If you were Premier Kathleen Wynne, would you want Ontario students to know too much about how you’re running this province’s fiscal fortunes into the ground?

Would you want them to be aware that your 25% cut in hydro rates — done in a desperate effort to hang onto power in 2018 — will mortgage their futures?

Would you want students to understand that when it comes to your government’s talk of “net zero,” you’re not offsetting the cost of the lucrative contracts given to their teachers with any cuts.

For sure not. You’d want to ensure school kids are as financially illiterate as you and most of your caucus appear to be.

That appears to have happened.

Tricia Barry, executive director of Money School Canada and a former banker, says despite promises by the provincial education ministry in 2011 to “integrate” money management into the Grade 4-12 curriculum, students know little more about money than they did five years ago.

She was so upset with the Liberal’s “broken promises” — what she cheekily calls financial literacy gate — she produced a discussion paper last November showing how little is being done.

In it she observes that the curriculum contains precious little content related to “core money management concepts” or vocabulary and that teachers are not accountable for lesson delivery. Teachers also haven’t had the proper professional development to teach money concepts with only $5 per teacher invested by the government.

“This translates to a haphazard, inconsistent financial literacy education for elementary students in Ontario,” she writes.

She feels financial literacy is more important than the controversial sex-ed curriculum

“Financial literacy to me is a critical life skill,” she says.

By the time Ontario’s school kids reach Grade 8, she says they should have an understanding of the concepts of income, expenses and interest. But they don’t.

By the time they graduate from Grade 12, Barry says they should have a solid understanding of saving, smart spending, budgeting, borrowing and credit cards.

Again, other than in rare exceptions (such as in a business class) very little of that is being taught, certainly not as a mandatory program, she says.

PC MPP Vic Fedelli recognized financial literacy was so lacking in the school system, he introduced a private member’s bill — the Financial Literacy for Students Act, 2016 — that would make a Grade 10 course in money management mandatory for Ontario students to graduate.

“That’s how important we think it (financial literacy) is,” says Fedelli, the PC finance critic.

After the bill made it through first reading last November, he says the Liberals promised to come out with their own program. Because of that, he took the bill off the table.

But what Liberal Education Minister Mitzie Hunter came up with last week was a series of pilot projects at 29 high schools to lead towards redesigning a Grade 10 career studies course to include financial literacy lessons.

That new improved course won’t be in place until the fall of 2018.

According to education ministry spokesman Heather Irwin, teachers participating in the pilots will cover four modules: Digital literacy, career life planning, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

Under financial literacy, students will investigate such issues as deciding where they’ll pursue post-secondary study and how they would get the money to accomplish this, Irwin says. (Sounds really touchy-feely to me.)

She adds that $142,000 has been budgeted to support the 29 pilots (or about $5,000 per pilot.)

Fedelli says he’s “disappointed” that what Hunter introduced doesn’t have “the teeth” of the PC bill.

“It looks like another box (for the Liberals) to tick before the (2018) election,” he says.

He says he’ll see what comes of the pilot projects but may have to bring his bill back.

As far as Barry is concerned, the proof of the lack of money management training are the abundant statistics showing that more than one-third of those ranging in age from 18-29 are burdened with a debt of $10,000 or more.

“They end up in a pickle,” she says. “We can just look at the generation today with huge credit card debt.”

Forget about giving kids an allowance

Tricia Barry is not a fan of giving kids an allowance — even if it is provided in exchange for chores completed.

The executive director of Money School Canada and former banker teaches parents who use her services to engage in “allowing” — as in allowing kids to manage some part of money parents would normally spend on them anyway.

She refers to letting a child manage — say a $30 budget — for movies or other entertainment or for pizza lunches.

She suggests these “low-risk money transfers” be made to kids once a parents engages in a “crystal clear discussion” about what should be done with the money.

If a child takes the money and uses it to buy his or her friend a bucket of chicken instead, that’s his or her “choice” and the “consequences of that will be felt” because there will be no money for the pizza lunch or the movie, she says

“It teaches kids to make trade-offs, to compare prices and teaches them consequences of poor money management,” says Barry, who teaches money skills in schools, libraries and at Children’s Aid societies.

She feels this can be done as early as Grade 3.

SLevy@postmedia.com