The U.S. Department of Education shouldn’t exist and we’d be best off if we could summarily abolish it. Short of that, however, under sensible leadership, the department could at least do a bit of good. In today’s Martin Center article, economics professor Kelly Markson proposes an idea — promote financial literacy in our schools.

She teaches at Wake Tech Community College in Raleigh and has observed that many of her students know very little about personal finance. That knowledge used to come from the family and having part-time jobs, but too few of America’s youth today gets much of that. Markson recounts a conversation with an economics major at UNC who wasn’t even able to explain the difference between gross and net income.

Her students are amazed to learn how much wealth they can accumulate through steady saving and investing. It’s lamentable that so few students learn that at any time during their education.

Markson concludes, “Secretary DeVos, please prioritize personal finance. There are some who will criticize you no matter what you do. They might argue ‘What good is teaching about investing in the stock market when the working poor barely have enough to eat? Let’s stick to the status quo, and focus more on things such as Algebra I.’ The truth is that not everybody needs to learn Algebra I to succeed, but everybody needs to understand the basics of budgeting, saving, and building wealth.”

It would be interesting to see what would happen if Secretary DeVos did make this part of her change agenda. I think most Americans would say, “Sure — that ought to be part of every student’s education.” Progressive zealots, however, would no doubt oppose it since financial literacy tends to imbue people with both a sense of personal responsibility and far-sightedness, neither of which is consistent with the sort of citizen the progressives want to create. They’d much rather have the schools teach kids to hector everyone about climate change and white privilege than to understand compound interest and financial instruments.