The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy
by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber
LB2331.7 .B47 2016
New Arrivals Island, 2nd floor
As August rolls in, the days shorten, and many of us would insist that the clock speeds along more quickly as well. Why do we always reach this point of the summer wondering why we haven’t accomplished all we “should”? Have we used our time as efficiently as possible? Have we met ever increasing goals set for us and by us? Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber challenge us to question this push towards a frantic pace, a symptom, they assert, that is a result of the corporatization and standardization of academia.
Forms of the Slow Movement philosophy have been explored in the context of Slow Money, Slow Medicine, have been researched in the context of information behavior and more. Berg and Seeber extend Slow principles to academia, emphasizing that professors and students need what they refer to as “timeless” time to above all think. Time for reflection and open-ended inquiry is not a luxury, but crucial to what academics are and do.
This encouraging 90-page volume speaks not only to professors, but all instructional staff, graduate students, and those in academia who balance precious student contact time with other institutional responsibilities and expectations.
Well this is all treu & god, but we can add a nother element to gilt the banana so to speek. Simply reduct not only fast spead, but also the SIZE of the materiel. See “less Content to kover, hence more qualitat-Time upon it!! The gist, pith, essence savoured. Its all like “Sound Byte T-shirt Wisdom in elevator-speach duration.” Winterim, but next is Mini-Courses 4 successive Saturdays for one Kredditt. Next stop is the Diurnal or One-Day course, “In by Eight, out by Four.” Arrkieology 101, visit town dump in A.M. display specimens in P.M. Then “smidgeon” courses lasting only One Hour, for 1/16 a credit. Egg-Painting, 1 egg onley but repeatable. Proverb-reading .001., one example every five second’s. Auto Repair: “tap, wipe, & tighten” covers it. Onley five minuets for Chinese Stir-Frei, “The first four minutes” of meeting some one. And then into nanno courses, for 1/144,000 th of a credit. SO examine Micro substance with Macro time! The book at onley 90 pages Walks its Preaching, Practices its Talk. I gotta go, re-read some proverbs…