critical citizens through combining community service with civic action. Just as
with the technical and hermeneutic curriculum resources, the examples of service-learning projects
outlined on the National Service-Learning Clearinghouses website (ETR Associates, 2012) can be
altered if need be to support more critical inquiry and action: the websites example of students
studying health issues and holding health fairs, for example, could be replaced with an investigation
into which classed, raced and gendered groups are most at risk of premature death, obesity and
food insecurity and the government policies and market forces that impact the health and diets of
those populations. Students could then disseminate their findings to the public, relevant nongovernmental organizations and/or state officials. Just as financially literate citizens require more
than knowledge of stocks and bonds, so do citizens require more than knowledge of the nutritional
value of fruits and vegetables; if students are going to improve the lives of those in their
community, they must also understand the political, economic and social reasons that keep
disadvantaged groups from accessing healthy food just as they must understand the reasons that
keep them from managing economic risk.
This does not entail a wholesale jettison of education designed to present the world as it is,
especially those examples of technical education that aim at ameliorating the social disadvantages
certain classed, raced and gendered students face within neoliberal capitalism, while also
advocating for a better world (Lucey & Giannangelo, 2006). Financial literacy education must be
relevant to the world in which we live and so financial literacy educators should teach students
about bonds, stocks, interest rates, food banks, welfare supports, unemployment insurance and
credit but must also provide an opportunity to critically analyse the structural conditions which
create, necessitate and support these forms of risk management, and a space to intervene to affect
change (i.e. to experience being critical citizens). Financial literacy education ought to be an act of
dissensus that supports citizens who struggle to question and change what is given in order to
promote greater equality and democracy.
Notes
[1] Moreover, I do not think that the justification for an avowedly political and critical financial literacy
ought to rest solely on the fact that financial literacy education when promoted as a form of civic
literacy colonizes macroeconomic and political issues. Even the financial literacy initiatives that
have no civic pretensions are also problematic because regardless of the target subjectivity (consumer
or citizen), we should not separate the teaching of means from the discussion and analysis of the ends
of those means when the issue is political.
[2] These crises should properly include those situations such as food insecurity, unemployment,
underemployment, lack of leisure time and poverty that do not substantially affect those deemed too
big or important to fail and thus disappear as effects of our collective political economic practices
and reappear as individual problems requiring individual solutions such as technical and/or

172

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

hermeneutic financial literacy instruction. For some, our political economic practices generate
continual crisis.
[3] However, more troubling that any lesson plan the Foundation for Teaching Economics creates, are
their 2010 voluntary National Content Standards in Economics for elementary and secondary school
teachers, which omit views that conflict with a neoclassical model of human behaviour, ostensibly
because this is the view of a majority of economists today and including strongly held minority
views of economic processes and concepts would have confused and frustrated teachers and
students (Siegfried et al, 2010, pp.vi, cited in Arthur, 2012b) an admission stated in the documents
preface.
[4] For particularly stark examples of neoliberal capitalisms destructive effects see Chris Hedges analysis
of sacrifice zones in the United States (Hedges, 2012).
[5] Capitalism routinely produces plenty amidst scarcity. The world, for example, produces enough
food to feed the worlds population but many routinely go hungry or starve to death (Food and
Agricultural Organization, 2002, p. 9), and in the United States houses remain vacant while families
live on the street or in their cars (Pelley, 2011).
[6] A phrase famously trumpeted by Margaret Thatcher (Harvey, 2007, p. 40).
[7] A rise in wealth inequality is one of the defining characteristics of the neoliberal era (Dumenil &
Levy, 2004; Harvey, 2007, 2010).
[8] The recent outcry at the end of 2011 when it was announced that Greece was contemplating a
national referendum on austerity measures is only a more obvious example of neoliberals hatred of
democracy.
[9] Rancire writes that a political subject is a capacity because politics as dissensus creates new
subjectivities and so codifying the subject as a set of fixed traits is to re-enact the police order. It is
precisely the identity of the known including the subject that is contested in politics.

