Could the Next Steve Jobs Come From Philly?

Of course, that’s probably just quibbling. The world doesn’t necessarily need an entire army of Biz Stones; it only needs a few. The bigger question about entrepreneurial education might be this: Will it encourage kids to define success too narrowly? Will it teach them to look at the world only with the eyes of a businessman, and never those of a poet?

Sitting inside her large office—which is ringed, fittingly, with whiteboards—Priscilla Sands says no. Not only is entrepreneurship bigger than business; school is the last place you’re likely to find adults interested in churning out mini-asshole-Donald-Trumps. “Our kids—there’s going to be a small fraction of them who are thinking about this in terms of business,” she says. “I’m more interested in the empathy and compassion of our kids who are always trying to help someone.”

But then Sands adds something I don’t expect: “On the flip side, I don’t want money to be a dirty word. Schools have never talked about this before—we never talk about money. And that seems bizarre to me.”

She makes me think not only of those little PeopleLinxers hocking their lemonade, but also of how hardheaded, in the best possible way, this approach to education is. After decades of everybody-gets-a-trophy coddling, the pendulum at last might be swinging the other way. You want to save the world, kid? Great. Here’s how the world really works. Figure it out.

“When things start tilting, I think America has flourished,” Sands says. “When you really look back at who came to America, who they really were—I have a feeling they were probably a lot of people with ADD who loved adventure, who just had a different way of thinking.”

The best part about entrepreneurs? They are, by necessity, an optimistic bunch, always certain they’ve latched on to the next big thing.