In high school, our (American) children learn critical skills (or not ... but that's a subject for another blog post ...) such as math, science, history, and literacy.  However, one thing that our schools do not teach is finance.  I'm not talking about high finance, or corporate finance - just basic finance that helps manage day-to-day money matters!  Consider the following:

• In 2007 a Charles Schwab survey on teens and money reported that only 45% of teens know how to use a credit card, while just 26% understood credit-card interest and fees.
• Only 1 in 3 teens knows how to read a bank statement, balance a checkbook and pay bills. Barely 1 in 5 had an idea how to invest.

And this isn't a new phenonenon either:

• About 20% of U.S. households, representing 22.2 million families are "unbanked." (i.e. not using mainstream, insured financial institutions.)
• The average household with debt carries approximately $10,000 to $12,000 in total revolving debt and has 9 credit cards.

Why?

• 40 states have personal finance standards or guidelines (up from 34 in 2004), 28 states with standards require them to be implemented, 9 states require testing of student knowledge on personal finance content and 7 states require students to take a personal finance course to graduate.
• Entrepreneurship is much less integrated into the curriculum in the states. Just over a third of the states include the subject of entrepreneurship in their K-12 educational standards, and only a handful require it to be included as a component of a high school course required for graduation.

(Source: Young Americans Center for Financial Education, http://www.yacenter.org)

Am I the only person that thinks that the record for education the people of American on matters of financial literacy could best be described as "spotty?"  The good thing is that this is one area where e-Learning may be easily applicable.  With good coursework, one should be able to inform someone with minimal math skills (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) in only a few hours!  Does anyone know anyone that is trying to do this?