My Take | Is mini MBA for 7-year-olds worth the money?

Educating and equipping children to face the future with confidence is the aim of every parent. Most go to great lengths to make sure of this, and to meet the needs of such parents experts chart out different kinds of curriculums. But some courses on offer leave one a bit perplexed.

Take, for example, the "mini MBA" courses offered in Chengdu for children aged seven to 11. The aim of the tutorial is to improve children's FQ or financial quotient (their ability to understand and manage money, the institute's director explains). The course offers tips on the value of money, budgeting, investment awareness and related subjects.

It sounds like a well-thought-out and educational programme; the institute has four full-time lecturers, all former English teachers, and even flies in experts from Britain periodically. The 40-odd students enrolled are also taught the relative and absolute value of money through imaginative games, they say.

This may sound a bit old- fashioned, but one feels children of that age are better off not being taught things most adults find a bit hard to master, such as managing money or pyrotechnics, to take another example.

Some may learn the usefulness of this mini MBA quickly, figuring out how to get a few hundred dollars off their parents at the weekend on the pretext of a class assignment. After all, spending habits is part of the course.

No one can doubt the desire of parents to give their children the best options available to hone their skills. That should explain the logic behind the programme in graffiti that started in Singapore recently. It is open to anyone aged 12 or above.