Albert Einstein once said that “the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” He may have exaggerated a bit, but he was on to something. Compound interest has made busboys into billionaires and brought others to the brink of destitution, but it is one of many (simple) financial concepts that are not covered adequately in public schools. Think back to your high school years. Were you ever taught in class how to balance a checkbook, fill out a tax return or save a portion of your income for retirement? Did anyone caution you against the utter inanity of using credit cards or payday loans to borrow money? For some reason, society has decided to treat the most important, relevant things that a person will ever learn as given, mainstream knowledge. Perhaps this is why our country has a negative savings rate, and why so many people are forced to declare bankruptcy because of out-of-control credit card debt. Most of the financial education that children currently receive comes from their parents. This system of privatized financial education works great, except for cases where the parents are woefully ignorant of intelligent money management practices. Adults who do not manage money well are almost invariably poor, and the spending habits that their children learn from them perpetuate class divisions across generational lines. It’s funny, then, how much attention is paid toward this country’s sinking competence in science and mathematics when the most basic tidbits of knowledge that are needed to survive in the modern world are carelessly neglected. Very few people need to be able to solve a quadratic equation, and even fewer need to know the difference between meiosis and mitosis. But every single person in this country is, at some point, going to have to face the choice between paying taxes and breaking the law. Everyone is going to get an offer for a credit card application, and everyone is going to need to be able to balance their income with basic living expenses like food, shelter and medical care. It’s no wonder that students constantly bemoan the uselessness of the information that they are forced to ingest. The simple solution is, of course, to add a standardized finance course to nationwide school curriculums. If physical education can be made a priority (read: playing kickball in the school gym for an hour a day), so can financial education. A multi-year finance course could greatly reduce bankruptcy filings, increase the national savings rate and drastically improve the quality of life for lower- and middle-class Americans, all at a reasonably low cost. It’s unfair and borderline immoral for children of low-income families to not have the same exposure to basic money management that those of upper-income families receive all of their lives. The public education system should offer the opportunity to level the socioeconomic playing field without a redistribution of wealth by the government. Gambling a child’s future lifestyle on the financial skills of their parents is not a winning proposition.