by Lance T. Izumi, Fellow in California Studies
Pacific Research Institute
January 13, 1998

Announcer lead: Time for Perspectives. Lance Izumi says that it's time we teach schoolchildren how the free enterprise system works.

Perhaps the saddest irony in education today is the fact that American students live in the greatest capitalist country in the history of the world, yet end up leaving school not knowing the first thing about how capitalism works.

Successful Bay Area businessman Tim Draper is doing something about this woeful situation. Says Draper, "I had a terrific education, but I never learned anything about business. I never learned how to start or run a business. I never learned how it really worked. So I felt that I would create a course for children to understand business."

Draper's innovative program, BizWorld, is a fun and exciting four-day course that uses volunteers who go into a classroom, explain the fundamentals of business to students, and then help students put what they learn into action.

On day one, all students are given colored string to make friendship bracelets, are asked to design the bracelets and then build a prototype. The students are grouped in teams which incorporate and receive stock shares. On day two, students receive instruction about the banking system and manufacture the bracelets. On day three, students are taught about marketing and sales and sell their products to students from other classes. Finally, on the fourth day, students create a balance sheet and income statement, receive their stock prices, and learn how wealth is created.

Watching children respond to BizWorld is inspirational. They are engaged and enthusiastic. Their boisterous discussions about how to perfect their product, their creativity in advertising, and their clever salesmanship demonstrate the massive entrepreneurial potential that is wasted under our current curriculum.

Imagine if children in poor inner-city areas received BizWorld instruction. Instead of a future of welfare dependency, these children could become entrepreneurs and the catalysts for the economic revival of depressed urban neighborhoods. Now that's a prospect that would be worth the investment.

With a perspective, I'm Lance Izumi.