> at the time we were all dumb 14-17 year olds who didn’t care

This is not teaching, it’s a fabrication

Can you teach swimming to a guy who has never left Sahara desert and has never seen water?

Can you teach teaching driving to a guy who’s never touched a car?

Then how do we teach finance/banking to a kid who has never earned a salary, paid bills, and probably never even held more than $100 at all?

those are false equivalencies.

you can teach someone about financial concepts, without having the actual monies. These are not physical activities requiring actual mediums like driving or swimming. They are mental concepts - an extension of critical thinking and maths, with a bit of instruction following mixed in.

Good luck. In math, it's extremely difficult to teach the mental concepts and critical thinking. Unless you have a gifted teacher, most schools just teach you rote memorization and solving countless duplicate problems that use the same technique.

I really don't understand the people who complain that they weren't taught about debt and loans and checking accounts. You were given a 6th grade math education, and you were taught how to read. High school classes cannot be expected to teach every possible circumstance or decision you'll find yourself in. At some point you have to self-start.

realistically, the complaint isn't about lack of things being taught at school (tho it's framed that way).

The real complaint is the lack of being told exactly what to do that leads to a path of automatic success. What they were told to do did not lead to automatic success, but is in fact, fraught with traps and dangers, most of which is avoidable but only for those with the foresight.

But i am a believer of personal responsibility, and that following the crowd (or common advice) without thinking critically about it will merely lead sheep to slaughter.