Financial Literacy Education for Citizens: What Kind of Responsibility, Equality and Engagement?

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.