Why business needs to become a real part of the education system

[Ali P]

Interesting blog post from Dan Martin at Business Zone.

Why business needs to become a real part of the education system

My son had a playground business when he was 7. There were four pals involved and they made a modest profit, at which point the teacher found out they were 'trading' and ordered them to put all the proceeds in the charity box.

Unfortunately for the charity, they couldn't do so as one of the 'partners' (the financial controller) had already spent it on his lunch the day before. So two early enterprise lessons were learned by D, who soon after left school for home ed vowing never to trust a teacher, nor a partner with his share of the working capital.

Our family was privileged to spend some time with John Taylor Gatto when he came to speak at the Schoolhouse conference in 2008 and he is a great proponent of enterprise in education - not in the classroom but in the real world. Inspire kids to get on with making a living, he said, and they'll go and do it, overcoming pitfalls (or not) along the way as in real business.

He recounted some amazing stories of young people he had taught from the dodgiest parts of New York going on to become successful entrepreneurs, from dog walkers to film makers, after being released from his classroom to do their own thing.

Meanwhile in the school world, there are so many regulations that young people are lucky if they can find an employer to consider them for work experience or shadowing. And all the sham school businesses that are set up as 'enterprise projects' usually rely on mum, dad, Auntue Mabel and the neighbours' dog to buy products that would find no market in the real world.

[suze]

Reminds me of when I was at school and used to get a dinner ticket for every day. The monetary value of the ticket was 64p and a lot of kids at my school who had packed lunches wanted to "experience" the pleasure of a school dinner. The ticket also allowed you to skip the queue. So I decided to sell my tickets for 80p each. I would then visit the shop on the corner and buy an apple (9p)and a roll and ham or cheese (25p) adding up to 34p the rest was pure profit. I managed to do this for months until I was rumbled and a meeting had to be called with my mother and the head teacher. I remember the school seemed to think this was all very serious at the time. I was given into big trouble and chaperoned to the dinner school, I was 10 at the time. Luckily my mum thought it was ridiculous and praised me for being resourceful!