Are you sure you want kids to learn entrepreneurship?

Find a way to get there. (Èze, France along with the Bay of Èze and Cap Ferrat photographed by Erich Westendarp)

It’s fashionable now, among progressive educators, to speak about teaching entrepreneurship.

What most of these folks are actually doing is teaching small business ownership. However admirable that may be, it is not the same thing.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking can be taught. However, an entrepreneur can’t be manufactured. Simply teaching business processes doesn’t lead to entrepreneurship, just as piano lessons don’t automatically lead to becoming a songwriter or composer. Entrepreneurship requires a different way of thinking — and it’s not a way of thinking that most people necessarily want kids to have.

A true entrepreneur takes a gamble on something that doesn’t exist (yet). She is willing to take a risk and see it pay off; moreover, she can accept that not every risk will pay off. This is troublesome behavior in a child, since she is more interested in what is possible than in staying safe and secure. Her behavior might be a bit unpredictable (“Sorry, Mom, I just wanted to see what would happen,”) or disconcerting (“You mean to tell me you’ve been selling your lunch to buy candy every day?”).

An entrepreneur is constantly looking for ways to make life easier and better. This is a trait that people don’t enjoy when it shows up in children. We like teaching kids to work hard; however, working hard, as a show of diligence and obedience, is anathema to the entrepreneur. The entrepreneurial kid looks for a way around the work she doesn’t want to do. Ironically, she’s willing to put a huge amount of effort into finding another approach.

The entrepreneur questions convention and tradition, another quality that annoys people when it’s exhibited by a child. She wants to know why, and she’s not going to be satisfied with a superficial answer. She is ready with the next question practically before you’ve answered the first one.

Thus, to teach true entrepreneurship to kids is to train them into being the opposite of the compliant, cooperative class most teachers are looking for. Someone who sees the allure of creating a business system as opposed simply getting a job will not be content to follow the traditional steps that most of us are asked to follow (do well in school, get into a good college, etc.). This person sees through the sham that the traditional classroom often is; this person is probably going to get in trouble as a result.

On the other hand, the entrepreneurial thinker sees choices, opportunities, and possibilities that others don’t; such a lens can be useful whether or not she ultimately creates her own enterprise. It is a recipe for a fulfilling life that I do, in fact, want every one of my students to have.

Unfortunately, by middle school (which is when I get my hands on them), they are used to thinking small and assuming that they can’t do stuff. It takes a lot of work to help them reconnect with their own potential, laying the groundwork to empower them to set their own goals and reach them.

Ideally, every kid keeps a little subversive spark alive inside them, even when school is telling them that they aren’t worth much because they aren’t the best. And if that spark can survive, untouched by all of the adults who would tell them who they are, perhaps it can be coaxed into a flame, independent of what they’re being formally taught. From there, the artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs might emerge, ready to do the work of questioning the status quo even without explicit permission. We can only hope.