Youre Doing it Wrong Dad
[Music]
an
old lanky farmer stood up next to me to
make his point
singling out two teenage boys in the
back of a rural west african schoolhouse
they did it the youth
the force and passion expressed by the
old farmer created tension
in what had been a seemingly pleasant
conversation
but what exactly had the youth
done if you’re like most people you tend
to think of youth as either
impressionable sponges in need of our
love knowledge and care
or as obnoxious little tears who ought
to be seen and never heard
and maybe if you’re a parent you go back
and forth between the two
but what if there were a third way to
view youth what if there were a way to
empower youth
to transform adults and what if that new
perspective of youth
could solve some of the world’s most
pressing challenges
i’m an agriculturalist i grew up on a
cattle ranch in west texas
as a product of school-based
agricultural education even serving as
national president
of the future farmers of america i never
had a desire to be in education or
youth development i wanted to transform
agriculture
particularly in sub-saharan africa a
region i had grown to appreciate
after leading several research
expeditions on agriculture and food
security
but in order to pursue this i would be
taking down a path that reshaped the way
i viewed youth
by connecting a 100 year old idea in
agricultural education
to a modern theory of behavioral
economics by a nobel prize-winning
economist
and it would all somehow collide in that
rural
west african schoolhouse which i’ll come
back to in just a moment
the story begins when america was little
more than a developing country of
struggling farmers
just over 100 years ago imagine the
scene
droves of angry farmers with pitchforks
arriving on campuses of land-grant
colleges
accusing the government of spending
their tax dollars to turn
their sons into scientists rather than
better farmers
one man rufus stimpson president of what
is today the university of connecticut
heard the legitimate concern behind the
farmer’s anger
as a pragmatist who had studied
philosophy under william james at
harvard
he believed that agricultural research
developed at the university
ought to directly benefit farmers he had
an idea
so in 1908 he resigned as college
president
to become a high school agriculture
teacher to test out his new idea
what he called a home project to diffuse
agricultural innovations
into rural communities through youth
while simultaneously giving them an
opportunity
to learn by doing the idea was
straightforward
the college trains the teacher in
science-based agricultural practices
the teacher trains the student through a
public school
and the student demonstrates the
improved methods through a home
project on their family farm when we
think of knowledge transfer
we tend to think of adults teaching
youth but this is only really true
of established knowledge and tradition
such as mathematics or even religion
it’s not necessarily true of new ideas
or technologies
such as a social media platform a social
justice cause or
even a new agricultural crop just think
of all the new technologies your own
kids have shared with you
sharing new ideas however doesn’t always
lead to behavioral shift
or adoption of new technology this is
where something in
stimson’s methodology was different his
and other youth-centered agricultural
programs
were leading to widespread adoption of
better agricultural practices
and technologies across the united
states
youth seemed to be the magic ingredient
but why
the field of behavioral economics as
developed by daniel kahneman and amos
taversky
may shed some light on this question and
present
us with an opportunity to shift the way
we think of the role of youth in the
economy
to better illustrate this let’s have
some virtual audience participation
of the following which do you choose
take 45 cents for sure
or flip a coin and win a dollar on heads
and nothing on tails
capture that answer in your mind
second problem which you choose take
450 000 for sure or flip a coin
and win a million dollars on heads and
nothing on tails
now capture that answer in your mind
if you’re like most people you chose the
gamble of the coin flip in problem one
but chose the sure thing of the 450 000
in the second problem why the switch up
both problems share the exact same odds
in behavioral economics the answer is
reference point
reference point is simply the status quo
or in this particular case
your current state of wealth few people
know their state of wealth within a few
thousand dollars
and no one knows it within 45 cents
because a sure thing is stated as one
option
your mind adds that sure thing to your
state of wealth
and then calculates the psychological
pain it would go through
if you chose the gamble lost the gamble
and therefore lost a sure thing while
losing 45 cents may cause you no pain
losing 450 thousand dollars probably
would
that fear of loss drives you away from
the gamble in the second problem
to choose the sure thing of the 450 000
would a billionaire and a homeless
person choose the same responses to both
questions
of course not they have different
reference points
now consider this problem a new hybrid
