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[lentinman]

Death:

Although Carlin may be right-on with respect to his macro argument of the super rich not wanting the rest of us to be "educated", I still maintain that the biggest micro problem with the education system is the glaring lack of being taught personal finance.

When you graduate from high school (or college) - from that moment on (if not sooner) the most important knowledge you have is personal finance.

I bet you would be just as shocked at how many people don't know what DJIA stands for as you probably are at how many people can't locate Kansas on a map! Of course, that is just one simple point that could be made. Most young people don't know (or don't understand) a myriad of things that will matter the rest of their lives - such as compounded interest, problems with debt, financial bubbles, emotional investing and on and on.

Oh, they can tell you what some dorky "god" is named for in Greek literature, but they can't balance a checkbook. It's insane! The crap you get taught that in 98% of the cases never provides any REAL value to you the rest of your life takes precedence over the single most important thing - personal finance.

In fact, so obvious and glaring it is, I'm borderline inclined to believe a big conspiracy is at work here. As you know, I'm not one to believe in such things, but I simply cannot comprehend how our educational system could overlook something so obvious to the degree it has. A good conspircist could easily argue that if the masses really, truly understood personal finance, that big corporations would lose a fortune because people wouldn't buy things until they could pay cash - if nothing else.

It's a no-brainer that there should be some type of personal finance course REQUIRED in every year of high school and college - even if it is just a single semester class each year piggy backed onto economics in high school or a 1 hour credit each year in college.

Len