The Study Guide Phenomenon

With the new college term beginning, in many respects it has been deja vue  all over again.  I can always count on some students to resurrect old chestnuts that I have heard countless times.  In so doing, they remind me of the difficulties in teaching materials with which they are unfamiliar.

Every course starts out with a description of what will be covered and how student achievement will be measured.  Naturally this includes a discussion of the exams and how they are to be graded.  As might be expected, this makes many of my listeners nervous.

As a consequence, one almost always asks if I will provide a “study guide.”  My answer is invariably no, to which someone, usually a person who has had me before, inquires if I will reconsider.  After all, other professors provide these predigested compendiums; why shouldn’t I?

First, let me explain what a study guide is.  It is usually either an outline of what the course has to date covered, or a series of topics that are apt to appear on the exam.  This way students can anticipate what is to come and narrow their focus to what will be be required.

In most cases, I immediately explain why I do not supply this assistance.  I tell my students that one of the most important skills they can acquire is how to study.  It is up to them to figure out what is important and concentrate on that.  They must decide what is meaningful, as opposed to what isn’t.

I generally underline my point by asking whether they expect to receive study guides from their future employers?  Won’t their bosses expect them to know their jobs without being furnished with written instructions?  If they can’t get along without such directives, isn’t it obvious that they will not rise to positions of authority?

Nowadays, in our enormously complicated world, where professionalized occupations entail discretion, if people cannot be self-directed, how will they be able to make good choices?  If they are unable to deal with uncertainties because they are too frightened to think for themselves, why would they be trusted to lead others?

But where are they to learn to think for themselves?  If not in our colleges, then where?  Doing so is, of course, difficult in that mistakes are possible.  Actually, it is dead certain that beginners will make missteps.  We all do—especially when we are in unaccustomed waters.

Yet isn’t it also important that we learn to cope with our errors?  If we do not allow ourselves to recognize these, how will we discover how to rectify them?  And if we don’t, won’t we perpetuate a myriad of otherwise correctable slip-ups?

Life is filled with landmines and embarrassing miscalculations.  Things do not always go as we hope.  We therefore require the courage to manage a variety of uncomfortable moments.  We must be honest enough to figure out what is going on and brave enough to apply measures we believe might work.

With our colleges having become the land of the snowflakes, this is not their conventional wisdom.  Blizzards of politically correct nonsense routinely obscure the vision of the inhabitants.  So caught up are faculty and students in the need to bolster everyone’s self-esteem that simple facts are ignored.

George Washington and Abraham Lincoln did not have study guides.  Neither did Isaac Newton or Thomas Edison.  I wonder what Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, would say if asked about the study guide he used when creating his company?

These days we have become so desirous of avoiding distress that we want everything laid out for us.  But who is going to do this?  If everyone becomes a self-absorbed egotist who cannot engage in independent thought, we will have millions of computer game players, but few game designers.

Our colleges—indeed our nation—are sure to be trouble as long as we insist on the easy way out.  Success takes effort.  Social advances require determination.  When these are lacking on either the personal or community level, dreams do not come true.  And, lest I be misunderstood, this includes the American Dream!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University