Illich and faculty development. Yes – I see a strong connection here with Medical Nemesis. Illich says that doctors promote sickness since health is the commodity that they sell. By analogy, institutionalized education promotes stupidity since knowledge is their commodity.

You cannot sell health to healthy people, and you cannot sell institutionalized learning to people who are smart enough to teach themselves. The real role of state education is to disable the natural learning faculties of human children, locking them into a lifetime of dependence on (educational) authority.

Now, for faculty development, this scenario does not work. We need faculty to be able to teach themselves and the usual power play > shut up and listen to me! I am the authority! only raises hackles. I suspect that one of the biggest difficulties in faculty development relates to the politics of power – it really is like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. Good luck with that. Or, rather, inshallah, this will work nicely.