I got excited by the headline thinking that they want to normalize co-locating daycares / kindergarten to ease the burdens that working parents have with drop-off/pickup, etc.
But it turns out they actually want to innovate on the education itself. That is far less exciting to me.
Kindergarten in NYC is approaching ivy-league college tuition prices with not much improvement in service or quality, and could use some serious competition.
The WeWork model applied to Kindergarten would actually be interesting. A drop-in kindergarten, while you work nearby. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be it.
"“In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be launching their own businesses,” Rebekah Neumann said in an interview. She thinks kids should develop their passions and act on them early, instead of waiting to grow up to be “disruptive,” as the entrepreneurial set puts it."
Gotta indoctrinate them early to the capitalist way.
And the justification is such a load of crap: kids, and adults for that matter, are perfectly capable of "developing their passions" without wrapping it in the cloak of _business_.
The idolization of business culture has gotten completely out of hand.
> The idolization of business culture has gotten completely out of hand.
I'm concerned that when these children grow up they won't have the coping mechanisms to deal with the fact that very few of them will get to be the CEO.
That and the general cultural impact of bolstering STEM careers at the expense of skilled, manual labor careers, which can pay the same or more - especially when partnered with a strong entrepreneurial mindset.
This stuff feels like a new outlet for overbearing stage/sport parenting types.
"In my book, there's no reasons why we can't take money from the parents of children in elementary school."
This has nothing to do with enabling entrepreneurial youth. The vast majority of cases will involve students whose parents bankroll, manage, or outright run, the business.
"Cute kid invents innovative new 3d printing process, with only minor help from dad (Masters mechanical engineering), and mom (MBA Stanford, Google Project manager)."
My brother decided on his own he was going to be a paper boy at the age of 8. He wanted to save up money to buy a car. Announced this to my dad, who decided to roll with it. (My dad had picked fruit from orchards as a kid for similar reasons -- other kids did it because their families needed the money.) Later he set up a business doing yard work with a friend, put up flyers and everything.
Me? I sold origami in elementary school and tried to become a loan shark in middle school, until some wuss took up a dispute with a teacher.
Why is playing video games and roaming the neighborhood on bikes a more appropriate behavior for kids than doing work and getting money? It beats violin lessons.
It's a pretty tone-deaf thing to say -- sounds like someone that hasn't yet realized that people have mixed feelings about tech/disruption/etc.
I do think we can and should be challenging middle/HS kids to engage with the real world more than we currently do. "Start a business" might make sense, alongside (eg) "get an op-ed published", "create/market/manage a park cleanup event", etc.
Elementary is maybe too early for all that. It's certainly a dumb place to start the conversation in this zeitgeist.
This seems to relate directly to what Malcom Harris discusses in his new book [1]. I just happened to read these back to back and I couldn't believe it.
I would be more concerned they have lost revenue growth. That's usually the reason why companies start branching out before they have an established business model.
I passed a WeWork space (on Market) this weekend with a friend, and I tried explaining what they do. But now I think next time someone asks that, I'll have to respond "I have no idea."
> “In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be launching their own businesses,” Rebekah Neumann said in an interview.
That's really one of the saddest things I've read from the tech community in a long while. Truly beyond parody. The reason is that they're fucking children and part of being a kid is being sheltered from some of the realities of the world. Training kids to focus on business from an early age which, since there are limited hours in the day, must come at the expense of something else is just sad. Let them develop in peace at least a little bit before being ravaged by capitalism.
It's well-dressed, well-spoken, well-connected cultishness. They're Branch Davidians. If you've gotten that far into a belief system, you'll do anything to promulgate it, even at the expense of children.
> In her own family, she said, “there are no lines” between work and life or home and office.
This line also stuck out. Seems horribly dystopian to me and yet is presented without comment. Sad that these people are considered "thought leaders" and that viewpoint is presented with anything but scorn.
>This line also stuck out. Seems horribly dystopian to me and yet is presented without comment.
The comment is her next sentence:
>“My kids are in the office. I’m doing what I _love_, he’s doing what he _loves_, they are observing that, and they are doing what they _love_.”
The author is talking about the passion for a life hobby being one and the same as work. Instead of being dystopian, it's actually the utopia many people are striving for.
She's not talking about having a terrible job where you peel potatos and then go home and peel more potatos to bring back to work the next day.
She's also not talking about working 100 hours a week and having no life.
It speaks to a poor understand of kids, schools, and reality. I think we often underestimate kids and their intellectual capacity, but this is just ridiculous. I started outlining how bad this would be for kids, but the list was getting so long that I had to stop. Let's just rely on common sense here.
