Reflections on Communication, Education, Scholarship, and Life

About the Book

Our actions in education, business, and government are no longer guided by conscious ideals, but by entrenched practices that are products of expediency, indolence, and even tyranny. Inveterate and ubiquitous problems abound. Students hate school. Employees dislike their jobs. Professors become disinclined toward teaching. Boredom and procrastination are everywhere. There are promotion requirements (such as scholarly publications by college professors) that promote nothing and benefit none except to move the person into the next nominal category along the spectrum of the organizational ladder. We are plagued with senseless competitive patterns and numerical evaluations that make life a mere matter of "rat race", the winning of which does not uplift us into the sublimity of humanity, but trammel us in the degradation of being "rats".

Essays in this book reflect on and search for answers to widespread and inveterate problems that degenerate modern life into mere livelihood. Products in sober solitude rather than in the societal cacophony, most essays in the book were written during the author's doctoral studies.

About the Author

Xin-An Lu holds a PhD in Organizational Communication and Leadership and teaches at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Results from his interest in research and writing include publications of poems, journal articles, book chapters, and frequent conference presentations on different aspects of human communication. One of his hobbies is to reflect on the ?un-economics? in contemporary organizational life. He lives with his wife and two little daughters in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.