by Daniel Yordy
Almost everyone buys almost everything they need in life from someone else. In order to have the things we need for life we “work” daily at productive jobs by which we earn income. Almost all jobs exist because someone is selling something to someone else. You and I would not have work except for selling. Selling is at the core of all economic life.
Without selling, every one of us would be reduced to the little bit we ourselves could eke out of the ground with our own hands (if you have a hoe, you probably bought it from someone who sold it to you).
Selling is business; business is selling. All prosperity comes from selling. All poverty comes from its absence.
What does this have to do with homeschooling and with project-led learning?
Consider this. A person can go through high school, through college, through grad school, and walk out with a Masters of Business Administration – and never have one second’s experience starting their own business! How blind and false can the world be? They are “experts” at business, yet they have never sold anything!
Project-led learning is about replacing fictional learning with reality learning – all the way through.
In the modern school, children are taught a tiny little bit about business, maybe. At no point are they coached in starting their own business.
Business is at the heart of project-led learning. Most (not all) of the projects a child does could be elevated into an actual business. But the Vocational Project is pursued by the child specifically to sell something that they themselves make to someone who will benefit by that purchase.
Project-led learning in the middle school years then leads to business-based learning as part of high school learning.
One child grows pumpkins and sells them at a roadside stand. Another child takes an order for a decorative table cloth and sews and embroiders that product to the customer’s specifications. Another child takes an order for a wall shelf and constructs that shelf according to the customer’s wishes. In each case, the student interacts with a customer, works to the customer’s satisfaction, works to benefit others, calculates costs and profits and losses, keeps books, and follows legal requirements.
My teenage daughter is completing her first year operating her own piano teaching business. She has had a number of clients. She has experienced many of the ins and outs of business: customer’s not showing up, great students - not so great students, late payments, nice sums of money in her bank account, and so on. There is no question in my mind that her experience has been worth far more than a year’s “business course” in a modern high school. More than that, she is finding out who she is in relationship to reality, not inside the bland fiction of much teenage life.
At the seventh and eight grade levels, some children will be ready to pursue aggressively their own business, but many will not. However, inside most any project, there are many naturally occurring elements of “business.” Every project should require an accounting of all costs with a “total cost of project” at the end. And projects should be engaged in that include producing things that benefit others – raising vegetables for the table or cut flowers, making a step stool for mom, writing a story or playing music for people to enjoy.
But selling is central to modern life and to prosperity. Approaching a customer, finding out what that customer would like, working to meet that customer’s needs, delivering the work – satisfaction guaranteed, and receiving payment for a job well done, all these should be found inside a real education.
In the guides that I write, I have placed the act of satisfying a customer and receiving payment for work well done inside the Vocational Project Guide. But there is no reason why such an experience for your child could not be included in most of the other types of projects. Even in the “Spiritual” category, acts of charity such as “Visiting the Elderly” are built on the same model as any business. Charity is meeting a customer’s needs to their satisfaction. The return may not be monetary, but there is still an accounting of costs and a reward. And yes, selling is central to charity. If I do not convince someone that they will benefit by receiving what I am giving, how can I give?
Education cannot become real in a child’s life without business, without satisfying a customer and receiving the increase of one’s labor. Find a way to bring that kind of experience into your own childrens’ lives.
Daniel Yordy has worked with teenagers for over thirty years, both on the job, doing a wide range of activities with young men and women from construction to woodworking to gardening to milking cows, and in school, public, private, and home school. While obtaining his Masters Degree, he pondered the difference between the dictates of “modern education” and the practical reality he already knew produced far superior learning results than anything contrived in the modern (pretend) classroom. The result is Project-Led Learning, a weaving of the objectives of education into the actions of real-life, personal projects that contribute to a young person’s life and family.
