Communication

(The Crimson invites all men in the University to submit signed communications of imely interest. It assumes no responsibility, however, for sentiments expressed under this head and reserves the right to exclude any whose publication would be palpably inappropriate.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

I would like to bring to the attention of CRIMSON readers the following excerpt from an article in the "New Statesman" (Liberal Labor Weekly), entitled "Are lectures worth while?";

"The older and newer universities alike are victims of the lecturing habit. Education is conceived mainly as a process of sending students to attend as many lectures as possible, and, while some attempt is made to supply by individual and group tuition the deficiencies of the lecture method, there can be no doubt that the student is expected to acquire his education mainly by the assimilation of lectures. He does not, and cannot in fact, do this, for, although the lecture has its proper place in the scheme of education, it is wholly unsuited to serve as the main instrument.

"The substance of the majority of the lectures which are given could be got by the student far better and in far less time from books which are readily available, and most lecturers, in attempting to 'cover the ground' in a given number of lectures, greatly overtax the capacity of their students by assimilating by ear long chains of fact and argument. There is a case for special lectures given by the expert for the purpose of expounding and testing a new discovery; there is a case for the popular lecture as a means of arousing attention; but there is no case, we believe, for the lecture, as ordinarily conceived, as a regular and systematic method of university education."

The application of this, though essentially English, need not be entirely so. E. A. BARRELL, JR. '23   December 12, 1922.