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College English Classrooms Should Be Slow 

Reading can be a leisurely practice and one that allows the reader to spend time with the text, but often for academics and students, other demands of work, family and life make reading something that has to be done as quickly as possible, writes Luke Vines, assistant director for academic support at Berry College and Ph.D. candidate in the department of English at Vanderbilt University in a recent Career Advice piece for Inside Higher Ed.

• In the 2016 book, The Slow Professor, the authors challenge the speed in academia and advise faculty to work more slowly. This can be a challenge, as many faculty are not in control of how much work is accomplished in a given time frame, but they can control how much work they require of students.  
• “As English professors, our job is not to encourage quick thinking but to foster thorough, imaginative and critical thinking,” Vines writes. “To do this, we must design our courses to foster and prompt slow work that breaks students out of the habits of expediency they have developed throughout their time in school.” 

Read the full piece here.