Whenever I see students made to cram facts into their short-term memories for
a test, practice a series of decontextualized skills on yet another worksheet,
listen passively to a lecture, or inch their way through the insipid prose of
a corporate-produced textbook, I find myself thinking of a comment made by
Frederick Herzberg, a critic of traditional workplace management: “Idleness,
indifference, and irresponsibility,” he said, “are healthy responses to
absurd work.”