‘Not All of Us Can Be Nurses’: Proposing and Resisting Entrepreneurship Education in Rural Lesotho

Abstract

Education in Lesotho, as in much of the world, has historically held out the promise of a ‘better future’. Success in school and the achievement of academic credentials were expected to lead to a secure future in the formal economy. With increasing school enrolment and growing youth unemployment, such futures are now illusory for most youth. In 2009, Lesotho introduced a radical new curriculum that aims to instil in young people skills and attitudes for entrepreneurship, enabling them to build their own futures in an increasingly uncertain world. Based on 9-months’ ethnographic fieldwork in two primary schools and their surrounding rural communities, we trace how the new curriculum is being delivered in schools and how it is intervening in children’s aspirations. Despite lessons intended to prepare them for livelihoods in the informal economy, young Basotho prize the security of a salaried job as a nurse, teacher, police officer, or soldier. We frame this contradiction in relation to concepts of doxic and habituated aspirations, concluding that due to the way schools deliver entrepreneurship education it both fails to displace long-standing doxic aspirations to professional careers, and fails to engage with young people’s habituated expectations of rural livelihoods.

Facilitators of tertiary students' entrepreneurial intentions: Insights for Lesotho's national entrepreneurship policy

“…Although students pursing programmes such as business management that are entrepreneurially inclined have high entrepreneurial intentions, streamlining entrepreneurship courses as core components of university programmes can spur entrepreneurial interest among students pursing non-business management programmes such as French, thereby boosting their entrepreneurial intentions and increasing their risk-taking abilities to engage in entrepreneurship. This can go a long way toward addressing Dungey and Ansell [ 12 ] concern that the lack of entrepreneurial and skill-developing components in Lesotho's education is partly the cause of low entrepreneurial intentions among its youth. Having realised from the study that students who pursue university programmes that are entrepreneurial in nature, such as business management, develop positive entrepreneurial intentions, it is imperative for the government of Lesotho to provide the enabling and conducive environment for such students to put their intentions into reality.…”

“…Although students pursing programmes such as business management that are entrepreneurially inclined have high entrepreneurial intentions, streamlining entrepreneurship courses as core components of university programmes can spur entrepreneurial interest among students pursing non-business management programmes such as French, thereby boosting their entrepreneurial intentions and increasing their risk-taking abilities to engage in entrepreneurship. This can go a long way toward addressing Dungey and Ansell [ 12 ] concern that the lack of entrepreneurial and skill-developing components in Lesotho's education is partly the cause of low entrepreneurial intentions among its youth.…”

“…Although several authors have studied entrepreneurship and generated models that predict entrepreneurial intentions [ 10 , 11 ], yet, entrepreneurship education has not gone well with the citizens of Lesotho. Graduates are not demonstrating entrepreneurial intentions and competencies in Lesotho [ 12 ]. The reason is that Lesotho's education adopts a neoliberal human capital approach and does not create better skilled workers [ 13 ].…”

Rural Schooling and a Good Life in Late Socialist Laos: Articulations, Sketches and Moments of Good Time

“…Yet the expansion and intensification of basic education that can be observed across rural Laos has certainly not been any less impactful. Moreover, the location of schooling on the intersection of state and society renders it a space in which various ideas of a good life are articulated, reworked, negotiated and possibly resisted (Dungey and Ansell 2022;Morarji 2016).…”

Young People’s Aspirations in an Uncertain World: Taking Control of the Future?

“…Dungey and Ansell (2020b) also focus on entrepreneurship education, in this case within the formal primary school curriculum in Lesotho. Here, too, the curriculum has the support of global finance and represents a neoliberal response to economic and environmental uncertainties.…”