In my home province of Quebec, an 11-year-old boy is building children’s picnic tables in his garage (using jigs his father built for him) and selling them at a very reasonable price at local home stores. You won’t need to speak French to get the gist of it. What he’s learning is surely invaluable, and it seems as though, in a sane world, this sort of activity would be readily available to all children who enjoy working with their hands.

Thanks to the rapid productivity growth enjoyed by earlier generations of North Americans, families in this part of the world no longer have to rely on the income generating capacity of their children for survival. But does it make any sense to divorce work and entrepreneurship from education as thoroughly as we currently do? In the places where co-op work experiences are being offered to high school students, the practice seems popular. And in a truly free education marketplace, there would be an incentive for educators to meet that demand wherever it exists.