Financial literacy and entrepreneurship, taught as subjects
Most people leave school without ever having been taught what interest is, what a business actually does, or why two things that cost the same are not the same purchase. It's a strange gap, and it's not there because the material is hard.
Here money and business are subjects with time on the timetable, taught from the start rather than offered as a club to whoever signs up.
What the younger years cover
Where money comes from and what it's for. Earning it and saving it. Why the same thing costs different amounts in different places. What it means to want something now instead of something better later, which is a lesson about character before it's a lesson about money.
Simple record keeping, done by hand, because a child who has written down what came in and what went out understands a balance in a way no explanation delivers.
What the senior years cover
Interest, and why it works for you in one direction and against you in the other. What a business is, what it sells, and the difference between money coming in and money kept. Pricing something and finding out you got it wrong.
By the senior grades students run something small and real, and keep the books for it themselves. Not a simulation with pretend money in it.
Why it is a core subject
Because almost every adult needs it and almost no adult was taught it. That's the whole argument, and we have never heard a good answer to it.
It sits alongside the other things a person turns out to need: how to build and fix, how to look after a body, how to make a case and change your mind, and how to work with people you did not choose.
Questions about Money and business
Isn't this too young for financial literacy?
Five-year-olds already understand that things cost money and that you cannot have everything. Building on that's easier than undoing twenty years of not talking about it.
Do students actually handle real money?
In the senior grades, yes, within a real venture with real records. That's the part that makes it stick.
Join the founding families list
The Academy opens when the founding cohort is full. Families on the list get first places, help set the first year's calendar, and keep the founding rate for as long as their child is enrolled.