Out of the philosophy of Project-Led Learning, Mr. Yordy has devised a series of Project Guides in ten different categories of learning. You can find out more about these exciting Guides at http://www.yguideacademy.com/ProjectLedLearning.html
Almost everyone buys almost everything they need in life from someone else. In order to have the things we need for life we “work” daily at productive jobs by which we earn income. Almost all jobs exist because someone is selling something to someone else. You and I would not have work except for selling. Selling is at the core of all economic life.
Without selling, every one of us would be reduced to the little bit we ourselves could eke out of the ground with our own hands (if you have a hoe, you probably bought it from someone who sold it to you).
Selling is business; business is selling. All prosperity comes from selling. All poverty comes from its absence.
What does this have to do with homeschooling and with project-led learning?
Consider this. A person can go through high school, through college, through grad school, and walk out with a Masters of Business Administration – and never have one second’s experience starting their own business! How blind and false can the world be? They are “experts” at business, yet they have never sold anything!
Project-led learning is about replacing fictional learning with reality learning – all the way through.
In the modern school, children are taught a tiny little bit about business, maybe. At no point are they coached in starting their own business.
Business is at the heart of project-led learning. Most (not all) of the projects a child does could be elevated into an actual business. But the Vocational Project is pursued by the child specifically to sell something that they themselves make to someone who will benefit by that purchase.
Project-led learning in the middle school years then leads to business-based learning as part of high school learning.
One child grows pumpkins and sells them at a roadside stand. Another child takes an order for a decorative table cloth and sews and embroiders that product to the customer’s specifications. Another child takes an order for a wall shelf and constructs that shelf according to the customer’s wishes. In each case, the student interacts with a customer, works to the customer’s satisfaction, works to benefit others, calculates costs and profits and losses, keeps books, and follows legal requirements.
My teenage daughter is completing her first year operating her own piano teaching business. She has had a number of clients. She has experienced many of the ins and outs of business: customer’s not showing up, great students - not so great students, late payments, nice sums of money in her bank account, and so on. There is no question in my mind that her experience has been worth far more than a year’s “business course” in a modern high school. More than that, she is finding out who she is in relationship to reality, not inside the bland fiction of much teenage life.
At the seventh and eight grade levels, some children will be ready to pursue aggressively their own business, but many will not. However, inside most any project, there are many naturally occurring elements of “business.” Every project should require an accounting of all costs with a “total cost of project” at the end. And projects should be engaged in that include producing things that benefit others – raising vegetables for the table or cut flowers, making a step stool for mom, writing a story or playing music for people to enjoy.
But selling is central to modern life and to prosperity. Approaching a customer, finding out what that customer would like, working to meet that customer’s needs, delivering the work – satisfaction guaranteed, and receiving payment for a job well done, all these should be found inside a real education.
In the guides that I write, I have placed the act of satisfying a customer and receiving payment for work well done inside the Vocational Project Guide. But there is no reason why such an experience for your child could not be included in most of the other types of projects. Even in the “Spiritual” category, acts of charity such as “Visiting the Elderly” are built on the same model as any business. Charity is meeting a customer’s needs to their satisfaction. The return may not be monetary, but there is still an accounting of costs and a reward. And yes, selling is central to charity. If I do not convince someone that they will benefit by receiving what I am giving, how can I give?
Education cannot become real in a child’s life without business, without satisfying a customer and receiving the increase of one’s labor. Find a way to bring that kind of experience into your own childrens’ lives.
Daniel Yordy has worked with teenagers for over thirty years, both on the job, doing a wide range of activities with young men and women from construction to woodworking to gardening to milking cows, and in school, public, private, and home school. While obtaining his Masters Degree, he pondered the difference between the dictates of “modern education” and the practical reality he already knew produced far superior learning results than anything contrived in the modern (pretend) classroom. The result is Project-Led Learning, a weaving of the objectives of education into the actions of real-life, personal projects that contribute to a young person’s life and family.
Out of the philosophy of Project-Led Learning, Mr. Yordy has devised a series of Project Guides in ten different categories of learning. You can find out more about these exciting Guides at http://www.yguideacademy.com/ProjectLedLearning.html
