There is almost zero information provided on proper personal financial responsibility/management in formal education in the U.S. You'd get more information from the /r/personalfinance Reddit subreddit FAQ.
I remember having a class called "household" taking about an hour a week for a year or two in my primary education, where we learned mostly about cooking. Yes, I'm not joking. A class about finance could take the same amount of time, since apparently there is time available in the school schedule, and be very worthwhile.
We had a semester-long required course in high school (usually taken as a freshman) called "Career and Family" which focused on a re-hash of sex ed. and information on the dangers of drug abuse. We also had a semester-long required course in economics which focused more on the stock market and macroeconomics.
Way back in 4th/5th grade we had an hour or so each day for a couple of weeks focused on things like balancing a checkbook, but it was probably a bit too early on to do much good beyond reinforcing the required math skills. Then again, cooking was something I learned a year or two earlier in a summer-school class, so maybe some things do stick at that age.
There's a difference between a lack of financial education and "made deliberately so by perverse educational systems."
I don't think there's a massive conspiracy to systematically keep people financially naive. I think there's a legitimate debate to be had over whether formal schooling is the best place to put this sort of education.
How is
that debatable? We teach coins and bills to 8 yr olds, but for some pseudoiberal-arts-intellectual reason we don't teach propaganda and compounding interest to hif schoolers. (I actually learned propaganda in a school-funded after school academic "sports" club, but my case was rare)
I don't think we should be teaching finance any more than we should be teaching cooking. It's mainly a life survival skill, not an academic subject, and thus should be the responsibility of parents.
Schools, by design, are not interested in encouraging critical thinking or creating independent and free individuals. Rather, the focus is on organising children and creating reliable, predictable, obedient citizens. As award-winning former teacher John Gatto puts it, “school was looked upon from the first part of the 20th Century as a branch of industry and a tool of governance.”
The financial elite and their philanthropic organisations together with lobby groups and governments have been able to mold society by funding and pushing compulsory state schooling for the masses.
Also, schools have become bastions of various ideologues (feminists, multiculturalists, moral relativists etc.), most of whom are not particularly clear thinkers. These people spend most of their time divided between pushing their own brand of BS and fighting for tenure with little concern for true educational reform.