Probably actually. We had mandatory personal finance to graduate high school, and they gave us one major take away message – don’t spend more than you have. You could take out loans for things of course but your monthly payments plus everything else needed to be less than your monthly take home pay.

My school was a bit special though. It was a public school but it gave students a lot of freedom and was structured to be more like a college experience. My understanding is since then, the hammer has fallen and it’s become more “traditional”