Program teaching American children how to run a factory, cherish their economic freedom | Eastern North Carolina Now

“It’s fascinating how quickly they catch on because it’s logical—it’s common sense,” she said. “I usually start each lesson going through vocabulary to understand the terminology, then there’s an activity to do, and the activity is what makes it come alive for them.”

“Some of my students don’t necessarily do well in history, but they thrive in this environment. They love it, and I’ve loved watching a different side of their personalities come out,” she said.

“Some of the kids that are not necessarily good at just sitting at a desk, staring at a computer screen or reading a textbook, can do the hands-on, and it comes to life.

“They're so engaged, and at the end of the year, they still remember it. I mean, they're all over it,” she said. “And it's the terms, the price discovery, the law of supply and demand, all of that, it just makes perfect sense to them.”

As the students began to grasp these concepts, Ms. Vitacca also noticed a change in their outlook.

“They're no longer looking at it as a child, as being dependent on your parents giving you money,” she said. “They're starting to think more and plan for their future and how they can earn money, how they can spend money, all of those things.”

“The kids don’t need a device,” he said. “The teacher delivers the material and runs the activities.”

And he believes he is offering something that is missing from the curricula of teachers’ colleges, and missing from many grade school curriculums as well.

“One of the beautiful things that we see is that, we’re not just teaching students, we’re teaching teachers as well,” he said. “We’ve undone 18 years of indoctrination in a matter of weeks. They’ve never seen this side of the story before; they’ve only seen the bumper stickers.”

One aspect of the program is to demonstrate the information that is generated by free-market economies through the price mechanism, and how you cannot make proper decisions on allocating resources without it. As part of the program, students are asked to play the role of factory managers who must decide about producing some combination of four products.

This allows them to see if enough people actually want the products they’re making, and whether they can afford to build them. Then the conversation shifts, and students begin to create a product mix that keeps the company running profitably.

To demonstrate this idea visually, Mr. Foster said, “We show them the satellite, nighttime photos of North and South Korea, and we say, ‘So what’s happening in North Korea?’”

“They don’t have prices there, and whoever the guy is who’s in charge of the central plan, he has no more idea how to run his factories than you would without prices, though he has to pretend he does because his very life depends on that,” he said. “And so they understand exactly what a price does, and exactly how blind you are, and what the consequences are if you don’t have prices in your economy.”

Mr. Foster, who started his career in chemical engineering and then gained experience managing plants before going on to work in corporate strategy, said the idea to develop the Middle School MBA program hit him while he was a volunteer teaching Junior Achievement classes.

“I just kept adding things to my classes until I had my own curriculum,” he said. “And one day, I was on the way to class, and I thought, ‘Why am I just teaching 14 kids? I should teach 14,000.”

“Economics is not some sophisticated academic field of study that requires years of prerequisites,” Connor Boyack, creator of the Tuttle Twins book series, told The Epoch Times. “It’s simply the study of human behavior—why people behave the way they do, what motivates them, what tradeoffs exist, what incentives are, etc.”

“These are concepts that kids can absolutely understand when presented in a simple way, relevant to their lives and the world they are a part of,” Mr. Boyack said.

“They call middle school the logic stage,” Mr. Foster said. “Prior to that, kids are just learning facts.

“But when they get to the logic stage, they want the connections between the facts they’ve learned, and that’s what economics is about—all these connections and how all these things fit together,” he said. “At this stage, they’re seriously thinking about these things, and what we do is we show them the landscape, what it’s like out there.”

Ms. Vitacca said her students now have an idea of what it takes to start a business. But in addition, “I also talk about, when you’re going to be an employee, what skills can you bring?”

Mr. Foster says the Middle School MBA program is now being taught in schools from New York to Texas, and though it initially got traction in elite private schools, he is now seeing interest from public schools as well.

“It’s the principals and teachers that are ambitious for their kids—those are our customers,” he said. Regardless of the political leanings of particular states and counties, he said, “We want our kids to know everything; we want them to succeed, and so it’s not really a function of geography; it’s just the personal attributes of administrators.”

“It’s a modern tragedy when our academic institutions are the source of ignorance and error,” Mr. Boyack said. “Too many educators are activists, using their classroom as a platform for social agendas and political ideologies. They promote a victimhood mentality, whether regarding race or economic status, and help children to perceive themselves as oppressed in a Marxist-style class warfare through which they should struggle.”

“Frankly, kids reading the Tuttle Twins books often boast that they know more than most adults,” he said. “Sadly, they’re not wrong.”

“Everything happens at the margins,” Mr. Foster said. “There are kids that are incredibly bright and tough and motivated. You only need a half a percent of the population to be that, and you’ve got it made.

“Even in business schools, perspectives are presented in only one way,” Mr. Mendenhall told The Epoch Times. “As a business student, you have to learn about ESG because it’s permeated all areas of business.

“So in order to be competent in the business world, you have to learn about ESG,” he said. “However, the way it is typically taught is very one-sided; you don’t get a variety of perspectives on it, and you certainly don’t get critical perspectives.”

“We teach the value of what we call traditional ethics,” Mr. Mendenhall said. “We try to show how ESG and related concepts can actually lead to unethical behaviors.”

Students in school today “have all been taught from a young age that you just want to save the world and do good things,” he said. “But they’ve never pulled back the curtain to look at, what people purport to be good is actually doing all this nefarious stuff.”

“Most people look at corporate America, and they think corporations are always pro-free-market, but that’s almost never the case because the bigger a company gets, the more likely it is to lobby for regulations, to lobby for new barriers to entry.”

While many students in universities and grade schools are being taught that socialism is morally superior to capitalism because it ensures equality and facilitates central planning to fight things like global warming, Mr. Boyack says that students should be reminded of the benefits of the free market and the ties between economic freedom and political freedom.

“Goods and money are really an extension of us; they represent the stored value of time and energy we previously spent,” he said. “When the government restricts our ability to trade—when it makes things cost more, devalues our money, or limits our ability to access certain products—then it really is restricting our freedom of time and how we spend our energy.”