Why?

Last week the college held convocation. This is where faculty and staff get together to start the new year off on a common footing. This year when I arrived I found a book waiting for me. Apparently, we're supposed to use this book in our courses to help bridge the gap between the various departments. Of course, that's what I got from asking around. No one in charge had actually told anyone anything, which is kind of normal. If the book were by Hawking or even some worthy literature like Dickens, I'd support the idea. This book however, while probably a good and decent book, was a mass market, self help type book. Okay, not quite what I think of when I think of college level, but I guess we're supposed to teach to the lowest common denominator rather than expecting excellence from our students.

The why moment came before lunch, when the program finished 30 minutes early and the guest speaker hadn't arrived yet. Since the college has a distributed campus structure and a service area approximately the size of Connecticut, this is the only time many of us see our colleagues. You'd think this would be a golden opportunity to discuss professional issues. Alas, the powers that be hate not filling all time with something. They think it's inefficient, or they won't be able to fill out the block on their form that says they were performing professional development at that time,  or something like that. So they started to read the book to us. Now I liked people reading to me in the 3rd grade, but now, I find it a might insulting. Granted they'd only read a little bit and then ask us to discuss, but come on people, I wouldn't treat my students like that. If they do, I've found the reason why our enrollment keeps dropping.

The bright spot in all this was that most of the faculty just ignored them and kept discussing matters which were actually important. Still, to think you need to impose so much control in a room of college educators is just mind boggling.