By Emeka Monye
IN HIS 2009 book, “What America Really Want, Dr. Frank Luntz, a respected pollster who measures the heartbeat of America, asked these survey questions:
“If you had to choose, would you prefer to be a business owner or CEO of a fortune 500 company ?” His question was a closed ended one, bearing in mind he wanted a direct and simplistic answer.
The response he received from his residents is as diverse and clear as one would expect.
Out of all his respondents, eighty percent of them said they would want to be owner of business that employs 100 or more people, while fourteen percent said they would want to be Chief Executive Officer of a fortune 500 company that employs more than 10,000 people and the rest six percent not giving a clear answer to his research question.
His response re-echoes the desires of the average human, working to be their own boss, living the life of the dreams and having to live the life of freedom, yet such desires of owning one’s business remains elusive for an average student because our school systems only teach and train the students to be employees.
This is part of the problem. The school system does not train the student to create jobs, to build capacity to set up industries for students and when you don’t have this kind of culture, where the school system prepared the student to be job creators, then you just know that with time, the job seekers will find no job
Our school system, apart from the skills they teach, the system doesn’t teach the student capacity, competence, street smart, exposure and many of those contending factors that set apart entrepreneurs from employees.
According to Robert Kiyosaki, author of the famous book, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad, There is a tremendous difference between the skill sets of an employee and an employer. The skills of an employer are not taught in schools.
Kiyosaki submits that both skills differ because while the employee is deep in neck reading hard to pass exams and make good grades and potential unemployment, the employer is building capacity, street wisdom, exposure to understand the vagaries of business success.
While the school system focuses more on theoretical framework, it really doesn’t teach the student practical, at best what the school system teaches the student is ability to memorize concepts. This procedure doesn’t really prepare the student for the real world of entrepreneurship
The world of entrepreneurship is practical, brut, adventurous, smart, continuous learning, discerning, intuitive, intelligent, wise, and above all, a combination of classroom knowledge and real life experience and exposures.
Dr. Luntz also in his book, ” What America Really Wants”, asserts that the lack of financial education is the main reason why many people will remain employees.
Many people dream of becoming entrepreneurs, yet a few people will take a leap of faith to actualise such dreams. This is what the school system does teach one – financial education.
Financial education and the transformation it delivers are essential for entrepreneurs because it teaches some fundamental principles of creating wealth and takes one from being a consumer to advancing to becoming a saver and ultimately attaining the height of an investor.
While these three cardinal factors are keys to remain poor and building wealth – consumption, savings and investments, the school systems really don’t teach the students about this.
One only gets to learn about this after leaving the school system. This is part of the problem – lack of financial education.
One of the challenges in the contemporary school system is that it trains students to be A student in academics, to be B students in government establishments, and therefore leaving the very few C students, the very street smart, practical ones, to follow the entrepreneur path.
That doesn’t mean the school system is not good, it is of course, but in reality, its limitations to the classroom doesn’t reveal certain fundamentals about financial intelligence, the real life after classroom and how one can navigate all these vagaries and make the student achieve real financial intelligence and success is what the school system doesn’t teach you.
Emeka Monye, a journalist, works with Arise News.
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