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One-upmanship disguised as entrepreneurship

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HAVE you been through the extreme endurance test that is ‘Entrepreneur’s Day’? This parent has:

[insert expletive] Entrepreneur's Day, and there is a special place in hell for the person who thought this would be a good educational experience. For those of you who have not experienced this particular hell, the kids make some products, set up a stand and sell the products to other kids.

Sounds good, right. Except when the teachers let the children pick their own groups and then [they] switch, disband and reform groups faster than alliances on a reality TV show. The products change on a weekly basis, until a week beforehand I had to intervene and say: "This is what you are making".

Then I had to go out and spend my money (which in theory I should get back, but who are we kidding), assist in the making of the goods and then go to the school and help set up the stand. At what part is the child in charge of this process?

Oh yes, and I have a massive deadline at work so I can't just take half a day off and make everything pretty for them. I was there this morning to set up a gazebo and there were stands there where the children were running a generator. A [insert expletive] GENERATOR! Are you kidding me? […]

Any person who thinks that the kids are going to do this on their own clearly has not met many grade 7 children, who are like ADHD goats at the best of time.

Essentially this is a project that is custom-made for children with overachieving parents…

To which another parent replied:

Dude. You have no idea. My son goes to a school in [northern Joburg]. There were stands there where the gazebos were branded with the group’s name, complete with teardrop banners and full printed menus. There was a group selling Emoji pillows for R150. Please tell me whose pocket money paid for that? Some were flighting adverts, others had machine-printed flyers, one had a series of jumping castles…

Said another:

All school projects should be geared towards getting the kids to put in maximum effort, and the parents should simply be there in scene-setting capacity (taking them to the library or setting up those tricky gazebos). For something like this, the playing fields should be levelled, for example, everyone gets a budget of R500 or whatever, and then they have to show how they used that money and made the most of it, etc. All this really does is illustrate how in a capitalist society, trust fund babies excel over those from more humble backgrounds.

Exactly. I once did a story on the entrepreneurial focus at a couple of upmarket schools, and I was appalled. Each of those schools had scholarship programmes, so there were children of domestic servants or (in one case) a nearby township studying there.

It was plain even then (about eight or ten years ago) that a kid who didn’t have a wealthy helicopter parent (or one who could afford to delegate the role of helicopter parent) was going to be crushed by the experience.

Training for real life? Yeah, right. I would prefer that any child of mine delayed that kind of agony to a time when they had just a leeetle bit of maturity.

But the big question, for me, is how does any of this teach entrepreneurship, rather than one-upmanship? You could do that with a much simpler scenario: four groups per class, each with a budget of R300 to R500 (keep it low) to make and market simple things like lemonade, muffins and homemade bracelets from el cheapo wooden beads (which they are assigned – no choice in the matter).

In an initial experimental period the kids make, say, lemonade from two lemons, cost the lemons, sugar and electricity, and work out what each drink will cost and what you can charge. Everybody shares this in class, makes suggestions and so on.

Teacher points out missed input costs like labour or cups, for example, talks about the environmental costs and how that affects your choice of cup, and asks how you’ll ‘market’ this lot – do you have budget for a poster or labels? (Parents are STRICTLY forbidden to contribute anything other than advice, and instructions on how to use the popcorn-maker.)

Finally, you have a much more down-market day where the children are supervised and taught how to keep tally of and secure their money. (I hear in one case, for example, the cash on a stall managed by Grade 2s somehow went missing. Surprise!) All profits go into a kitty for something the class chooses to do. (Fun social responsibility project, I’d hope, where other things can be learned?)

The scenarios I’ve seen described must be very poor learning experiences; certainly they’re unlikely to teach responsibility – or lead to a great feeling of achievement – if parents are forking out and pitching in to that extent. And how much do they learn of the basics?

As one mom wrote: “... if they make a profit they will be happy and if they make a loss they will be devastated. But they will have no idea why this happened.”

It’s not a chance to score, to show off, or for parents to work off their own need to excel. It’s supposed to be about children learning valuable skills for life. That can surely be done without turning Entrepreneur’s Day into a twice-yearly nightmare of stress and expense and competitiveness for parents.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.

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