
WeWork Is Going After Kindergartners Now - stablemap
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/wework-hits-education-with-an-entrepreneurial-school-for-kids
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bertjk
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.

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emodendroket
In fact I think a lot of this stuff is more frightening or ominous than
"exciting."

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kobeya
Seriously, stay away from my kids' school...

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Saaster
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.

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carlosdp
"“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."

Jesus dude, let kids be kids for a bit.

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Cacti
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.

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fortythirteen
> 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.

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shalmanese
Don't worry. By the time they grow up, we will have renamed the position of
"Intern" into "Participation CEO".

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wpietri
When stable companies experiment with new things, I'm all for it. But when a
rapidly growing pre-IPO company does, I get concerned they've lost focus.

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emodendroket
I don't really care that much if WeWork goes under; I _do_ care if a bunch of
kids get a sub-par "experimental" education that hurts them for life.

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merpnderp
Too late, we already do that at a national level now. Bill Gates did say
"whoops" the other day, though.

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emodendroket
Well, no sense throwing good money after bad, so to speak. We don't have to
keep moving further in that direction.

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ejlangev
> “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.

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aaron-lebo
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.

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ejlangev
> 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.

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jasode
_> 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.

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sharkweek
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.

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20years
"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.

Keep your hands off my kids.

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buttcoinslol
Silicon Valley is getting out of hand. This is straight up indoctrination.

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dpflan
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...](https://genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-
money-was-no-object-annotated)).

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)

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Fomite
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..."

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stuart78
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.

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Fomite
Indeed, for most kids, if we were making something a core educational pillar
it should be financial literacy.

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nikkwong
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.

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tnzn
This reminds me of Macron's ridiculous statement that "the youth wants to be
entrepreneurs, not state workers". Lolz

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emodendroket
"Entrepreneurship for kindergarteners"? How can you even parody this stuff
when the genuine article is so ridiculous?

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praneshp
Upvote this article highly enough, and then watch
[http://n-gate.com/](http://n-gate.com/) over the weekend.

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659087
> 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".

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kaffeemitsahne
autoplay vid + audio

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stablemap
Ah, sorry—it's in the following article (is there a term for this?) and didn't
autoplay for me in Safari.

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swyx
can anyone smell a pivot? they raised a ton of money a year ago based on
rolling out WeLive to like 30 something locations. today they only have two.

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jasode
Instead of a pivot, it just looks like a side pet project for the WeWork
founders. The article says they're considering making the program non-profit.

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swyx
i was a little tongue in cheek, but yes.

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LeicaLatte
They are not serious about this, are they?

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eliben
I was reading through trying to find out whether this is a joke...

[There's a nice subreddit for things like this called r/nottheonion/]

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ori_b
_checks date_

Nope, it's not April 1st.

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ShabbosGoy
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?

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emodendroket
Oh no, not regular hours.

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ShabbosGoy
A bit of context: with LA traffic 9-5 at WeWork is actually 12-3. Unless you
want to leave at 5 AM in the morning and leave WeWork at 2 PM.

My point is, it's just plain inefficient. We got a beach house on Airbnb
literally on the beach. I wake up to a beautiful view in the morning.

If I ever feel like I am burning out, I just walk on the beach or grab a beach
chair and start hacking away :)

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659087
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"

