Reading about schools

Having a lot of time to catch up on magazine literature in the various airports and rental car outlets of this great nation, I'm in the pleasant positon of recommending an essay by Rick Moody in the Summer Fiction issue of The Atlantic Monthly (an appetizer sized portion is available online here, but the whole thing is worth reading...)
Moody reflects on his undergraduate and graduate studies in writing, paying special attention to the role of some mentors he worked with at brown and criticizing (in depth) the workshop system of writing he worked under while getting his MFA at Columbia. Not to spoil it, but Moody's gripe with the workshop system (which resembles the critique mode used in studio MFA practice) is that it excludes and normalizes interesting work into a "corporate" product. He draws an interesting comparison to Hollywood test screenings in which audiences tell film makers how they can "fix" their work (another onerous part of too many crits...). In lieu of the standard, shop-talk workshop crit questions, Moody suggests a handful of alternatives ("What music would this story listen to?" "Will this story save any lives?") that put the risk back in reading and writing.
I mention this becuase it's always good to stick one's head up and realize the limits of one's discourse, especially when it is fiercely intense and concentrated as it tends to be here. Asking whether the work you bring to class might save any lives may seem a bizarre and high-bar for evaluating it, but it also sounds like a potentially useful way of recapturing relevance.