I never felt I was "ravaged by capitalism," but I was never forced as a kid to compete in cutthroat markets where I was pretty likely to fail against adults who had fully-developed brains and more experience in every relevant field.
Yes, let's get kids more hands-on experience. But the feeling of failing as a kid is brutal. Don't set them up to fail. More importantly, let's teach them critical thinking skills so they can adapt. Focus less on facts and more on solving problems and finding their own solutions. This is possible without forcing them into a high-stress environment where many adults (with far more experience in markets and as consumers) fail.
While I totally agree that it's weird and unsettling to push kids in this direction, I remember having a blast setting up a little candy business in elementary school--my friend and I bought Starbursts, Reese's, Skittles, etc. in bulk at the grocery store with allowance money then doled it out at a markup. This was totally our idea and not something our parents had any involvement in.
I think that as long as the desire is coming from the kids and not elsewhere, it can be a fun and healthy thing, but it's definitely a fine line.
>That's really one of the saddest things I've read from the tech community in a long while. Truly beyond parody.
I think I get what WeWork is trying to teach kids. As a comparison, there's a program in Florida called "Junior Achievement"[1] which teaches entrepreneurial skills to kids K-12. That JA charity is over 40 years old so WeWork's idea is not new. I assume other states have similar kids' entrepreneurial programs under different names.
I went through JA myself. It was a 6-week after-school program. The way it worked was that volunteers (accountants, managers, executives, etc) from local corporations would come in and lead a session to help kids set up businesses. In my group, we created a thermometer company and sold them to neighbors. At the end, the volunteers helped us put together the profit-and-loss financial results. I think I was 11 or 12 at the time.
Another interesting thing is that the JA volunteers not only donated their time after school, but they also had to "recruit" the kids for the program by coming in for 10 minutes during the normal class hours and make a little pitch for kids like me to sign up for the program. It sounded interesting so I got the permission slip for my mom to sign.
The JA experience was fun and I don't think it deprived me of any childhood. I don't know enough about WeWork to know if it's better or worse. Whatever curriculum WeWork is attempting, they still have to sell the parents on letting their kids do it. Parents have to be convinced that it enriches their childrens' lives. It certainly seems from all the responses here that none of the HN parents would enroll their kids.
Agree it sounds a bit yucky, but as a counterpoint:
I've heard so many kids talk about how they want to become youtube stars. They believe that if they only had the time and support, they'd be making thousands of dollars every day by talking into a camera.
So kids may already be considering launching businesses: in spaces with high competition, oversupply and poor business plans. I suppose this is nothing new: in my generation everyone was going to be a professional musician or video game designer.
I feel like teaching kids the importance of designing for a market, seeing what you can sell and getting real customer requirements could be valuable, but probably more worthwhile for kids over 10 or so.
I think that's a valid point but certainly not for kindergartners. Learning about business is potentially useful but needs to be balanced against the fact that most people don't want to be entrepreneurs and that you need to not learn something else in order to learn that.
It sounds like they are trying to make a kindergarten, just like any other, and they are using this 'start-up' spin to attract parents to sign-up.
It's not a terrible marketing idea, in that 'all news is good news, even bad news' kinda way. But in a, I dunno, human way, it's horrific. Like, preschoolers can't possibly do business, in any way at all. Thinking that they can, heck, insinuating they can, is like thinking a lemonade stand on the corner is a good tax base: froot-loops crazy.
Some of my fondest memories of childhood include selling audio mp3 cds and individual warhead candies.
I think there is something to be said about working towards a goal. Think about developing a game or eveb a lemonade stand. You have to know marketing, supply chains, management, finance just to name a few. The reason school isn’t interesting to many is that it is just isolated knowledge and facts. Solve for X type problems. It would be more engaging if you actually had a goal that required a cross disciplinary set of skills.
Alright, that's it - I'm now forcing my children to skip college to be electricians or plumbers or something.
If every kid is expected to be in tech/business, there's going to be a massive shortage of skilled labor, and those people are going to make a buttload of money in the near future.
"She thinks kids should develop their passions and act on them early, instead of waiting to grow up to be “disruptive,” as the entrepreneurial set puts it."
Just wow! How about let them be kids before they grow-up. At this age their passion is transformers, paw patrol, my little pony and playing at the park. They do not need to be disruptive or being pushed entrepreneurial crud this young. That is just plain dangerous.
This would be a better fit for middle school aged kids.
