Niceness overated?

Rory Litwin, a person I admire very much, has taken his Library Juice into a blog format. He has an entry about Steven Bell's commentary in Inside Higher Ed entitled, "Good at Reviewing Books but not Each Other." The Bell article outlines his arguments against inculcating a culture of politeness that doesn't serve to advance discourse in our profession. I have few thoughts myself related to this topic.

As a librarian in an academic library who also teaches a graduate course on academic librarianship I think that there is a bigger issue. One of the main reasons I believe that we don't have a true discourse in librarianship is library education. Many of my students are not prepared for a rigorous examination of the issues surrounding academic librarianship. I have had students protest the longish reading list provided in the syllabus with one asking, "Do I have to read them all?" While realizing that many of my students are attending part time and have other time demands, it fascinates me that there is a perception that library school shouldn't be "hard".

My own program had its share of classes that were deemed easier than others but each was intellectually demanding. If librarians, who by their attendance are presumably interested in becoming academic librarians perceive the work to be too difficult, what does this predict of their future job performance? More importantly, what does this say about their willingness to engage in the discourse?