References
Agnello, M.F. & Lucey, T.A. (2008a) More than Water under the Bridge: initiating a critical democratic
interpretation of economics education, International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 1(2), 115-118.
Agnello, M.F. & Lucey, T. (2008b) Toward a Critical Economic Literacy: preparing K12 learners to be
economically literate adults, in D.E. Lund & P.R. Carr (Eds) Doing Democracy: striving for political literacy
and social justice. New York: Peter Lang.
Arthur, C. (2012a) Financial Literacy Education: neoliberalism, the consumer and the citizen. Rotterdam: Sense
Publishers. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-918-3
Arthur, C. (2012b) Consumers or Critical Citizens? Financial Literacy Education and Freedom, Critical
Education, 3(6). http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/criticaled/article/view/182350
Biesta, G. (1998) Say You Want a Revolution? Suggestions for the Impossible Future of Critical Pedagogy,
Educational Theory, 48(4), 499-510. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1998.00499.x
Brown, P., Lauder, H. & Ashton, D. (2010) The Global Auction: the broken promises of education, jobs, and
incomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199731688.001.0001
Brown, W. (2003) Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy, Theory & Event, 7(1).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tae.2003.0020
Bryant, J.H. (2010a) Financial Literacy and Silver Rights, OECD Observer, 279.
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/3267/
Bryant, J. H. (2010b) Education and Financial Literacy as a Business Case, OECD Education Today.
https://community.oecd.org/community/educationtoday/blog/authors/505009
Carr, P. (2012) Connecting Financial Literacy and Political Literacy through Critical Pedagogy, in
Thomas A. Lucey & James D. Laney (Eds) Reframing Financial Literacy: exploring the value of social
currency. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.
Chang, H.J. (2002) Kicking away the Ladder: development strategy in historical perspective.: Anthem Press.
Dumenil, G.R. & Levy, D. (2004) Capital Resurgent: roots of the neoliberal revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

173

Chris Arthur
ETR Associates (2012) What is Service-learning? National Service-learning Clearinghouse.
http://www.servicelearning.org/what-service-learning
Erturk, I., Froud, J., Johal, S., Leaver, A. & Williams, K. (2007) The Democratization of Finance? Promises,
Outcomes and Conditions, Review of International Political Economy, 14(4), 553-575.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09692290701475312
Flaherty, J. (2008) Guest Speaker Talk for the International Conference on Financial Education. May 8,
Washington DC. http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/videos.asp?sCodigo=08-0180
Foundation for Teaching Economics (n.d.) Lesson 3: Trade and Labor: sweatshops.
http://www.fte.org/teacher-resources/lesson-plans/tradelessons/lesson-3-trade-labor-sweatshops/
Food and Agricultural Organization (2002) Reducing Poverty and Hunger: the critical role of financing for
food, agriculture, and rural development. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/003/y6265e/y6265e.pdf
Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics: lectures at the Collge de France, 1978-79. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Frederick, C. (1929) Selling Mrs Consumer. New York: The Business Bourse.
Freire, P. (1970/2006) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum.
Freire, P. & Macedo, D.P. (1987) Literacy: reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.
Giroux, H.A. (1980) Critical Theory and Rationality in Citizenship Education, Curriculum Inquiry, 10(4),
329-366. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1179823
Greider, W. (2012) Why are Republicans Attacking Vulture Capitalism? The Nation, February 6.
http://www.thenation.com/article/165738/why-are-republicans-attacking-vulture-capitalism
Harvey, D. (2007) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (2010) The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism. London: Profile Books.
Hedges, C. (2012) Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. New York: Nation Books.
Humes, W. (2002) Exploring Citizenship and Enterprise in a Global Context, Citizenship, Social and Economics
Education, 5(1), 17-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/csee.2002.5.1.17
Johnston, D.J. (2005) Importance of Financial Literacy in the Global Economy. Keynote Address to the
Financial Education Summit, Kuala Lumpur, 12 December.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/57/35883324.pdf
Kelly, B., Adam, E., Cartmale, L. & Gollino, L. (2006) Taking Stock in your Future: a guide (intermediate).
Toronto: Investor Education Fund and OISE/UT.
Lucey, T.A. (2007) Beginning Conversations about Social Justice and Financial Education: exploring musics
role, Eastern Education Journal, 36(1), 37-40.
Lucey, T.A. & Cooter, K.S. (Eds) (2008) Financial Literacy for Children and Youth. Athens, GA:
Digitaltextbooks.
Lucey, T.A. & Giannangelo, D.M. (2006) Short Changed: the importance of facilitating equitable financial
education in urban society, Education and Urban Society, 38(3), 268-287.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013124506286942
Macaluso, G. (2012) Caterpillar Workers Decry 50% Pay Cut: locked out London, Calgary Herald, January 5.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/life/christmasfund/Caterpillar+workers+decry+cent/5952142/story.h
tml?cid=megadrop_story
Macpherson, C.B. (1973) Democratic Theory: essays in retrieval. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Madison, L. (2011) Elizabeth Warren: there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own, CBC News,
September 22. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20110042-503544.html
Marcuse, H. (1968/2009) Negations: essays in critical theory. London: MayFlyBooks.
McLaren, P. (1997) Revolutionary Multiculturalism: pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
McLaren, P. & Farahmandpur, R. (2005) Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: a critical
pedagogy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
McNally, D. (1993) Against the Market: political economy, market socialism and the Marxist critique. London:
Verso.
Messy, F.A. (2011) Financial Education at School: international OECD/INFE Guidelines. FCAC-OECD
Conference on Financial Literacy, Toronto, 26-27 May.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/14/48211770.pdf

