50 pages • 1 hour read
Ken BainWhat the Best College Students Do
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Messy Problems”
How can a college education help in confronting messy, or “ill-structured” questions—wars, death-penalty jury trials, romances, problems at work, and the like? Among successful people who went to college, five traits emerge: (1) They surround themselves with diverse people and opinions; (2) they thrive on controversy and question their own prejudices; (3) they cultivate a deep curiosity about the world; (4) they do deep research on tough questions; and (5) they have mentors for support.
As a Brooklyn youth, David Protess lived with the fear of polio and nuclear war. His Jewish neighborhood read about the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of spying for Russia, and fears abounded that a new wave of killings of Jews would erupt shortly after the Holocaust. David loved to read but was a lackluster student. Struggling with these big issues and his place in the world, David discovered a vibrant community of thinkers at Chicago’s Roosevelt University, where he joined the ongoing discussions about justice in classrooms and hallways. His interests coincided with the civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s; he thought hard about his own biases and learned how to think constructively about the controversies sweeping the United States. His professors “challenged his thinking with questions about his assumptions, evidence, and reasoning” (140).
David realized that underachievers like him could thrive under the right conditions, especially in small groups where he felt free to propose interesting ideas without fear. His grades shot up. David became an investigative journalist and professor at Northwestern University, where he formed study groups that helped free death-row inmates, many of them Black and poor, who had been unjustly convicted of murders.
One of David’s students, Shawn Armbrust, was part of his study group that looked into Illinois’s murder case against Anthony Porter. Porter disputed his conviction while serving 15 years on death row, and David’s group developed leads that pointed to another suspect, Alstory Simon, who finally confessed to the double killing. Porter was freed, and Governor George Ryan put a moratorium on executions; 10 years later, the Illinois death penalty was abolished. Shawn’s group uncovered massive incompetence by police, prosecutors, and courts: “Twenty-one-year-olds shouldn’t be freeing innocent men from jail” (150). Shawn became an attorney and joined the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which appeals unjust convictions. For his part, David formed the Chicago Innocence Project to continue the work begun in his classes at Northwestern. David won the Puffin Prize for “creative citizenship.”
According to researchers Patricia King and Karen Kitchener, as people grow in their thinking, they tackle ill-structured problems a step at a time, climbing up a thought ladder toward higher rungs of better judgment. The first rung is thinking in absolutes: The truth is either one way or another. On the second rung, we believe answers from authorities. At the third step, we “fill in the gaps with our own beliefs” (152). The fourth level is where people begin to see that knowledge is uncertain; on the fifth level, truth is a matter of interpretation, and evidence can be used to prove almost anything. Levels six and seven usher in “reflective thinking,” when we begin to appreciate the complexities of deep problems and approach them from different perspectives, weighing evidence carefully.
At the top level, seven, “we draw the most reasonable or probable conclusion from the current evidence” (155) and re-evaluate when new evidence becomes available. This is the level of “reasonable inquiry” in which personal biases fade, replaced by explanations that fit the evidence.
As a student at Yale, Cheryl Hayashi appreciated the variety of smart minds around her. She focused on courses that piqued her curiosity. A class on evolutionary biology introduced her to the painstaking detective work of science and the way researchers can tease inferences out of limited data. Cheryl did research on spiders in her senior year, and the following summer she worked in Panama studying the local spider species. There, she learned that, to contribute new ideas, a researcher must know what’s already been discovered, ask questions and form hypotheses, generate data, and “then adjust to all the things that will inevitably go wrong” (161).
Cheryl completed a PhD, set up a lab at the University of California at Riverside, and became one of the world’s experts in spider silk and its possible uses. She won a MacArthur “Genius Grant” for her innovative research. Her experience typifies the path that successful students and professionals take from surface learning to deep understanding—from curiosity to powerful mental strengths.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Encouragement”
Self-esteem is important to achievement, but a student who bases self-worth on grades can become trapped in a vicious cycle of test anxiety, less-than-stellar grades, more test anxiety, and more grade problems. Not only will this student have trouble on tests, but the focus on grades will block valuable deep learning. This problem can intensify if a student is a member of a population that has been disparaged as less academically able: The pressure to perform well on behalf of one’s group can increase test anxiety and interfere with good performance.
Researchers have shown that students do worse on tests when told they’re being examined on their “basic abilities”; they do better when told the test simply examines “problem-solving styles and approaches” (168). Sometimes self-respect can degrade into narcissism, when people become arrogant and selfish. They may decide that they’re so wonderful, they don’t need to study, then run into trouble at test time and take it out on others, either blaming or criticizing them to cover up their own failings.
To avoid the pitfalls of esteem, we can exercise “self-compassion”: This includes being kind to oneself instead of being “harshly self-critical” during difficult moments and being mindful of the pain of disappointment or loss without “over-identifying” with it (172). Everyone struggles, and trouble visits every life, but problems aren’t criticisms; they do, however, call on us to take steps to fix them. Students with this type of “self-compassion” tend to have more satisfaction, joy in learning, and less obsession with grades. Similarly, self-compassion characterizes successful professionals. These people tend to involve themselves more in their communities and their life purposes than in their egos. Even tragedies become fodder or inspiration for their creative efforts.
A high-level, competitive achiever in high school, Eliza Noh discovered a world of people at Columbia who were concerned more with learning and discovery than grades. A course on power relationships in society inspired her to question her own assumptions and explore issues more deeply. With friends, she petitioned the university and won the hiring of an Asian-studies teacher. Pressures to achieve are high among Asian American women, and Eliza’s sister, also an over-achiever, committed suicide. The shock of this nearly sent Eliza into a tailspin, but she learned to cope by seeing the loss in its larger social context. This approach put her on a career path in ethnic studies; she earned a PhD from Berkeley and began doing seminal work in the field.
