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The details of the school seem amorphous / nebulous right now. Some Excerpts: > “In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be lau
by dpflan 9y ago
The details of the school seem amorphous / nebulous right now.
Some Excerpts:
> “In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be launching their own businesses..."
> “...we noticed she has a strong aptitude and passion for design,” Neumann said. She is securing an apprenticeship with fashion designers who rent space from WeWork.
> But WeWork’s “very instrumental approach” to learning, “essentially encouraging kids to monetize their ideas, at that age, is damaging,” Abrams said. “You’re sucking the joy out of education at a time when kids should just be thinking about things like how plants grow and why there are so many species.”
> Neumann argues it’s conventional education that is “squashing out the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity that’s intrinsic to all young children.” Then, after college, she said, “somehow we’re asking them to be disruptive and recover that spirit.”
Could gettings kids into entrepreneurial thinking very early on backlash and make them less interested in entrepreneurship? I think the idea of identifying interests and finding out how to foster and to develop those is great (e.g. the child with design aptitude and the apprenticeship program mentioned). Entrepreneurship seems to be a proxy for finding something you are interested in and creating a way to financially support that interest - perhaps that is the theme to strive for (queue Alan Watts: https://genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-annotated https://genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-an...).
This seems like a way to make a human a "WeWorker" for life - you start in school and then you graduate to using their services. I would not be surprised to see discounts for graduates. Also, they are throwing cash at celebrity-level architect(s) - this is catering to the elite and I question when it can trickle down.
On a related noted: how are Thiel Fellowships panning out? (Connecting Theme = Entrepreneurship at Younger Ages)
- Fomite 9y agoSo an N = 1 anecdote, but as a kid, in elementary school (albeit not kindergarten) I was interested in starting my own business. There was a bank in the area run specifically for young people (the Young Americans Bank in Denver, CO - it's amazing) that essentially had a club for that. Most of it was kids selling handcrafts and things, but as I recall, there was one girl who had a custom map/layout design company and some others. I think it was immensely valuable in teaching me how a business worked by thinking about applying it to the things I wanted to do, but it also had an ample helping of understanding the downsides, and at this point in my life, whenever there's a push to increase entrepreneurship in my field, my first reaction is "Uggh..."
- stuart78 9y agoI agree that clubs are a great solution for this kind of thing. I'd encourage kids to explore whatever interests them (business, dinosaurs, Model UN) as early as they're interested. But canonizing 'business' as a core educational pillar feels deeply misguided.
- Fomite 9y agoIndeed, for most kids, if we were making something a core educational pillar it should be financial literacy.