Maybe you remember the movie about a small boy who start a movement to do good by something he calls pay it forward. In the movie, the young Trevor McKinney, troubled by his mother’s alcoholism and fears of his abusive but absent father, is caught up by an intriguing assignment from his new social studies teacher, Mr. Simonet. The assignment: think of something to change the world and put it into action. Trevor conjures the notion of paying a favor not back, but forward — repaying good deeds not with payback, but with new good deeds done to three new people. Trevor’s efforts to make good on his idea bring a revolution not only in the lives of himself, his mother and his physically and emotionally scarred teacher, but in those of an ever-widening circle of people completely unknown to him.

Is it a new idea? No, not at all. There is even a long wikipedia description of the concept, obviously without the Hollywood drama:

The expression pay it forward is used to describe the concept of asking that a good turn be repaid by having it done to others instead. In contract law, typically there are two parties but there is the concept of third party beneficiaries. Pay it forward merely applies this contract law concept so that third party beneficiary be a stranger to the creditor. More specifically, the creditor offers the debtor the option of “paying” the debt forward by lending it to a third person instead of paying it back to the original creditor. Debt and payments can be monetary or by good deeds. In sociology, this concept is called “generalized reciprocity” or “generalized exchange”. A related transaction, which starts with a gift instead of a loan, is alternative giving.

It appears to be really old, dating back 317 BC, eventually rediscovered by Benjamin Franklin in 1784:

I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you [...] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money.

I believe it the challenging times we live in now, with all the technological advances but also the things happening right now in Greece and Italy we need to rethink how we work together, and how we can all benefit most from it. Profit warnings from big companies are not the way forward. Would be a good thing the rethink profit as well. What is it more than gaining money? Same for growth. Maybe we should have a better look at already existing ideas as well, like affectio sociatis. This is the French legal concept that means that two people or more share the same idea, and personally commit themselves to achieving
the purpose of the association. In short: the links between people over profit. A powerful idea, I learned from Marie Elisabeth Boury, who I met in Paris. In an emil to she writes:

Latin Expression “affectio societatis”, it was the condition to create a company (in France or in according to the french law). It indicated that one of the key questions was the link between people.
It resonates with the fact that 2 or 3 generations before, founding a company was not for profit first but for sharing with people inside the company and people outside (customers); you can still have an idea of that in the North/East Italy (Verona area) where you have many companies not wanting to grow too much and completely focused on the links.
When the most successful and recent companies such as Google, Facebook, etc. were founded, they were not created for “profit first” but for “linking” first; that’s why they are very innovative and resilient; that is the human part in us which is the source of innovation; if in your job, you are considered only as a “resource” you are denied you human part, and the collectivity you are belonging to loses capacity to rebounding and rethinking (…); profit is important of course but has to be balanced.

So how to apply this for schools? I think we can make internships better (or skip totally them) and more valuable for everyone involved. Schools too, by seeing them not at a place where you learn, but as a part of society. A place where you can already work with a community of young people with a wide variety of talents who are learning. To not educate them for jobs, but in jobs. A place of potential. So they can find out if they like what they picked in the Big Catalogue of Future Job Options. And if they don’t they can try something else.

How could this work as a model? An example. Imagine you are a start-up company. You believe in what you do and found out there is a need for what you do. But you also know you only have once chance to present yourself to the world. You should look just as good as the competition. But you don’t have the means to do that. You can go to a bank, borrow money from family. Or collaborate with a couple of students, together create what you are looking for and what you need, meanwhile creating life long lasting links, building expertise and portfolio at the same time. No fiction or hypothetical assignments, but real stuff. And then make agreements on how to pay for it when you business becomes successful. Then you can actually pay for what you got and helped you becoming a successful business. And if success isn’t on your side, you at least had a great learning experience and maybe even gained some new friends. Moving from learning to earning, beyond profit. And students have when they graduate, real experience for real clients with tangible results and maybe even recommendations. Things we value in the after-school life to give people jobs.