At GoForth Institute, we love teaching would-be entrepreneurs all the skills they’ll need to succeed in small business. And we definitely include youth in that category, as we’ve shown with our entrepreneurship education for high school that’s being taught to Canadian high school students right now. Comprehensive small business education is about more than sales and marketing. It teaches crucial skills like financial wisdom, risk management, creativity, and ethics – skills that are invaluable both inside and outside the business world.
For this reason, we were very interested to read an article in the Edmonton Journal this week, titled “Lamphier: Should entrepreneurship be taught in schools?”
Here’s an excerpt:
“They think the K-to-12 curriculum gives you the base and then you apply it at the post-secondary level. They don’t believe there is fundamental value in teaching courses on project management, budgeting or understanding the concept of profit.”
Although Mawji says some critics will say business has no place in an elementary or secondary school classroom, fearing it may lead to the profit-driven commercialization of education, he believes such fears are misplaced.
“We’re not talking about bringing specific brands into the equation. We’d talking about entrepreneurial concepts. Starbucks isn’t going to sponsor a course, that’s not the plan,” he says.