Growing up in an alcoholic family that descended into poverty, Duncan Campbell became street-smart, learning how to make creative use of the few opportunities around him. He also used reading and puzzle solving as ways to comfort himself. Because of the discrimination he experienced for being poor, Duncan felt a natural compassion for the downtrodden, and, at the University of Oregon, he studied law, hoping to help poor children. It wasn’t until he earned a CPA, created a specialty investment group, and sold it for millions, though, that he obtained the wherewithal to develop mentoring programs for school kids. The most prominent is Friends of the Children, which pairs full-time coaches with the “toughest cases,” mentoring them from elementary through high school. Duncan has won the Purpose Award for his efforts.
Singaporean Meixi Ng grew up in an informal group of Christian families who prioritized helping each other. She lived briefly in Illinois; in high school, she studied for a time in Thailand, where she became close to a Thai girl who later was sold as a bride to help pay her family’s expenses. Angered by this, Meixi launched the Amber Initiative, which works to end human trafficking and expand education opportunities for youth. Meixi attended Northwestern University, where she set up organizations to help disadvantaged youth. As the author explains, “Her own education focused on a higher purpose that never confined itself to a classroom or a single course” (191).
Reyna Grande’s father left Mexico for the United States and worked there for eight years before sending for his children. Reyna, age 10 when she arrived in the US, struggled to learn English and catch up in school. She earned a scholarship to the University of California, but her father, who had become alcoholic and violent, refused to let her go there. At Pasadena Community College, Reyna met a writing professor, Diana Savas, who took her in, encouraged her writing, and helped her get a spot at University of California, Santa Cruz, where she thrived in a variety of classes. After graduation, Reyna earned an advanced degree in creative writing at Antioch University.
Reyna began a memoir, but when her painful memories became too much, she converted the manuscript into a novel, a process that gave her some emotional distance. The novel became the award-winning book Across a Hundred Mountains; she followed up with an acclaimed second novel, Dancing with Butterflies (198). Grateful to receive critical support at the right moments, Reyna worked hard to rise up from a difficult situation and build a productive and creative life. She used “a combination of empathy, self-comfort, self-examination, a growth mindset, and that habit of trying to understand what motivates other people to discover the dynamic power of her own mind and forge a creative life” (197).
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
These chapters look at some of the biggest challenges of deep learning and ways to manage those demands. One way to make solid progress in complex issues, suggests the author, is to reach the top of the seven stages of judgment and arrive at a level called “reasonable inquiry.” At this stage, a student or professional is better able to untangle a mass of confusing evidence, look at it from different angles, and develop possible answers whose structures best fit the data. At stage seven, personal biases drop away. The search for understanding places a premium on what seems most likely to be true, rather than what is most likely to be pleasing. Thus, one of the hardest parts of thinking at this level is the willingness to accept answers that may seem uncomfortable, frightening, or disappointing.
People sometimes get into extended debates over complex issues like the death penalty, violence on TV, or how best to manage public health issues because they differ vigorously on what should be the proper conclusion. We often have intense feelings on these topics; our emotions impart a convincing sense of rightness to our conclusions. It’s easy to confuse these strong preferences with the objective facts of the case. This doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, or illogical, to have preferences. The desire to achieve what we prefer motivates our curiosity and inspires us to learn. We must be careful, however, not to choose theories or ideas simply because they seem to flatter our preferences. Thinking about messy problems tends to go better if we examine the evidence dispassionately; otherwise, in our eagerness to justify our current viewpoints, we may distort the information to conform to our view.
In learning how to think deeply on tough questions, one rule of thumb stands out: Generate lots of ideas. To do so, students will need to abandon biases that limit inquiry. Then, they can ask lots of questions, listen to many perspectives, and interact with people from different places and cultures, all the while gathering as much relevant data as possible. It helps also to brainstorm as many solutions as possible, then argue against them. In fact, students should stress-test all their ideas with outside critiques, experiments, and test runs. Some ideas will evolve logically through careful reasoning; others will pop up seemingly out of nowhere. The more ideas, the better.
Chapter 6 discusses the ironic connection between self-esteem and narcissism, an oddity that causes people to question the value of self-esteem altogether. An arrogant expression of self-admiration often disguises deep insecurity and self-doubt. This isn’t genuine self-esteem, and it is a mistake to consider these types to be the same. It’s one thing to have strong self-regard because you are a productive member of society; it’s quite another to think you’re great simply because you compete better than other people. Western society, especially in the United States, puts a premium on competition—in business, sports, popularity, and the like—which encourages people to think more about winning than about making a contribution.
This dichotomy parallels the author’s point about grades versus deep learning: Students who care mainly about showing off won’t bother with a time-consuming educational process that doesn’t earn them points or praise. After all, you don’t get applause for what you merely think about. The wise student, however, pins self-regard on the ability to ponder deep questions and generate powerful insights. Such students know what they have achieved and don’t have to prove it to anyone.
Any time self-esteem is placed at the judgment of others, it is shallow and apt to collapse at the first criticism. As with good grades, the approval of others is useful, but it isn’t the source of authentic self-esteem. The confidence we develop from our own hard-earned competencies is much more solid and stable than any accolades we might extract from others. High grades can be a key that opens certain career doors, but knowledge and the ability to think clearly are powers that open up the world.
Reyna Grande’s climb from poverty and insecurity to literary success exemplifies the author’s assertion that anyone, no matter how hobbled by circumstance, can achieve a higher education and career prominence and use it productively to help and inspire others.
