If you are old enough to work, you should have a modicum understanding of what to do with the money you're earning other than spending it on consumables (such as gas, food, electronics, bowling, booze). Basic finance is more valuable than history, science, art, music, gym, english or social studies. Everyone uses money in order to purchase the necessities to survive every day, and not having mandatory courses in its basic uses and management is a shame.
Some of the topics that might be covered in my suggested curriculum:
1 - Balancing a checkbook (don't laugh, most people cannot do this)
2 - Defining Interest and Yield
3 - How the money system works (velocity of money, printing, etc.)
4 - Credit Cards (yes, you could devote an entire course to this)
5 - Lending and Borrowing, e.g. debt
6 - Investments
7 - Bank services (i.e. what is FDIC protection and the differences between CDs and Savings Accounts)
8 - College savings, borrowing, and options available to students
9 - Financial aid programs for students, entrepreneurs, and homebuyers
10 - The time value of money
When I have a child I will do everything in my power to see that they get an excellent education in proper money and debt management. However, every parent is not capable of educating their child on fiscal responsibility. Personal finance is worth more than a couple seminars, it should be a core course and required as much as any art or music course because it enriches their lives. Not only that, but proper money management and savings should reduce crime, given that the majority of non-violent crime stems from the desire for the need for money. In fact, many violent crimes are related to money, too! Who knew?
Money management should lower the personal debt rate and result in increased spending. Increased spending? Of course, when you have more money, you have more money to spend. Also, when institutions have more money from investors and savers, they have more to lend to businesses, who in turn generate value, enriching the economy.
How is knowing the number of planets in our solar system - of which we can only visit one and haven't done so in decades - more useful than knowing that check-cashing places are ripping off workers? Or that the interest on credit cards is more than quintuple what the consumer can make with any certainty on their bank savings? When a student graduates high school only to go on to become so heavily indebted they will never have any chance of leaving their station in life, what good does a diploma do? Nothing. But they can tell you the atomic mass of Hydrogen (hopefully).
I will be looking into seeing if there is anything that might be done to add such a course to our public schools in Boston as time permits.