Well, I don't have a foolproof program (you know what they say about ingenious fools...), but what I've seen work in a more informal context is a group class for the main parts of a subject, and optional, short "appendage" classes run in parallel with the main class, for little bits and pieces that may be harder for particular students.
Mind you, this was for a group of very motivated & generally competent adults, so the people who needed additional help tended to self-identify and show up at the side mini-classes as they needed. It was also an environment where the same main class was being taught in parallel to hundreds of students, so having side mini-classes that might only be attended by 5-10% of the students still made sense.
Some of the kids do remember just enough to be useful later.
We didn't have a module on life insurance, but I picked up at about the same age "anything but term insurance is probably a scam" (though doubtless perfectly legal). Later I added "before buying life insurance, think about what would actually be needed if the death occurred". What else do I need, other than a good financial calculator and at least some providers willing to give actual financial details, rather than imprecise or misleading brochures?
Likewise, one of my math teachers, when I was somewhere around 12 years old, brought in a heap of income tax forms, and had us all fill them out for three hypothetical tax payers. My take away: "this is <i>easy</i>; all you need is basic arithmetic skills." I didn't become better able to file taxes, or even learn about some of the ways in which filing income tax can be made anything other than simple. But more than a decade later I faced my first tax forms with happy confidence. (And yes, they were as easy as I remembered.)
That last bit (which, btw, good job by that teacher!) reminds me of one of the guys who lived in the house where I rented a room during grad school. He used to work as an assistant furniture delivery guy, and when he got paid he would cash his check at one of the supermarkets, for a not-insignificant fee, then carry a huge wad of bills home. He'd pay his rent and utilities with money orders that he'd buy at the same supermarket quasi-banks. (He'd give me cash for his share of the cable bill, since I had been the first to move in and the service was in my name...)
I tried to explain to him once that this was insane behavior, and he should deal with reputable banks instead. His reply was "I don't want to get a checking account, because I don't want to deal with all that math."
(Bizarrely, he was not the only one to live in that house who didn't have a checking account. The OTHER guy in that boat had a long-ago conviction for check kiting, and was (he said; I couldn't exactly confirm this) that he was on some kind of blacklist as a result. He did have a savings account in a real bank, at least, and would buy his bill-paying money orders from them at a much less confiscatory rate...)
One thing I've long wished for is optional classes, say, after school for pre-college students, and whenever, for college students. Now, maybe you'd have the same problem of "kids who need to learn about time management will find it difficult to get themselves to this class, especially if it's not required," but I'd file that under "making the perfect the enemy of the good." *Some* kids will be all over some of these optional offerings. I know that I, for example, would have loved to learn some more about money, beyond just how to balance a checkbook or calculate simple interest.
The larger problem, of course, is "Who is going to pay for this?" I don't have an easy answer, but I suspect such programs could be incubated with, say, charitable donations. And maybe eventually given a slice of the schools' budgets, under the thinking that is leading the schools to pay for the currently required "Life Skills" classes already.
Well, I don't have a foolproof program (you know what they say about ingenious fools...), but what I've seen work in a more informal context is a group class for the main parts of a subject, and optional, short "appendage" classes run in parallel with the main class, for little bits and pieces that may be harder for particular students.
Mind you, this was for a group of very motivated & generally competent adults, so the people who needed additional help tended to self-identify and show up at the side mini-classes as they needed. It was also an environment where the same main class was being taught in parallel to hundreds of students, so having side mini-classes that might only be attended by 5-10% of the students still made sense.
Some of the kids do remember just enough to be useful later.
We didn't have a module on life insurance, but I picked up at about the same age "anything but term insurance is probably a scam" (though doubtless perfectly legal). Later I added "before buying life insurance, think about what would actually be needed if the death occurred". What else do I need, other than a good financial calculator and at least some providers willing to give actual financial details, rather than imprecise or misleading brochures?
Likewise, one of my math teachers, when I was somewhere around 12 years old, brought in a heap of income tax forms, and had us all fill them out for three hypothetical tax payers. My take away: "this is <i>easy</i>; all you need is basic arithmetic skills." I didn't become better able to file taxes, or even learn about some of the ways in which filing income tax can be made anything other than simple. But more than a decade later I faced my first tax forms with happy confidence. (And yes, they were as easy as I remembered.)
That last bit (which, btw, good job by that teacher!) reminds me of one of the guys who lived in the house where I rented a room during grad school. He used to work as an assistant furniture delivery guy, and when he got paid he would cash his check at one of the supermarkets, for a not-insignificant fee, then carry a huge wad of bills home. He'd pay his rent and utilities with money orders that he'd buy at the same supermarket quasi-banks. (He'd give me cash for his share of the cable bill, since I had been the first to move in and the service was in my name...)
I tried to explain to him once that this was insane behavior, and he should deal with reputable banks instead. His reply was "I don't want to get a checking account, because I don't want to deal with all that math."
(Bizarrely, he was not the only one to live in that house who didn't have a checking account. The OTHER guy in that boat had a long-ago conviction for check kiting, and was (he said; I couldn't exactly confirm this) that he was on some kind of blacklist as a result. He did have a savings account in a real bank, at least, and would buy his bill-paying money orders from them at a much less confiscatory rate...)
One thing I've long wished for is optional classes, say, after school for pre-college students, and whenever, for college students. Now, maybe you'd have the same problem of "kids who need to learn about time management will find it difficult to get themselves to this class, especially if it's not required," but I'd file that under "making the perfect the enemy of the good." *Some* kids will be all over some of these optional offerings. I know that I, for example, would have loved to learn some more about money, beyond just how to balance a checkbook or calculate simple interest.
The larger problem, of course, is "Who is going to pay for this?" I don't have an easy answer, but I suspect such programs could be incubated with, say, charitable donations. And maybe eventually given a slice of the schools' budgets, under the thinking that is leading the schools to pay for the currently required "Life Skills" classes already.