The government wants children to run businesses – it will be awful
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Version 0 of 1. We're about to be cursed with a generation of miniature Apprentice candidates. We'll soon live in a world where our five-year-olds will stagger around their playgrounds under the weight of their own hair gel, promising to give everything 110% and forgetting how to spell their own name because they're too busy comparing themselves to sharks. It'll be awful. But it's an unavoidable consequence of the government's new plans to bolster the UK's business ambitions. On Thursday, Lord Young, the prime minister's adviser on enterprise, is set to propose a scheme in which all primary school students are taught how to run a business for profit. According to the Telegraph, one of Young's suggested plans is the expansion of a current initiative called the Fiver Challenge, under which pupils are given five pounds each and told to set up a profit-making business with it. Kids are free to do whatever they want with their fivers. Some wash cars, others hold bake sales. It's unclear whether or not the more traditional playground tactic of maximising profit by going up to a smaller kid and shouting "Give me your money or I'll smash your mouth in!" at them is something that the Fiver Challenge condones. But, if it's meant to reflect the realities of the business world, they should at least consider it. The upshot of this scheme is that, when these kids finally leave school, the prospect of self-employment won't be as intimidating as it is now – which might in turn help boost the UK's plummeting position in the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index. The downside is that, once children start prizing their capacity to make money over everything else, you won't be able to walk through a schoolyard without having dozens of swivel-eyed mini-spivs rushing up to you and trying to flog you one of the counterfeit watches they've got pinned to the inside of their anoraks. Although the plans are well-intentioned, playgrounds are supposed to be playgrounds, not bustling micro-economies. If you give a kid a fiver, that kid should automatically want to use it to buy three bags of Haribo Tangfastics that they can eat in one go and spend the next 36 hours fizzing on additives. Sure, it might be smarter for them to invest it in popcorn kernels, sell popcorn to their classmates at a hugely inflated mark-up and end up with five times that money, but who needs 15 bags of Haribo anyway? However, if this really is going to be the case, and we really are breeding a generation of miniature, self-interested Apprentice candidates, I've got some advice for any five-year-olds reading: invest in hair gel. You'll make a fortune. |