Looking Back to Look Forward

Abstract

This “looking back to look forward” chapter addresses narrative threads that began in the Foreword of this book. The Holocaust and other inhumane acts again serve as starting points for discussion. Woven in are passages from an open letter a Holocaust survivor wrote to teachers in the aftermath of World War II. The naming of dehumanizing acts, along with their educated aggressors, segues into a discussion of excessive entitlement, the topic of this volume. This chapter acknowledges that faculty and graduate students wrestle with intractable educational dilemmas ignited by those who are excessively entitled. As they struggle to make sense of off-putting experiences that trace to their peers' excessiveness, they inevitably conclude that dilemmas, by their very nature, can never be resolved definitively. But they can be circumstantially managed. Teachers and principals are highly influential in weighing and managing dilemmas. They are primary role models to others in society because of their sustained relationships with youth over time. Only when teachers and professors consider humanity in its entirety do their in situ understandings of excessive entitlement recalibrate to become empowered entitlement where both self and others are taken into consideration where informed actions are concerned. This chapter ends by reinforcing the importance of the best-loved self, which repeatedly shows itself to be the yin to excessive entitlement's yang. This point is emphatically made in each preceding chapter as well – with all this volume's chapters suggesting how academia could move beyond excessive entitlement with the betterment of humankind in full view.

Citation

Craig, C.J. (2024), "Looking Back to Look Forward", Ratnam, T. and Craig, C.J. (Ed.) After Excessive Teacher and Faculty Entitlement (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 47), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 271-274. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720240000047017