In this fast-paced TED talk entrepreneur Cameron Herold talks about why kids should be raised to be entrepreneurs instead of being lawyers or accountants.
By and large, society and our educational system predominantly prepares children for corporate jobs. This is a huge missed opportunity because many children have entrepreneurial traits and skills like creativity, storytelling, tenacity, networking, problem-solving and negotiating skills. However, we don’t nurture those but teach kids to get and hold down a ‘proper’ job.
Even the seemingly innocent concept of allowance prepares kids for wage payments or even worse for being on the dole. Cameron instead suggests having kids look around at home for jobs to be done and then negotiate for money they’ll get paid for doing those jobs. Doing this will teach children to recognize problems and develop creative problem-solving and negotiating skills.
Or why do kids mostly get told bedtime stories instead of being incited to make up and tell stories themselves? Telling stories hones creative skills and teaches you to comfortably speak in public. Besides, it’s much more fun than just listening to a prefabricated story anyway.
Cameron vigorously argues for supporting kids to develop entrepreneurial skills from an early age and gives some practical advice (alongside with interesting anecdotes from his long entrepreneurial career) as to how to go about this: