Private versus public ownership, stealing versus working, competition, market saturation, and bankruptcy: over a semester Mini-Societies will have to wrestle with all of them, "all the things people learn in economics classes," Kourilsky says. It is an exercise in values clarification, with no grades or right and wrong answers, only choices the students have to live with.
"Children do fail," Kourilsky says. "They may fail three or four times. But they find out how to fail. And they don't say they failed. The day they go bankrupt, they go home looking totally dejected, but they'll come back in a day or two with another angle." Not surprisingly, the academically less successful often create the most successful businesses, just as they do in the real world, she says. Likewise, students from the wealthiest communities are the least likely to succeed as entrepreneurs. "They're wonderful at consumption, but very lazy when it comes to production."
The older the students, the more sophisticated their society can become. Businesses in the early grades mostly sell "stuff," jewelry or cookies, wallets or pencil holders; older students add services to the commercial mix, banks and tutoring services, venture capital funds, advertising agencies, and casinos. Not everyone decides to start a business: the math whiz may well feel more comfortable with a salary, for example, and sign on as a classmate's accountant. As a citizen of a Mini-Society the teacher, too, has opportunities; there is always a place for a smart consultant, Kourilsky points out, particularly one who will help you tie your shoes for free.
For an adult it can be eerie to visit Mini-Society classrooms. The choices the students face so closely echo our own. If Gigglesville consumers catch a business selling watered-down lemonade, they might decide to encourage another market entrant with a tax break, while Lollypop Land might decide to put a product inspector on the payroll. With government spending persistently exceeding revenues, Poohville might cut the bureaucracy, while The United Class of Fonzies might raise taxes. Most children will follow historical precedent, however, and just print more currency -- then learn for themselves what happens when too much money chases too few goods.
In Starville, Doris Stevenson's Mini-Society, this year's class even got a glimpse of international competition, when Toshisha Fujii, the son of a visiting Japanese professor, joined their class. Although he didn't speak a word of English when he started, within three days Toshisha had cornered the paper-airplane market, thanks to his training in origami; he had started to learn some new words, too, the English numbers from one through 20, plus his personal favorite, "profit!"
Mini-Society parallels our own gender patterns and prejudices, too, Kourilsky says. Boys start businesses first, "when they figure out they can get the girls to do all the work." But the arrangement rarely lasts; there'll be fights over fairness and equality, perhaps even tears -- "then the girls figure out they can go out and work for themselves." Once committed to business, however, the girls are just as likely to succeed as boys, although most usually work with the support of a friend for a partner, while boys usually operate alone.
"I'm a strong woman, and I don't like to see those differences," Kourilsky says. "But I do see them. I think they're social, definitely not inherent -- and I think they start young."
That bias against women in business not only starts early, Kourilsky knows, it lasts a lifetime. She's seen it personally, over 16 years trying to convince American educators that they could teach economics to children, any children, if they would only take the risk, loosen the reins of control, and trust the children to learn from experience.
"I was considered a monster when the program started," she remembers. "Mini-Society seemed too market oriented to people. They would ask me, 'Why's a nice girl like you interested in business?'
"Even today the program is just getting by. Entrepreneurship is still not a good word in academic circles; academics are the least entrepreneurial people in the world.
"You can't teach Mini-Society under the name of entrepreneurship; academics won't accept it. You have to teach it as empowerment and autonomy, all the things that entrepreneurship is, and work backward."
Over the past 16 years Kourilsky has expanded her program dramatically, developing Kinder-Economy for kindergarten through second grade, Max-Economy for junior and senior high, and an adult-education curriculum. It is a crusade of sorts, spread through weekend workshops, with Kourilsky hoping the teachers and economists she trains will go home and teach other teachers. She's thought about turning it into a business, using the market to spread her message; she's even been approached by several deep-pocket would-be investors. But she doesn't dare, as much as the idea tempts her.
"I believe in entrepreneurship with a passionate fervor," she explains. "But I know that if I ran this as a business it would make Mini-Society far too suspect. Most academics would never accept it."
Most academics, though, don't accept business itself yet or understand how it can teach the lessons of risk and reward.
But Kourilsky's Mini-Society graduates know better. Ask elementary-school students, before the program starts, to draw a picture of a successful entrepreneur, and they'll draw a caricature: a man, fat and bald, smoking a giant cigar.
Ask them again after the Mini-Society program is over, and the picture will be different. Then the businessperson is young, attractive, and confident -- and often strikingly similar to the little boy or little girl who drew it.
