A meeting about writing

I went to a meeting about teaching writing yesterday at the university and had a moment of dismay. Now, I don't want to get in trouble by giving the false impression that it was a bad meeting. I learned some good things and the people there were delightful. However, the moment of dismay came when the work of a contest winner was presented as a good example of excellent writing in personal narrative. It was awful. No, it was gosh-awful. It was a string of superlative adverbs and adjectives that was more an exercise in self-indulgence than crisp, clear narrative. What dismayed me even more than that piece was that several of the writing teachers gushed over over how wonderful it was, yet, later in the meeting when another personal narrative was read that sparkled with clarity and excellent word choice, only one person praised it. If teachers of writing can't tell the difference between self-indulgent, purple prose and truly excellent writing, how are they going to teach their students how to write?