As Barack Obama said in a recent speech, "Eighty percent of African-American teens in a city like Washington think that they'll be rich and over half think they'll be famous." Assuming that these optimistic predictions hold true in other cities and among other groups, it's clear that young people have pretty optimistic hopes for their future. If only their competence matched their confidence.

According to a recent survey (PDF - may take a minute to load) released by Schwab and written up on Yahoo! by Carrie Schwab Pomerantz, 73% believe they'll be earning "plenty of money" when they're out on their own. Based on the career that interests them most, teens believe they'll be earning an average annual salary of $145,500.

Here's the really amazing part: 63% of teens say they are knowledgeable about money management, including budgeting, saving and investing.

But then you get to the more specific financial literacy questions: 13% say they know what a 401(k) is, 14% say they know how income taxes work, and 23% say they know what a credit score is. But when Jump$tart gave students a basic financial literacy test (asking questions like what investment has historically provided the best return of 20 years), the average score was a 52.4%.

This appears to be a classic case of a deadly combination of arrogance and ignorance. Only about 17% of teens have taken a course on personal finance or money management and, in this era of predatory lending and defined contribution retirement plans, financial literacy is far more important than it's ever been before.

Here's the good news: In the Schwab survey, 89% of students said they want to learn how to make their money grow. 2/3rds think learning about money is "interesting." And 85% want to learn about money so they don't have to rely on others.

There is a golden opportunity for the schools to step in and teach kids about money. It appears to be a class kids would actually want to take. And unlike a lot of classes (I took four years of Latin), it's actually useful.