More to Childhood Than Making a Buck

As I read the July 15 article on Joshua Ballard, the 11-year-old Fountain Valley teacher of a course on how other kids can start businesses, I couldn’t help but feel that something was amiss.

His mother taught him to look at every acquaintance as a potential business contact and every hobby as an opportunity to make money.

The message that comes across is that materialism and getting ahead take precedence over activities that one normally associates with childhood, those that usually have no immediate monetary compensation.

For example: engaging in creative play, fostering intellectual curiosity and courting relationships for their own sake. Don’t hobbies and friends have their own intrinsic rewards, or must everything have utility?

This is not meant as an attack on Joshua. I think it is praiseworthy that Joshua has entrepreneurial talents and is willing to share them with others in a rather innovative way.

But I find it objectionable that a child’s talents appear to be directed toward serving only one purpose--material gain.

Equally objectionable is that his community teaching position makes him, in effect, a role model for this extremely utilitarian value system, one that I doubt he has had time to fully examine at age 11.

I can only say that this value system begs for reexamination.

I find it astounding that parents pay for the opportunity to compare their children to this rather precocious child. What may come naturally to this child is certainly not going to wash with most other children.

Do they actually propose to put kids in a shirt and tie and slap a cell phone in their hands?

David Chicoine

La Habra Heights