NDE encouraging earlier exposure to entrepreneurship

As is the case with reading, writing and even learning a foreign language, the earlier in life we’re exposed to crucial skills, the easier they are to pick up. Entrepreneurial expertise is no different. That’s why Gregg Christensen and others from the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) are seeking to include more entrepreneurial options in the curricula used by schools across the state.

“Quite frankly, with the economy we’re in right now, if kids don’t have entrepreneurial skills and we don’t focus on entrepreneurial businesses acumen, we’re going to fall desperately far behind other countries,” said Christensen, an entrepreneurship and career education specialist with the NDE, as well as a self-described “passionate advocate for entrepreneurship education.” “We’ve been seen as a beacon of entrepreneurship throughout the world, but if we don’t continue to impart that knowledge and make students realize that entrepreneurship is a career option, then other nations could pull ahead.”

Entrepreneurship in Nebraska: Conditions, Attitudes, and Actions by Eric C. Thompson and William B. Walstad

Most Nebraskans agree with Christensen. Accordingly to a series of 2005-2006 Gallup polls (which later became the basis for a 2008 book on Nebraska’s entrepreneurial climate), four-fifths of Nebraskans feel it’s important for schools to offer entrepreneurship education.

And Christensen believes that education should begin as early as elementary school.

“Entrepreneurial concepts can be infused at any time, from kindergarten on — it’s a lifelong process,” he said. “Elementary school kids already go on field trips to observe traditional jobs: fire stations, police stations, grocery stores. But we’d like to emphasize that communities are also filled with entrepreneurs. We need to make young people aware that entrepreneurs are everywhere.”

Ideally, that formal education would segue into a middle school exploration of entrepreneurship as a viable career path, followed by teaching kids practical entrepreneurship skills during their high school years.

In Cody, Nebraska, for example, that high school level of entrepreneurship education comes with a hands-on twist. The 132-person town has been without a grocery store for nearly a decade, but a recently acquired federal grant has given community leaders the means to re-service a convenience store, transforming it from gas station to grocery outlet.

Conceived as a non-profit, the new grocery store will be staffed by high school students, providing them with invaluable skills and giving the entire community an alternative to driving 35 miles to reach the nearest supermarket. Further down the road, said Christensen, the store will become an incubator for students seeking to start their own small businesses.

Even though most Nebraskans appear to be on board with increasing the level of entrepreneurship education in the state’s schools, and even though Cody’s innovative venture shows how such pedagogical measures can benefit both students and the towns they live in, working new courses into an existing curriculum is no easy task.

“It’s really tough to add classes, because the necessary academic courses are already taking up a large portion of the students’ schedules,” Christensen said. “Fortunately, the bigger the school district, the more options you have in terms of available teachers and slots to offer entrepreneurship courses.”

However, the eventual widespread adoption of entrepreneurship classes will be well worth the struggle. Among other previously stated benefits, students who see the possibilities entrepreneurship confers are more likely to stay in Nebraska, or to return to the state after completing their education, Christensen said.

“Students really need to look at the what their strengths and their talents are, and then think about how that can lead them into a business they’d be excited about,” he added. “A lot of times young people are going to go off and get an education elsewhere, but part of entrepreneurship education is showing them the opportunities that might exist if they return to Nebraska with the skills and knowledge they’ve obtained.”