Looking to Entrepreneurship Education During the Economic Crisis

By Julie Silard Kantor, Vice President,

The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship

(NFTE Office of Public Policy)

and Director, The Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy Group (YES Group)

As the whirlwind of news surrounding the vast global economic crisis continues, I stopped to reflect on why providing an entrepreneurship education to low-incomes youth - the primary cause of our Foundation - matters so much, especially at this time.

Obviously, this is an important contemporary civil rights issue.  Power and influence in our country is granted to those who own - own their own land, their own houses, and their own businesses.  Yet interestingly enough, we teach our students to be employees and not business owners.  Many high schools have job placement programs to help their students, but rarely do we see the possibility of entrepreneurship presented as an option.   Many also fail to see the correlation between the health of the economy and the people who have a vested interest in its health: entrepreneurs.

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