There’s a message in our society and our state that is so pervasive most of us don’t even notice.  Or, when they hear the message we don’t realize everything has changed in the last 20 years.  The message is about jobs.  To our youth, the message is about getting a good education in order to get a good job.  To the rest of us, education is all about training people with the right skills to work for others.  For the last 100 years, this has been the only message, but in today’s entrepreneurial economy, it’s incomplete and inadequate.  Who is going to create the companies that will need the employees?  In Kansas, we’ve just assumed that our current companies will always be here and that we need to attract new companies from “out there” to come to Kansas and provide jobs.  This has made us dependent on long-term jobs for our livelihoods; long-term jobs that, for the most part, no longer exist. 

We were all born to be entrepreneurs.  Maybe to say born to be entrepreneurial would be more accurate.  That doesn’t mean that we were all meant to own our own businesses, but we’re all meant to be independent in creative thought in the ways we solve problems in our personal, academic and professional lives. 

Therein lies the disconnect.  We are born to be independent, creative thinkers, but our society teaches us to be dependent on others for our lively-hood.  

The early days of the American economy were characterized by agrarian and craft/merchant economic activity and a certain self-reliance on the part of the people.  After the Civil War, especially in the torn-up South, livelihoods were harder to come by and, with the resumption of the industrial revolution; people gradually migrated from the previous independent entrepreneurial endeavors to the dependent lives of working for others.  In the early 1900’s, business, government and the institution of higher education got together and created an educational system to prepare young people to go to work for others and be good producers.  Students were sorted by age and placed in non-descript rooms.  The school day included bells and whistles to signal changes of activity just as they would experience when they went to work in the factories. 

Today, remnants of this educational system are still recognizable in our schools, from kindergarten through college. 

The economy today and in the future will be a mix of big business, entrepreneurial small businesses, independent contractors and employees.  Our educational system should be presenting all of the options and allowing our young people to choose.  Until our Kansas politicians and education policy makers and educators recognize the importance of the “rest of the story” besides just jobs, we’re destined for a lack-luster state economy.