In a recent interview with Maeil Economy, Oh Il-hwan, a teacher at Samgo High School, a co-author of the textbook, said, "At first, there were many suspicious eyes as to whether entrepreneurship can be learned through textbooks."
He emphasized, "However, I am confident that students will be able to overcome the limits of lecture-style classes as they carry out projects in each class."
The curriculum consisted of cases and practices that were difficult to see in textbooks in other subjects. It mainly included how to define what "entrepreneurship" is and apply it to solving problems in real life.
Sarah Blakely, an ordinary salesperson with no fashion knowledge, created a "footless stocking" and established a global underwear brand called SPANX. It also includes the case of programmer Yu Ju-wan, who drew attention with "Seoul Bus," an essential app for city bus users created by high school students when there was no bus arrival app.
Through textbooks, students learn specific implementation measures necessary in the actual start-up stage, such as idea creation techniques that make ideas in life into business items and prototype production and evaluation methods.
As such, "youth entrepreneurship" is different from other subjects that have been learned by understanding or memorizing concepts.
Teacher Oh said, "The purpose of entrepreneurship education is not to prepare young students to start their own businesses right away," and stressed, "Students who have become entrepreneurs will be able to take the lead in deciding their lives through start-ups instead of choosing only from existing jobs when making career decisions."
Teacher Oh said, "The class does not only deal with successful start-up cases." He explained, "Students vaguely think, 'If you start a business, you will make a lot of money,' while only encountering success stories, but it may be rather difficult to start a business easily if you know the actual start-up process."
"The essence of entrepreneurship is the spirit to discover and solve problems," Oh said. "We aim to develop a tenacity and challenge spirit that students do not give up even if they fail when they experience virtual start-ups through textbooks."
Teacher Oh explained, "The secret to his success is the question that his father has asked since he was young," adding, "It means that my father always asked me what kind of failure I did today, and praised me for doing much better than doing nothing" in the failed story."
Meanwhile, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups developed textbooks based on the fact that unlike the United States and Europe, Korea does not have regular courses that can foster entrepreneurship for youth. Starting next semester, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups plans to distribute textbooks to Bizcool High School and promote "youth entrepreneurship" textbooks through teacher job training or guidance from the provincial office of education.
[Reporter Lee Yoojin]
