I taught in a small college and among my duties was serving as the advisor to a group of students. I wanted to say, “Get out while you’re still alive.”

Why?

Because each professor assigned books, in addition to the course textbook, for each student to read during the quarter or semester. First, nobody could read that many books. Second, each professor acted as though s/he was the only professor in the college assigning books to be read during the term.

There was no communication between departments. This meant that each professor assigned books without thinking about the number of books his or her students’ other professors were assigning. Between the time I went to college and the time I taught in college, this problem had gotten worse. Nobody can read 3-4 novels a week when they have other classes to attend.

Putting up with the nonsense of (a) studying the assigned chapters in the textbooks for 3-4 courses per semester and (b) fitting in a hundred pages worth of additional reading from a stack of fiction and nonfiction for each course killed my respect for the educational system. I felt the same way when I was caught up in it as a teacher. I taught journalism. All we had was the textbook. But my colleagues were assigning stacks of books to be read each week and nothing I said about it mattered.

They wanted me to get with the program and, for example, force my students to read a thick book containing all of Hemingway’s war reporting one week and all of some other journalist’s dispatches another week. I wouldn’t do it.

So, we argued about it, the other departmental teachers and I, and the students were lost in the shuffle. No wonder everyone survived on Cliff’s Notes and Monarch Notes and whatever the modern versions of those are today. Frankly, I think that–based on the credit hours of a course–there should be a maximum number of pages/books that can be assigned (including the textbook). We need to increase the credit hours awarded by the course if we add more reading material.

I’m a writer and I disliked high school and college English departments. That’s kind of sad, I think. Those departments did their best to kill my love of reading and writing and, I have a feeling, they’re still doing it today. When will they ever learn?

—Malcolm