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They say if you give a man a fish you’ve fed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish then you’ve fed him forever. So why don’t we apply this logic in the classroom? In other words why don’t we teach students (of all ages) how to start a business of their own instead of relying on paychecks from an employer? I have a few theories on this;

1. Business is something you learn on your own - The conventional wisdom is that you learn ‘the ropes’ of business as an apprentice and then branch out to start your own business. While this is a valid path I think this applies to a small number of entrepreneurs these days. Most people spend many years in a corporation hating their job and not imagining that there may be a better way (as I did). Typically the people who make this leap have been forced to since they were laid off or had to leave before they had a nervous breakdown.

2. Schools aren’t prepared to teach entrepreneurship - School curricular don’t have the means to teach this because there hasn’t been enough demand historically. Furthermore teachers typically don’t have any entrepreneurial experience to draw on so they would need to bring in outside speakers for help. This isn’t a bad thing however it would take a real push to convince the school board.

3. This is what business school is for, isn’t it? – Typically people think that business is a complex topic that should be left for business school. However while business school is useful for those who want to specialize in finance, marketing etc. it’s not for everyone. This doesn’t mean that the broader audience shouldn’t learn business skills. The student interested in cooking may want to open a restaurant someday or the student interested in math may open an engineering consultancy or web development company.

Giving students an exposure to business means teaching them how to develop products, market them, manage inventory, deal with customers and finances. Certainly the complexity of these topics will increase as students progress through the years. As we don’t teach elementary students calculus, we wouldn’t teach younger children about corporate finance or tax optimization. However there are many important lessons that they can learn which will benefit them greatly in the future. The payoff to the student would be a sense of empowerment to be able to start and successfully manage their own businesses. The benefit to us (as a society) would be a stronger economy with less unemployment since small business is the engine of job and economic growth.

Andrew Hargadon has written a great piece entitled ‘7 Ways to Make Students more Entrepreneurial‘ which discusses how we can enhance our educational system to integrate entrepreneurship.

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