Fox Television airs a game show called, “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?”

Lance Dennee | The Sun Blake Sandlin, 11, and Taylor Skelton, 11, wait to be judged for their business plans during a fifth-grade entrepeneurial competition at Farley Elementary. Sandlin planned a chocolate-covered pretzel business, Pretzel Pizzazz, and Skelton an earing firm, Ear Blingz.

I’ll admit, I assumed the show would only frustrate me, but, I gave it a chance since “You might be a redneck” funny man Jeff Foxworthy was the host. I quickly ascertained that, for the purposes of this show, he wasn’t that funny and I wasn’t that smart! For example, here’s the question answered by the show’s only million-dollar prize winner:
“Who was the longest reigning British Monarch?”
If you think that’s a toughie, and if you consider yourself an entrepreneur, try these questions:
n What is an equilibrium price?
n How do you compute cost of goods?
n What are productive resources?
If you know the answers, you may be as smart as the average fifth-grader at Farley Elementary in Paducah.
As one of the recent judges of Farley’s Entrepreneurial Fair Competition, I had been introduced to 70-plus budding entrepreneurs by the end of the school day on a recent Friday.
The well-dressed young ladies and gentlemen stood at their school desks and gave a quick sales pitch for their product or service, explained their market research and how they arrived at their price points (equilibrium price), presented highlights of their written business plans, and in many cases displayed a prototype or sample of their product.
The demonstrations were so well-rehearsed and factual, I felt like just a really tall guy in a room full of short entrepreneurial experts. Only occasionally did I snap back into reality when, while watching a very well-produced video commercial for a young lady’s product, I saw a celebrity endorsement from The Jonas Brothers.

Money-making ideas

What do tomorrow’s entrepreneurs see as money-makers?
I saw several bead and bottlecap bracelets and necklaces, hand-decorated flip-flops, instant photo greeting cards and that timeless classic, food!
Amid some very creative pretzel concoctions, lemonade recipes and cookies, one young man marketed his own (yes, he mixed and baked them himself) chess pies. In consideration of my waistline and to remain a fair business competition judge, I refrained from sampling. But the various flavors of chess pies (and big brown eyes staring up at me) almost had me reaching for a fork. If he’d been about 15 years older — and I was a venture capitalist — we would have struck a deal instantly.
And that’s what it’s all about. Farley fifth-grade teacher Tina Hayes and other economics teachers nationwide are challenging students by teaching them hands-on, practical lessons that go beyond economics as a generic term.
This particular program incorporates so many valuable lessons based on their reading, writing and arithmetic skills, but also as we adults would put it, “They’re teaching them the value of a dollar.”
Lessons from the current economic conditions also registered with some of the entrepreneurs who offered value-added items with their products, as have almost every real-world retailer in recent months.
Life lessons

“My passion is economics,” Hayes said at the end of the long day of coordinating her school’s entrepreneurial fair. “The sooner we introduce the concept to our students, the better.
“Most of us think of business plan competitions as something for high school or college level students. That’s the level we should be reinforcing and advancing what we can teach them at this level.”
Hayes and Janice Vaughn of Murray State University are no strangers to teaching economics. In my former career at Dippin’ Dots, I watched them write and distribute an economics curriculum called “Dip Into Economics,” which was used not just at Farley, but at several schools well beyond western Kentucky.
Through the use of the famous, Paducah-based ice cream concept, students set up corporations to purchase, market and actually sell the treat for a few days at school.
Will the lessons stick? Will programs such as these help ignite a new entrepreneurial culture in our region?
EntrePaducah believes so, especially if there’s reinforcement at all levels. The Farley event wasn’t just a one-day, one-week competition. It was actually just one step in educating the students, allowing them to use their skills to compete, and eventually to profit from the actual sale of their products at a school event.
Top contestants at Farley joined hundreds of other students competing at Murray State’s Regional Entrepreneurial Fair for fourth- through 12th-graders for the chance to win cash prizes. It was also encouraging to hear how students’ parents worked with them on their projects — even to the point of providing invoices for services (trips to the store to get supplies), charging rent for kitchen facilities and assessing interest on loans for the students to fund their businesses.
Those are real-life lessons at their best.

Special thanks

As we in the economic development world work to inspire and help entrepreneurs launch their new businesses, we have to thank the teachers of the world who work to plant the seeds of entrepreneurism. As they do their jobs, we’re challenged to do ours by continuing to invest our time and resources into new business endeavors.
And by the way, the million-dollar answer was “Queen Victoria.”

Terry Reeves is the concierge for EntrePaducah, a joint effort by Paducah and McCracken County governments, the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce and Greater Paducah Economic Development Council to fosters small-business growth. Contact him at 443-1746 or treeves@entrepaducah.com.