Personal finance class

NPR's Tobia Smith reports on a popular personal finance class at Wellesley College. But why wait until college? When it comes to the fundamentals of personal finance every California schoolchild is being left behind. A decade ago I worked for a group of state securities regulators in Washington, D.C. that promoted financial literacy and personal finance classes in high school. One soundbite I crafted for our president: "We teach phys ed, sex ed and drivers ed, why not financial ed?" A question to be asked. The answer? Maybe that's the way some want it, to keep us stupid about money. Ignorant consumers, after all, don't read fine print, they don't ask questions, they don't comparison shop, they don't see through advertisements.