Don't get me wrong. I think the education system is broken but I don't think these "entrepreneurial billionaires" have the right solutions. They are so out of touch.
The details of the school seem amorphous / nebulous right now.
Some Excerpts:
> “In my book, there’s no reason why children in elementary schools can’t be launching their own businesses..."
> “...we noticed she has a strong aptitude and passion for design,” Neumann said. She is securing an apprenticeship with fashion designers who rent space from WeWork.
> But WeWork’s “very instrumental approach” to learning, “essentially encouraging kids to monetize their ideas, at that age, is damaging,” Abrams said. “You’re sucking the joy out of education at a time when kids should just be thinking about things like how plants grow and why there are so many species.”
> Neumann argues it’s conventional education that is “squashing out the entrepreneurial spirit and creativity that’s intrinsic to all young children.” Then, after college, she said, “somehow we’re asking them to be disruptive and recover that spirit.”
Could gettings kids into entrepreneurial thinking very early on backlash and make them less interested in entrepreneurship? I think the idea of identifying interests and finding out how to foster and to develop those is great (e.g. the child with design aptitude and the apprenticeship program mentioned). Entrepreneurship seems to be a proxy for finding something you are interested in and creating a way to financially support that interest - perhaps that is the theme to strive for (queue Alan Watts: https://genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-an...).
This seems like a way to make a human a "WeWorker" for life - you start in school and then you graduate to using their services. I would not be surprised to see discounts for graduates. Also, they are throwing cash at celebrity-level architect(s) - this is catering to the elite and I question when it can trickle down.
On a related noted: how are Thiel Fellowships panning out? (Connecting Theme = Entrepreneurship at Younger Ages)
So an N = 1 anecdote, but as a kid, in elementary school (albeit not kindergarten) I was interested in starting my own business. There was a bank in the area run specifically for young people (the Young Americans Bank in Denver, CO - it's amazing) that essentially had a club for that.
Most of it was kids selling handcrafts and things, but as I recall, there was one girl who had a custom map/layout design company and some others.
I think it was immensely valuable in teaching me how a business worked by thinking about applying it to the things I wanted to do, but it also had an ample helping of understanding the downsides, and at this point in my life, whenever there's a push to increase entrepreneurship in my field, my first reaction is "Uggh..."
I agree that clubs are a great solution for this kind of thing. I'd encourage kids to explore whatever interests them (business, dinosaurs, Model UN) as early as they're interested. But canonizing 'business' as a core educational pillar feels deeply misguided.
I don't understand why tech people have this disposition that entrepreneurship > everything else. That may have worked for some, but people find fulfillment in their lives in so many other ways. Arts, love, other careers, etc... I'd say the vast majority of people don't want to be entrepreneurs and well, also don't the skill/personality set. I'd guess that most Kindergartners won't benefit much from "entrepreneur school", since most won't (and don't want to) become entrepreneurs anyways.
> The fast-growing co-working company joins a growing list of billionaires trying to reshape American education with their influence and investments.
It's no surprise that many of those same billionaires go out of their way to make sure their own children aren't exposed to any of their "reshaping of education".
A little OT, but here's a heads up for entrepeneuers out there: WeWork is trash.
If you're a startup, I'd just recommend that you and your cofounders get an Airbnb month-to-month. I was quoted 1500/month for their Irvine Spectrum coworking space (which is lol in itself...because it's literally in the middle of nowhere!) AND they wanted an extra 250/month per person for parking.
The real kicker is the hours the coworking space is open: 9-5. Good luck trying to grow your startup with a working day of <8 hours a day. WeWork: not even once.
Btw, does anyone know of a service that's similar to Airbnb but for office space?
You're incorrect about hours, WeWork provides 24-hour access at your assigned office to all members except On-Demand members who pay per-day to acccess a WeWork location. Hot Desk, Dedicated Desk, Private Office all provide 24 hour access. Front Desk / Community Staff are usually present only during 9 - 5, but otherwise there's no difference between 11am on a Monday and 11pm on a Sunday -- I am typing this from my Dedicated Desk at 19:53.
You can see this information on the WeWork Plans page (https://www.wework.com/plans), and you can see events listed after 5pm at the WeWork Irvine location, demonstrating it is not an outlier and is definitely open after 5pm.
Pretty soon they'll become bold enough to stop attempting to sugarcoat this stuff with all the "trying to help children grow" language.
"Good morning children, and welcome to GoogSchool. Please take out your Google Chromebooks, wait 2 seconds for facial verification, and click two ads to start today's lesson"
