There is a point in our lives when we don’t learn in volumes but in bit sizes, like a simple question and the answer it demands. This is the point when we learn not only fast but learn things that will define our way of thinking entirely. This is the time when we are young. Governments and institutions seem to forget this and attempt, although rarely, to teach us about entrepreneurship as late as tertiary education, contradicting the mindsets they planted into our systems.

Hmm, I am sorry for altering this prompt. I am an activist. I believe the formal education system is broken. I wish it would change.

Related:

• Why did I drop out of College [Part 1]?
• Why did I drop out of College [Part 2]?
• Teaching kids about failure and blaming none
• Raising capital from scratch, becoming a capitalist and the broken education system

You might be reading this and thinking, “Oh, here he comes again with his pointless point expressing his pointless activism on the already flawless education system.” I dropped out of College in 2019. In 2022, after failing to be an ideal College dropout who drops out and becomes a millionaire, the family combined forces with a simple instruction, ‘return to College or get out of our homes’. As a dependant who had earned $473 and $370 in 2021 and 2020, respectively I complied. Once at the University of Zimbabwe for one final time, Education 5.0, was the new policing headline for changing the odds. In practising the policy we were put into groups like mining prospecting and farming, a few groups of investment categories we do not have to choose over. Capital was said to come. Although it never did I was asking myself, “Why this late?” Why was I being taught about entrepreneurship this late?

To set the record straight, tertiary education is no longer a bit-size teaching zone. A simple one-hour lecture with few business ideas we were not to choose from wasn’t enough to erase the salary mindset off my custom operating system and install an entrepreneurial one. I am a salary being. Besides the rest of the institution and lecturers who are leading in my academic path want me to be on a job not to be in business. Lecturers have a deeper salary mindset and it is all that they impart to students.

The question “What do you want to do when you grow up?” is not just a question. The education system has rigged the bank of answers. It wants answers from salaried jobs. This is a simple questing but in reality volumes a teaching intended for planting a mindset that will define the rest of the child’s future–a salary mindset.

When I was a Grade 3 student my class teacher who happened to be the school head and my paternal grandfather asked the question to class: What do you want to do when you grow up? The arrangement was one could rise say his/her answer and sit down while the one seated next repeated. When my turn arrived, I said “boss”. I was beaten for that. “We don’t say, I told you. It must be pilot, doctor or teacher,” Grandpa hissed his message in my ear while pinching before directing his attention to the next student: “Yes, Loveness”.

Loveness (surname withheld) added nurse to the exhaustive list of salaried workers. Of course, she was married very at a very young age before realising her dream at the age of sixteen. To early, huh?

Let me get the record straight by diverting from this topic. In my country donor agencies like Swedish International Development Agency joined forces with local ministries in fight against domestic violence. One way they did so was to hang a giant billboard with messages against domestic violence. A man or woman in his/her 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s is always the target of this message. Will s/he be changed by a billboard? It is too late.

It is harder to convenience an adult to reconsider his/her views on how things should be done than it is to convince a child. Again the benefit with a catch-them-young approach is the message imparted is simple. There is no need for experts to immerse kids into a certain positive mindset. An illiterate person at home can do it. It saves resources. A simple question and selective answers lined up of can make a difference.

What do you want to do when you grow up? Together with the answers expected, this is not just a question. It is a teaching, moulding a child into a way of thinking and doing that he will eventually grow up into. As the child grows he eventually becomes a teenager, the same teaching will now take more effort to impart. Hours of career guidance will then replace the once simple question and its answers. The higher you get the more complex it gets to impart a certain way of thinking. I suggest that a child be taught to appreciate capitalism not as a future worker but as a future capitalist.