Change approach to entrepreneurship training

Editor, I am so glad someone is looking at curriculum and rethinking what it actually aims to achieve. Curriculum is not the number one problem though – it’s number two, number one being the entrepreneurship teachers.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Editor,

I wish to respond to Sam Kebongo’s article, "Developing an entrepreneurial mindset” (The New Times, December 19).

I am so glad someone is looking at curriculum and rethinking what it actually aims to achieve. Curriculum is not the number one problem though – it’s number two, number one being the entrepreneurship teachers.

I’m not criticising entrepreneurship teachers per se, after formerly most were economic teachers practically with no entrepreneurial experience, nor any bridging course offered to help them think differently after the subject became compulsory.

It is hard to impart something which you don’t fully understand yourself. Whilst we have non-entrepreneurs teaching head knowledge via a rigid curriculum, student mindsets have little hope of changing.

Entrepreneurship needs practical and meaningful experience. Give a student Rwf500 and tell them to go on and turn it into Rwf1,000. That’s entrepreneurship.

Pamela Connell, BirminghamUnited Kingdom