Propagate A Horatio Alger Paradigm

At the last turn of the century, America was concerned about the violence and societal isolation of its youth.

Family values were evaporating in the pressure cooker of the industrial revolution, urban youth were turning to gangs for companionship and youth crime was at an all-time high.

America met the challenge through a series of highly successful youth programs stressing the outdoors and organized sports.

The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the YMCA and YWCA, the Little League and similar organizations offered healthy, nonviolent outlets for aggression.

They provided positive alternatives to gangs and a series of effective tools for teaching the values of honesty, self-reliance, sportsmanship and self-discipline.

We now fear we are in the midst of another period of youth violence, gangs and evaporating values. The youth organizations of the past are still highly effective but they fail to attract the disengaged preteen or teenager.

The disengaged child sees no future, has no hope and wants only to be left alone.

When neighbors and school friends join existing youth organizations that hold little interest for the loner, these disengaged youths become even more asocial or antisocial. Some are left standing only a small step from the kind of sociopathic behavior that can lead to a Littleton massacre.

One solution lies in a new kind of positive youth activity, cooperating rather than competing with existing organizations. This new activity must bring hope for the future, involvement in society and development of positive values wrapped in a package that will be attractive to the disengaged.

Entrepreneurship, with its mystique of wealth, power and independence, holds that attraction.

Several organizations have tapped this fascination, including Edge-Kindsway, Junior Achievement and The Boy Scouts of America (through its entrepreneurship merit badge and its coed, career-oriented Exploring program).

They have found that the process of planning and launching a new business venture provides young people - even previously disengaged young people - with the three elements most important to them.

These are: a sense of individual worth, a sense of control over their futures and a clear understanding of the link between effort and success.

It is the lack of these three elements that leads to disengagement. But happily, the creative processes of inventing a product or service, marketing it to the world and reaping the direct benefits of planning and effort provide those three important elements.

And not incidentally, entrepreneurship is “cool.” The very elements of Scouting that attract preteens - the uniforms, outdoor activities and positive image - may repel teenagers who haven’t seen programs designed for their age group.

And while sports programs retain junior athletes, the young people lacking the drive or coordination to compete rapidly drift off.

Church and synagogue social programs are attractive to mainstream youth but their sponsorship and agenda may ward off those disengaged teenagers who are questioning religion and rejecting imposed organization.

But working is “cool” and owning your own business is the ultimate.

All but the most hard-core disengaged young people will welcome the chance to make money without submitting to a boss, to have direct control of the future - and to have success.

In the process, they will learn to work with other people, to lead and to serve on teams. They will learn the value of planning, of researching. And they will see the direct link between effort and success.

Most important, these lessons won’t come from reading a manual or attending a class. Rather, they are learned from the direct feedback mechanism of starting a business: fail to lead effectively and your business doesn’t grow. Don’t plan and problems set you back. Slack off and the business dies.

Entrepreneurship teaches the lessons far more effectively, and far more convincingly, than any instructor can.

So how can we encourage the Boy Scouts’ entrepreneurship program, the people at Edge and the other growing entrepreneurial youth programs?

In the past 10 years, most American colleges and universities have added an academic entrepreneurial program. These programs have provided students with good educational skills and have often served their communities through internship and advisory programs.

It’s time to implement the next step. We need to encourage college-based entrepreneurship programs, and college students, to share their experience and expertise with local high schools and elementary schools.

When we provide disengaged youth with the entrepreneurial tools they need to take control of their lives, we will find that they re-engage, for the ultimate benefit of us all.