174

Financial Literacy Education for Citizens

Moore, D. (2008) Economic Turmoil Proves Acute Need for Financial Education Programs, Junior
Achievement. Washington. http://www.jawashington.org/about/presidents_corner.php
Mouffe, C. (2005) On the Political. New York: Routledge.
Nozick, R. (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2005) Improving Financial Literacy:
analysis of issues and policies. Paris: OECD.
Ontario Ministry of Education (2010) A Sound Investment: financial literacy education in Ontario schools.
Toronto: Queens Printer for Ontario.
Ontario Ministry of Education (2011) Financial Literacy: scope and sequence of expectations, grade 4 to 8. Toronto:
Queens Printer for Ontario.
Pearson, G. (2008) Financial Literacy and the Creation of Financial Citizens, in M. Kelly-Louw, J.P. Nehf &
P. Rott (Eds) The Future of Consumer Credit Regulation: creative approaches to emerging problems. Farnham:
Ashgate.
Pelley, S. (2011) Hard Times Generation: families living in cars, CBS News, November 27.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57330802/hard-times-generation-families-living-in-cars/
Personal Finance Education Group (2009) My Money: citizenship teacher handbook. Teaching Personal Finance
Education in Citizenship at Key Stages 3 and 4.
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/My_Money_Citizenship.pdf
Pinto, L.E. & Coulson, E. (2011) Social Justice and the Gender Politics of Financial Literacy Education,
Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 9(2), 54-85.
Pinto, L.E. (2013) When Politics Trump Evidence: financial literacy education narratives following the global
financial crisis, Journal of Education Policy, 28(1), 95-120. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2012.690163
Polanyi, K. (2001) The Great Transformation: the political and economic origins of our time, 2nd edn. Boston, MA:
Beacon Press.
Putnam, R.D. (2001) Bowling Alone: the collapse and revival of American community. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Rabbior, G. (2007) Money and Youth. Toronto: Canadian Foundation for Economic Education.
Rancire, J. (2010) Dissensus: on politics and aesthetics. London: Continuum.
Rucker, P. (2011) Romney Sees Choice between Entitlement Society and Opportunity Society, The
Washington Post, December 20. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/romney-sees-choicebetween-entitlement-society-and-opportunity-society/2011/12/20/gIQAjXH57O_story.html
Ruitenberg, C.W. (2008) Educating Political Adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and radical democratic citizenship
education, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 28(3), 269-281.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-008-9122-2
Schumpeter, J.A. (1942/1987) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Unwin Hyman.
Smith, A. (1776/2003) The Wealth of Nations. New York: Bantam.
Stewart, D.A. & Mnard, L.J. (2010) Why Now? Making Financial Literacy a Priority, The Globe and Mail,
March 15. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/why-now-making-financial-literacy-apriority/article1501423/
Tarantola, A.M. (2010) OECDBank of Italy Symposium on Financial Literacy.
http://www.bancaditalia.it/interventi/intaltri_mdir/tarantola_090610.pdf
Thompson, E.P. (1980) The Making of the English Working Class, new edn. London: Penguin.
Van de Walle, J.A. & Lovin, L.H. (2006) Teaching Student-Centred Mathematics: Grades 5-8. Boston: Pearson.
Wight, J.B. & Morton. J.S. (2007) Teaching the Ethical Foundations of Economics. New York: National Council
on Economic Education.
Williams, T. (2007) Empowerment of Whom and for What? Financial Literacy Education and the New
Regulation of Consumer Financial Services, Law & Policy, 29(2), 226-256.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9930.2007.00254.x
Willis, L.E. (2008) Against Financial-literacy Education, Iowa Law Review, 94(1), 197-285.
http://www.law.uiowa.edu/documents/ilr/willis.pdf

175

Chris Arthur
CHRIS ARTHUR is an elementary school teacher in Toronto, Canada and a PhD student at York
University, Toronto. His current research interests include financial literacy education, critical
theory, critical pedagogy, democracy and political philosophy. Correspondence:
chrisrossarthur@gmail.com

176