Why Isn’t ‘Just Thinking’ Rewarded?

What does the high school student who wants to get into one of the nation’s top universities do? I’ll tell you what, because I’m doing it.

He or she takes every honors and AP course available, attends every class, reads every assignment, works every calculus and physics problem, and writes and rewrites every English essay. He mentors math students, participates in a sport, enters math and science competitions, interns with a civil rights attorney and gets high scores on SAT I and II. He also donates hours to help get out the vote, care for the needy and nourish the poor.

And after all that he still feels like a failure. That’s because top universities seem to consider good grades, high SAT scores and community service just par for the course.

Don’t get me wrong. It is right that high school students look beyond their homework, friends, music and movies. But today’s high school students are so busy that they don’t have time to think. I mean deep thinking: the kind that may begin with daydreaming but then turns to puzzling over a question until a glimmer of the answer appears.

The thought came to me as I was sitting in front of my computer just thinking. After a while, I felt guilty that I was thinking and not doing. When I write a paper, work a calculus problem or feed the homeless, I can easily note that on a college application -- 500 hours community service, 50 hours mentoring math students and so on. Colleges reward applicants for doing. But how do I get credit for just thinking?

Didn’t Albert Einstein have to just think for hours on end? Had someone passed by Einstein’s window as he sat thinking, he might have wrongly accused Einstein of being a slacker.

I have had teachers explain the mysteries of physics, calculus and chemistry. I have had teachers get wildly excited as they talked about the words of Ernest Hemingway or John Cheever. I have had teachers who have urged me to develop the habit of giving to the community. I appreciate all that they have done. But no teacher has taken the time to tell me that it is important sometimes to just think.

College professors say their students do not know how to think critically. But how can they think critically if they haven’t yet experienced thinking? How can they think critically before they have learned how to formulate good questions, and then spent hours trying to answer them?

Adam Smith, the 18th century economist, wrote a book about why some nations are rich and other nations are poor. Economic growth, he said, depends on free markets, limited government and a system of natural liberty. My guess is that it also depends on people with ideas -- good ideas. Good ideas are grown in the garden of the human mind. And thinking is the water that makes that garden grow.