THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$ | Preview | PBS

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Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page looks at the role of entrepreneurship education as a way to help change the lives of at-risk youth.

“A lot of kids would like to start their own business of one kind or another, but they don’t know how. Most schools don’t teach it.” So says Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune and essayist of the sixty minute PBS documentary, THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$.

Centered on budding entrepreneurs across the country and the programs created to foster their interest and understanding of the free market, THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$ tells the tale of underserved youth creating and living their own versions of the American success story.

In the course of the documentary, viewers meet young entrepreneurs such as Eric and Derrick, 16-year-old twins in urban Milwaukee, as they promote their thriving lawn-care business; Laima, age 16, who makes sure her Web site development company in New York City doesn’t sacrifice good design and aesthetics for the latest special effects; and, west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, David Lawson of Wise County, Virginia, who began converting six acres of his family property to a vineyard after completing a high school entrepreneurship class several years ago.

“The old thinking figured kids were too young to learn about entrepreneurship. The new thinking sees entrepreneurship as a healthy remedy for classroom boredom, restless energies and high dropout rates,” says Clarence Page in THESE KIDS MEAN BUSINES$.

The stories in the documentary come from many parts of the country: Milwaukee, Wisconsin; South Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; Chicago, Illinois; Wise County, Virginia; and New York City, New York. Among the organizations featured in the program are the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, REAL Enterprises, Food from the 'Hood, Center for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Entrenuity, and the C. E. O. Academy.

In 1987, Steve Mariotti founded the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) with the mission of teaching low-income youth how to start and manage small businesses. “I think it's very important to start as young as possible,” explains Mariotti. “We start at the age of 11 and we are thinking about even moving down to the age of seven. The sooner a young person starts to train their mind to think entrepreneurially, to look for business opportunities, to think about budgeting and planning, to think about marketing and sales, and so that it's incorporated into one's very intellectual being, I think it's very, very positive.”

  

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