corn seed has been introduced to a rural
community in sub-saharan africa
scientists have tested the new corn at a
research center and determined it can
double the yields of the traditional
variety
without the use of additional inputs or
change to farming practices
no community member has seen the
demonstrations and the two seeds
look identical when compared visually
let’s call the hybrid seed
a gamble and the traditional seed a sure
thing
based on reference point who is more
likely to adopt the hybrid seed
a 13 year old taking an agriculture
class in junior high school
or her father a subsistence farmer
feeding eight children at home
not only is the young person more likely
to adopt the hybrid seed
she is also the best person in that
community to share the new innovation
with adult farmers
in such a way that will lead to its
adoption
but most interventions to diffuse
agricultural innovations
focus their attention on lead farmers
rather than youth
a lead farmer tends to be more educated
and slightly better off
resulting in a reference point that
allows them to be early adopters
imagine this represents the reference
point of an average
smallholder farmer in a rural community
from their perspective
a lead farmer is already above them
producing higher yields
so when a non-profit government or
private business conducts an
agricultural intervention
with lead farmers their high yields
become even
higher but from the perspective of the
smallholder farmer
nothing really changes the status quo
stays the same
the rich keep getting richer however
from that same reference point of the
smallholder farmer
youth are perceived to be beneath them
of course someone who’s been farming for
20 years can out produce someone who’s
never
farmed before in their life so when that
same agricultural intervention
is conducted with youth
the youth outproduced the smallholder
farmer
causing the reference point to shift
the sure thing of the traditional seed
which was once perceived as a gain
is now perceived as a loss when framed
against
the youth’s performance with the gamble
of the hybrid seed
as a result most adults will choose the
hybrid seed
next time a seed that could reduce
hunger
protect the environment and lift
families out of poverty
since 2013 my organization has built
capacity for school-based agricultural
education programs
in ghana and liberia working with
organizations such as
4-h in community after community
we are meeting farmers who have improved
their yields by 50
to 150 percent and in some cases with
the right technologies
as much as 400 percent based on what
they’ve learned from
teenagers to bring greater rigor of
evidence on this
we are partnering with economists from
northwestern university
to conduct a randomized controlled trial
on the efficacy of school-based
agricultural education in liberia
this will be the first research of its
kind to actually measure the economic
impact
youth can have by framing innovations to
adults
evidence should be published by 2023
so what exactly did happen with those
youth
in that west african schoolhouse i
referred to earlier well
after that old lanky farmer startled me
with his accusation
he continued the youth taught us
previously we were slashing and burning
but the youth taught us the conservation
methods and how to use the better seed
we saw how well the school farm was
doing
so we listened farmers then went around
the room
and began telling me everything they had
learned from the school’s youth
responsible fertilizer application seed
spacing
the importance of quality seed
composting terracing
every farmer in the room had more than
doubled their yields
based on lessons learned from junior
high students
but i was still curious who specifically
taught you
i asked well ishmael taught me said one
farmer
so i asked ishmael an 18 year old
student what had happened
he said he was walking through the
village one day and overheard a group of
farmers complain
about their exceptionally low yields
he walked up to the older farmers and
confidently said
i can help you get higher yields
they hesitated at his age he told me but
accepted everything he taught
because they had seen the increased
production he had achieved
on the school farm one farmer
invited ishmael to teach him how to
avoid soil erosion
plant in rose and properly apply
fertilizer on his own farm
a two-hour lesson from a junior high
student
transformed that man’s life as the
farmer later told me
by seeing the youth excited about
agriculture and doing well
not only have i produced more food to
feed my family
it has also made me proud to be a farmer
youth play a critical and distinctive
role in the political economy of our
world
a role that only they can play because
they possess
a unique reference point and when they
are empowered with the appropriate
knowledge and technologies
they can reshape the world back to the
rest of us
to nudge us from our reference points
to make better choices to solve some of
the world’s most
challenging problems if we want a better
future
faster we must harness the unique role
of youth
but we don’t need to wait for youth to
grow up to change the world
we can empower them to change us
and the world today
you