
Instead Of Field Trips To The Zoo, A Long Island Middle School Visits Startups - turoczy
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/06/13/businessinsider-microinterns-middle-school-students-intern-at-startups-george-haines-entrepreneurship-course-2011-6.DTL
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sourc3
Having been a student of the guy behind 140 Varick st and re-vitalization of
Silicon Alley, I am glad that we start teaching the new generation what it
means to be an entrepreneur.

Most kids today are going to college for a paper degree that will get them in
the corporate world and provide layers and layers of management cushion one on
top of another. Although boring, political and unfulfilling these jobs are not
really demanding.

Most people who go through the start-up experience (successful or not) and
wear many hats come out of it with invaluable experience and make better
owners/employees/consultants :)

Seeing this made my day.

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Tichy
Why not do both?

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hugh3
You do realise that the "instead of trips to the zoo" is just a headline
writer's sleight-of-something here, right? There's nothing in the article
about zoo trips being cancelled.

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Tichy
Still, he doesn't seem to think very highly of zoo trips.

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rmason
What you're forgetting is at that age one simple thing can create a spark in a
kid.

My uncle gave me a crystal radio at 10 (in the shape of Alan Shephard's space
capsule) and that led me to becoming an amateur radio operator. Later a
science teacher further stoked my interest in tech.

Sometimes it really is the simple things in life that set a kid on a journey.

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ahrens
That is just great. Just what is needed to increase the chances the generation
growing up now will be entrepreneurs. I will try to set us up as a host for
something similar this fall here in Sweden. I am inspired by all actions to
increase entrepreneurship and especially to children and teenagers.

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daimyoyo
I wish programs like this were in place when I was a child. Imagine going to
Google when it was still a few guys in a small office. It would be a life
changing event.

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slapshot
But would you have known the significance at the time? Google at 10 employees
consisted of a handful of scraggly guys* typing on a computer all day, and a
couple other scraggly guys talking on the phone all day to get deals done
(hosting contracts, funding, etc). There's nothing that looks interesting or
unique about an early-stage startup--it's just people in an office. Compare
that to a zoo that has plenty of room for kids to run and scream and see
things they've never seen before.

I'm not saying it's useless to take kids to startup offices -- it socializes
the value of entrepreneurship -- but it's not quite the same experience as
seeing the size of an african elephant for the first time, or looking a
gorllia in the eye.

* I use "guys" in a gender-neutral sense here; I don't know what the gender ratio was at Google at 10 employees.

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hugh3
_but it's not quite the same experience as seeing the size of an african
elephant for the first time, or looking a gorllia in the eye._

In fairness, most parents have probably taken their kids to the zoo dozens of
times before they even get to school age. I know I will, when I have kids,
because... hey, zoos are awesome!

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akat
Look ma, a JAVA developer!

