Book Review: 10 to 25

I didn’t want to like the book, 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation—And Making Your Own Life Easier by David Yeager. For starters, the title… such promises of “groundbreaking” and life-changing aren’t usually my jam. Nonetheless, despite myself, I found it a great read. 

The main premise of the book is that we should take young people seriously. No matter their actions, we should not simply write off young people as incompetent due to their developing brains—a mistaken understanding of young people which the author calls the “neurobiological-incompetence model” (a mouthful of a term that appears 39 times in the book!). The book’s first section aims to debunk this neurobiological-incompetence model and replace our understanding with a new model: that young people sometimes behave incomprehensibly because their priorities, rather than competence levels, differ from adults’. And specifically, two top priorities: status and respect.

The book opens with a case study on several anti-smoking campaigns that failed, or worse, backfired. Scare tactics didn’t work because long-term health might not be a teenager’s top priority. The author theorizes that a big part of status is being perceived as an adult—and what is more adult than making your own decisions? Hence, the decision to smoke might confer status. Yeager goes on to describe different, highly effective anti-smoking campaigns that aligned with these priorities, calling teens to rebel against manipulative tobacco companies; in a sense, making your own decision not to smoke.

One of the book’s most powerful case studies describes teenagers who receive kidney transplants but don’t take their anti-rejection meds due to side effects such as weight gain, bad breath, and body hair growth. Without the meds, their bodies would start rejecting the new kidney within the day, ultimately nullifying the transplant and consigning the teen to dialysis, potentially for life. I wanted to scream into my (audio-)book to please take your meds—and I think that’s the point. Underneath this frustration might be a latent neurobiological-incompetence assumption: these young people just aren’t capable of thinking long-term and making good decisions. Yeager then takes the reader on a journey of at least trying to understand how this behaviour could make sense under a model of teenagers as very competent indeed (for example, they might be incredibly adept at hiding things from their parents) but highly focussed on attaining status and respect. How might bad breath affect one’s status at school, for example? By being asked to take young people seriously in such an extreme context, the book challenged me to take young people seriously in every context.

We may be gaining an improved understanding of young people but… can we use it? The author goes on to describe how one doctor revamped the take-your-meds messaging to great effect. Instead of threatening consequences (you might lose the kidney), they pivoted to a new message: taking medication is honouring the kidney donor and medical professionals who made this happen for you. By taking the meds, you can raise your social status and find a sense of belonging in this ecosystem. As in several instances, the author then proceeded to share mind-boggling statistics about how much these interventions improved outcomes. It all sounds too good to be true, but if we can reproduce even half of what they claim, their “mentor mindset” interventions are deeply impactful.

This “mentor mindset” is a key element of the book. As befits its groundbreaking status, 10 to 25 presents us with a 2-by-2 matrix along two axes, with their approach at one corner. In this case, the axes are high vs. low standards, and high vs. low support:

In a nutshell, 10 to 25 is about why the protector and enforcer mindsets don’t work, why the mentor mindset does, and how to live the mentor mindset. There are three main contexts explored by the author: parenting, teaching, and management in the workplace. For example, a parent with a protector mindset might not let their child experience any discomfort of difficulties (high support but low standards), while a teacher with an enforcer mindset might be strict and unforgiving (high standards but low support). The book is centred around the stories of several highly successful mentors, including a high school physics teacher, a Silicon Valley manager, a university calculus instructor, a parenting coach, and more. 

For me, a key connection between status/respect and standards/support is the idea of earned prestige, described in the book as “looking competent in front of the people whose opinions we care about.” Holding young people to low standards via a protector mindset doesn’t give them the opportunity to demonstrate their competence and earn prestige. On the other hand, when faced with an enforcer mindset, young people may question themselves or prefer not to try at all rather than risk failing and lowering their status. The mentor mindset, which is more or less Yeager’s rebranding of tough love, is about giving young people an opportunity to earn prestige and feel successful. At VISST, as an accelerated and rigorous program created on the premise that students can do more, we have high standards baked right into our DNA. We also implement many supports behind the scenes including small review classes, teaching assistants, and offering a wide range of projects so that our students, with their wide range of interests, all have the opportunity to feel successful throughout their high school journeys.

VISST’s admissions process might be a microcosm of this thinking. Because we maintain high standards, during admissions we regularly defer applicants to be reconsidered in late summer if there is an area they need to improve in first. This offer of a second chance tends to be well-received as supportive, alongside resources we provide such as math study materials. I’ve been amazed at how applicants often rise to the challenge and come back much stronger after a few months of hard work. (Sometimes their parents are amazed too!) 

Towards the end, 10 to 25 takes an unexpected detour into landscape architecture. An expert landscape architect must envision the landscape not just on the day it’s planted but 10, 20, even 50 years into the future. Likewise, an educator ideally holds a vision for students’ futures, as blurry and imprecise as they may be. Put another way, a landscape optimized for day one may not be optimized for maturity; likewise in education, what produces the most results or satisfaction in the short term might not be what best supports a student’s success, fulfillment, and justified self-confidence in the long term. I found this analogy unexpectedly moving, perhaps because I felt seen and understood through its lens. I’m grateful to the VISST community for trusting our vision for our students’ long-term development and thriving.

Though 10 to 25 is occasionally repetitive and hawks its wares a bit too enthusiastically (for example, the book lacks a discussion of where its ideas might break down or not apply), I’ll colour myself a fan. Both as a parent but especially as an educator, 10 to 25 helped shape and clarify my thinking about a bigger picture of what motivates adolescents. It was also affirming to hear that many of my own teaching techniques are Yeager-approved, mentor mindset approaches. I look forward to putting more of these ideas in practice and building VISST as a high-standards, high-support environment. There’s nothing quite like that bottom-right quadrant.

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