Welp, there are a lot of people out there who are in bad situations because they made bad decisions because they didn't know or didn't understand the consequences of budgeting their own finances.

You could say they are stupid or/and irresponsible, which may be, but as long as we are in a world of public education then the system can't say they didn't allow them to be that way by not at least offering the opportunity to learn that stuff. You could say it's something that a parent should explain, but people in poor situations like this often don't have responsible parents. I can tell you honestly that my parents didn't actively teach me about balancing my finances and I did make a lot of early mistakes and it took a lot of time to recover from them. Maybe if there was a required class to teach such things when I was in school then at least I would have the information presented to me in some way so that I can prepare being a working adult.

And how did generations before handling this sort of thing? They didn't. Some people learned from their parents or figured it out themselves, and the ones that didn't lived in poverty or made a big mistake and learned from that.

I'm just saying, from a personal experience, I know I would have been better off with at least one required class about personal finances. Even if I didn't memorize it all, at least it would have given me an opportunity and maybe the information would be there in the back of my head when I faced a situation where it would have been useful. I just don't see a negative in having a couple classes like that, but I do see and have experienced a negative without.