Home ec could have used more 'ec'

It was the rip-roaring Wall Street 1980s.

Women were stuffing shoulder pads into power suits for a workforce on stock market steroids. The J. Geils Band was striking it rich with a more traditional spin: "Centerfold," a chart-topping ode to a classmate-turned-nude model.

And in home-economics class, public school, Delaware County, Generation X was being prepared for the next two decades of boom-to-bust financial Darwinism by learning to make trail mix.

I also learned to embroider purple thread onto the white felt teeth of a stuffed mouse with floppy ears. (I have recently wondered: What might that mouse of mine fetch on Antiques Road Show? Enough for a pension in 30 years? Enough to supplement my moody 401(k)? Enough to cover me if I get laid off?)

In the wreckage of the recent financial crisis, there has been ample time for reflection. And it's safe to conclude that the economic safety net that buffered many of our parents from the need-to-know world of personal finance is pretty much toast.

As teenagers back in that era of contradictions and change, none of us saw it coming. Boy George, George Michael, and the 401(k) made seemingly simultaneous debuts as job security began to exit, stage left.

Now, it seems, Generation X is in sore need of a Plan B. Because with three decades to go before retirement, it's all on us, folks. Every last dime of it.

Society dumped 401(k) Kool-Aid down our throats while dismantling pension plans and underfunding Social Security. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Nothing really prepared us for this, did it? Calculus? Nope. Kickball? Nope. Shakespeare? European history? Marching band? Not so much.

There was electric shop, where I used a soldering iron once. And wood shop, where I sanded my very own candlestick in the blessed absence of lawyer-proof protective wear.

And metal shop. Ah, metal shop, where a squinting teacher once called me "Mona Pan-TREE-dis," and I turned a slab of metal into a pointy silver bullet. Not on the same day, mind you.

So it was shocking in a Casablanca sort of way to catch this recent headline about U.S. financial literacy: "Teenage Years Prime Time to Teach Financial Skills," the boldface type blared.

The survey, by the market-research firm Mintel, found that two-thirds of today's teens learn something about finances through school lessons. Encouraging enough. "But disturbingly, 51 percent say they've acquired their financial skills through trial and error," the news release went on to say.

Really? No kidding? How's this for a news tip? "Disturbingly, most adults currently paying mortgages and working really hard have acquired their financial skills through trial and error. And error. And error."

If only Haverford High School teacher Charles Lord had been our guy in the Eighties. As head of the school's business department today, he has spent the last nine years helping to craft a personal-finance course that has become one of Haverford's most popular electives.

"Nobody is born with the ability to manage their money," Lord said. "It's a learned skill. People have to be taught this. And, unfortunately, it's not required, it's not being taught enough in schools."

Translation: You are not dumb if you don't understand. Even if you are a grown-up.

Personal-finance classes are not mandatory, the way geometry and algebra are in Pennsylvania schools. But clearly, there's an appetite for them, and a national movement urging more, Lord said.

"Can I sign up for his class?" a 37-year-old college friend, Beth, a working mother of two, asked as I told her about the Haverford class.

"When I was a teenager," she said, despairing, "what I learned about finances was, 'You don't get to spend anything, ever. Whatever you earn, it goes into the bank, and your father controls it.' "

Two hundred students have enrolled in Haverford's personal-finance class, said principal Jeff Nesbitt. It's a big draw - even the parts about stocks, bonds, and CDs.

"I just don't think there's enough kids being taught about this stuff," Lord said. "If they're not taught in school, they're turning to their parents. And, unfortunately, the parents don't have this knowledge either."

Adults can play catch-up by reading up on the Internet or seeking out a finance class at night, he said.

What Lord doesn't know is that, instead, I just might crash his class.

I could teach the kids a thing or two about trail mix. You know, for the next big financial catastrophe. Maybe it'll make me a millionaire.