Think Again

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF REPEATING
There’s only one class I regret missing in college. It was taught by a
philosopher named Robert Nozick. One of his ideas became famous thanks
to the movie The Matrix: in the 1970s, Nozick introduced a thought
experiment about whether people would choose to enter an “experience
machine” that could provide infinite pleasure but remove them from real
life.
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In his classroom, Nozick created his own version of an experience
machine: he insisted on teaching a new class every year. “I do my thinking
through the courses I give,” he said.
Nozick taught one course on truth; another on philosophy and
neuroscience; a third on Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus; a fourth on thinking
about thinking; and a fifth on the Russian Revolution. In four decades of
teaching, he taught only one class a second time: it was on the good life.
“Presenting a completely polished and worked-out view doesn’t give
students a feel for what it’s like to do original work in philosophy and to see
it happen, to catch on to doing it,” he explained. Sadly, before I could take
one of his courses, he died of cancer.

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What I found so inspiring about Nozick’s approach was that he wasn’t
content for students to learn from him. He wanted them to learn with him.
Every time he tackled a new topic, he would have the opportunity to rethink
his existing views on it. He was a remarkable role model for changing up
our familiar methods of teaching—and learning. When I started teaching, I
wanted to adopt some of his principles. I wasn’t prepared to inflict an entire
semester of half-baked ideas on my students, so I set a benchmark: every
year I would aim to throw out 20 percent of my class and replace it with
new material. If I was doing new thinking every year, we could all start
rethinking together.
With the other 80 percent of the material, though, I found myself
failing. I was teaching a semester-long class on organizational behavior for
juniors and seniors. When I introduced evidence, I wasn’t giving them the
space to rethink it. After years of wrestling with this problem, it dawned on
me that I could create a new assignment to teach rethinking. I assigned
students to work in small groups to record their own mini-podcasts or mini–
TED talks. Their charge was to question a popular practice, to champion an
idea that went against the grain of conventional wisdom, or to challenge
principles covered in class.
As they started working on the project, I noticed a surprising pattern.
The students who struggled the most were the straight-A students—the
perfectionists. It turns out that although perfectionists are more likely than
their peers to ace school, they don’t perform any better than their colleagues
at work. This tracks with evidence that, across a wide range of industries,
grades are not a strong predictor of job performance.
Achieving excellence in school often requires mastering old ways of
thinking. Building an influential career demands new ways of thinking. In a
classic study of highly accomplished architects, the most creative ones
graduated with a B average. Their straight-A counterparts were so
determined to be right that they often failed to take the risk of rethinking the
orthodoxy. A similar pattern emerged in a study of students who graduated
at the top of their class. “Valedictorians aren’t likely to be the future’s
visionaries,” education researcher Karen Arnold explains. “They typically
settle into the system instead of shaking it up.”
That’s what I saw with my straight-A students: they were terrified of
being wrong. To give them a strong incentive to take some risks, I made the
assignment worth 20 percent of their final grade. I had changed the rules:

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now they were being rewarded for rethinking instead of regurgitating. I
wasn’t sure if that incentive would work until I reviewed the work of a trio
of straight-A students. They gave their mini–TED talk about the problems
with TED talks, pointing out the risks of reinforcing short attention spans
and privileging superficial polish over deep insight. Their presentation was
so thoughtful and entertaining that I played it for the entire class. “If you
have the courage to stand up to the trend towards glib, seamless answers,”
they deadpanned as we laughed, “then stop watching this video right now,
and do some real research, like we did.”
I made the assignment a staple of the course from then on. The
following year I wanted to go further in rethinking the content and format
of my class. In a typical three-hour class, I would spend no more than
twenty to thirty minutes lecturing. The rest is active learning—students
make decisions in simulations and negotiate in role-plays, and then we
debrief, discuss, debate, and problem solve. My mistake was treating the
syllabus as if it were a formal contract: once I finalized it in September, it
was effectively set in stone. I decided it was time to change that and invite
the students to rethink part of the structure of the class itself.
On my next syllabus, I deliberately left one class session completely
blank. Halfway through the semester, I invited the students to work in small
groups to develop and pitch an idea for how we should spend that open day.
Then they voted.
One of the most popular ideas came from Lauren McCann, who
suggested a creative step toward helping students recognize that rethinking
was a useful skill—and one they had already been using in college. She
invited her classmates to write letters to their freshmen selves covering
what they wish they had known back then. The students encouraged their
younger selves to stay open to different majors, instead of declaring the first
one that erased their uncertainty. To be less obsessed with grades, and more
focused on relationships. To explore different career possibilities, rather
than committing too soon to the one that promised the most pay or prestige.
Lauren collected letters from dozens of students to launch a website,
Dear Penn Freshmen. Within twenty-four hours, dearpennfresh.com had
over ten thousand visits, and a half dozen schools were starting their own
versions to help students rethink their academic, social, and professional
choices.

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This practice can extend far beyond the classroom. As we approach any
life transition—whether it’s a first job, a second marriage, or a third child—
we can pause to ask people what they wish they’d known before they went
through that experience. Once we’re on the other side of it, we can share
what we ourselves should have rethought.
It’s been demonstrated repeatedly that one of the best ways to learn is
to teach. It wasn’t until I let my students design a day of class that I truly
understood how much they had to teach one another—and me. They were
rethinking not just what they learned, but whom they could learn from.
The following year, the class’s favorite idea took that rethinking a step
further: the students hosted a day of “passion talks” on which anyone could
teach the class about something he or she loved. We learned how to beatbox
and design buildings that mesh with nature and make the world more
allergy safe. From that point on, sharing passions has been part of class