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Business programs reach out to younger audience in classrooms

Advocates urge an early introduction to career options. Critics say the courses expose kids to cutthroat capitalism.

SAN FRANCISCO - Like any ambitious entrepreneur, Amy Lee has created a global marketing plan, approved the product manufacturing specifications and memorized a business pitch to venture capitalists.

"I'm nervous, but I think I can get people to invest," said the president and founder of Friends Forever Bracelet Inc., a jewelry retailer that plans a major Internet advertising campaign in China.

After a brief conversation with investors, she walked away with $32 in fake currency - no treasure for a Silicon Valley executive, but a proud fortune for an 11-year-old girl.

Amy is a fifth-grader at San Francisco's Jean Parker Elementary School, where she's enrolled in a monthlong crash course in the fundamentals of business administration. The students learn new words like "revenue" and "prototype," meet venture capitalists and executives, and even tour the glass offices of San Francisco's financial district.

At the end of the month, they sell their bracelets to fourth-graders. Whichever team makes the most make-believe "BizBucks" wins the contest, and everyone celebrates with a big party sponsored jointly by San Francisco software company Salesforce.com and BizWorld Foundation, a nonprofit founded by a local venture capitalist.

The program is one of many that aim to teach business skills to kids. Some, like Junior Achievement have been around for generations and are offered at schools around the world. But the programs, long commonplace in America's high schools, are increasingly being offered to students in middle and even elementary schools, advocates say, and are reaching a more diverse population than ever before.

Advocates say the initiative gets students thinking about entrepreneurship, finance, marketing and other real-world jobs, expanding their options beyond firefighters, veterinarians and other typical fifth-grade career picks. Proponents - including millionaire backers from the tech industry - want every school in America to teach business basics.

"Business curriculum engages students in learning much more than the basic 'two-plus-two-is-four' system, and it gives them a way to connect to their education," said Gerald Richards, executive director for the Bay Area Office of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. The group sponsors its own business school-style programs for students age 11 through 18 in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.

"It needs to become a standard part of education nationwide as a way to give students a way to take ownership of their futures."

But critics say these "kiddie MBA" programs - often sponsored by corporations - are thinly veiled advertisements that undercut the nonprofit motive of public education. They worry that dividing students into teams, then appointing one person president and giving lesser roles to other kids, needlessly exposes children to the cutthroat world of corporate America.

"If you're just trying to make every student want to be an entrepreneur, that's not necessary and could be harmful," said Ikhlaq Sidhu, who runs the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the University of California, Berkeley.

[Last modified March 5, 2007, 06:21:30]