I'm jealous. Sounds like a teacher that really knew his stuff and was passionate about teaching. Being a teacher is the easiest job in the world if you want to cruise through it after getting tenure. On the other hand, a true teacher challenges themselves to actually teach their students more than what they'll find in their textbooks, and it sounds like that's what your 10th grade Civics teacher did.
Believe it or not I learned in elementary school as my 4th grade teacher was an avid fan of the stock market. We played in the Newsday stock market fantasy game for schools throughout the country. We were given 10k in imaginary funds and based on your profit margin at the end of 6 months, a winner was declared.
Interestingly enough in 5th grade my teacher loved the NFL as her son played for the Miami Dolphins. So we all picked a team and followed them throughout the NFL season. We had to write up articles on our team and submit game summaries every week. I hated it at the time but now the NFL is part of my Sunday routine
A lot of high school economics teachers run the stock market games for their students, although it's a mixed bag on how much education those students actually receive on stocks. Some teachers just tell them to pick whatever stocks they think will make money or sound good. Others will actually teach the underlying principles of the stock market and what makes some stocks earn money and other lose money.
When I was in junior high I think stocks, business and investing were the furthest thing from my young mind. I didn't really wake up to the world of markets and investing until I was in high school. A class mate's dad, who was a stock broker, came in on career day and talked to the kids, and that really caught my interest.
I wish I could have learned about stocks in school, now I could be that guy that makes 72 million between classes. Sadly I am not, I am learning on my own.
Calling this sloppy journalism is understatement. I didn't learn about stocks in school. I learned many things in junior and high school, but I wish I had learned some basic life skills especially about money. I didn't learn these things at home either.
Nope, I didn't learn about what stocks really were till I took a business class in school. And boy, it would have been nice that instead of Geometry in high school that they would have offered a class that at least gave the basics of what stocks were. Even in college, it was just a basic overview and a week lesson about what stocks were and wasn't an entire class dedicated to learning about it. Unless you're majoring in business, there really isn't much offered in terms of G.E. courses to learn about the stock market. Everything I've learned now has been self-taught or some insight from my brother.
I had a home economics teacher who did a half-way decent job of teaching mutual funds to us brats. I learned most of my investment knowledge from my father and an older brother though. The latter has done very well in the market and I am glad I learned at such an early age to take care of business in this regard.