Fighting financial illiteracy should start at a young age — but it’s never too late to learn.

If you don’t know the difference between a debit card and a credit card, a stock and a bond, a pension and a petunia, don’t blame your teachers. When you were a kid, personal finance was as likely to be part of the school curriculum as, say, advanced Lithuanian or the history of cricket.

Unfortunately, despite vast financial illiteracy in America, matters have improved only slightly. According to a 2002 survey, only four states currently require students to complete a course that includes personal finance before graduating from high school.

But a number of individuals and organizations are working doggedly to change that. They want to make certain that American children enter adulthood with the ability to balance a checkbook and with a full understanding of both the marvel and danger of credit cards.

“Right now, we’re sending children out into the world without the money-management skills they desperately need, and that just isn’t fair,” says Muriel Siebert. As former superintendent of banks for the state of New York, head of her own brokerage house, and the first woman ever to hold a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (in 1967), Siebert knows more than a little something about money. “We’re clearly not teaching them in the public schools, and even those kids who go on to college tend to learn very little there. For example, they often have no idea that if they put last night’s pizza dinner on a credit card and pay off only the minimum each month that they could wind up paying for years.”

Siebert, through a foundation that bears her name, has developed a 21-lesson personal finance program that has been adopted by the New York City Department of Education and by next year, if all goes right, should be deployed in every high school in the city.

Others elsewhere are working on the same cause just as fervently. Washington, D.C.-based Jump$tart, a coalition of 160 organizations, including nonprofits, corporations, and government agencies, serves as advocate for the advancement of financial education and a repository for money-management educational material. “There is an enormous amount of good, largely free literature in our clearinghouse, and anyone is welcome to it,” says Jump$tart Executive Director Laura Levine. The coalition has affiliates in all 50 states, and each affiliate helps direct educators to material that is reviewed against state educational standards. (Go to www.jumpstart.org, or call (888) 45-EDUCATE (453-3822) for more information.)

One example of the array of good literature available is produced by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE). Free to public and private schools nationwide, NEFE’s brightly colored, highly animated six-unit plan features lessons about budgeting, credit, insurance, and setting financial goals. (The packet is available by calling NEFE at (303) 224-3511 or visiting www.nefe.org.) NEFE reports a steady increase in the number of requests for the plan over the past several years.

Out in the field, educators who teach personal finance often find their students extremely appreciative. Diane Neylan has been teaching high school in Richmond, Va., for the past 36 years. Feeling passionate about the need for children to enter adulthood with a strong knowledge of money management, Neylan every year has used her discretionary powers to slip personal finance into her government/economics course. In a good year, when the requisite material can be covered quickly, she will spend as much as six weeks teaching money management to her students.

Neylan doesn’t just stand at the front of the room and lecture — far from it. “I require the students to create an imaginary life … find a job, rent an apartment, buy a car, find insurance, apply for credit, shop for groceries. … The kids work very hard, but they really enjoy it, and they learn a lot that helps them in the real world,” she says confidently — with good reason. “I have people I run into on the street that I taught 30 years ago. They tell me, ‘You know, Mrs. Neylan, I never bounced a single check!’ ”

Just how many Americans can make that claim?