THE ROLE OF THE LECTURE

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am grateful to James Muller (The Crimson, Dec. 5, 1972) for beginning and to Michael Zeilik II (The Crimson, Dec. 12, 1972) for continuing, a discussion of educational reform and the role of the lecture. The research on higher education with which I am familiar indicates that there is no all-purpose method of learning, which suits every student and faculty's member. Even apart from financial and logistic considerations, we need to be more open-minded than many people presently are concerning what lectures can contribute for which neither Gutenberg nor McLuhan is a ready substitute. Students can respond actively or passively: participating vicariously in the lecturer's own efforts, or sitting back as many students are wont to do, watching the performance, and providing little feedback to themselves, let alone the lecturer.

I have experimented with a variety of formats for combining lectures with discussions in the General Education course I direct. Sometimes panel discussions with Teaching Fellows will spark further discussion from undergraduates. Frequently by lecturing at an hour when the hall is not taken lot the subsequent hour, I have encouraged students to stay on to take part in a more active discussion; commonly, those who take the trouble to speak on such occasions found it feasible to lead a discussion among several hundred students. But for this to happen requires that students come with a sufficient sense of engagement so that they listen in an active way, both to each other and to the more formal lecture. Ideology such as Michael Zeilik expresses makes it difficult for many students to learn to learn in settings they regard as less than optional and misses the point that it is possible although difficult to achieve a sense of intimacy in a fairly larger group and only a pretense of it in a very small one.

Lecture discussions of the sort I am describing are difficult to manage What is discouraging is when the verdict of boredom is taken as a given--as it is in many discussions of educational reform--without further scrutiny. Students often insist that having to listen to each other and to discussion is even more boring than to listen to a senior faculty member. The statement I am bored," is a verdict on the self as well as on the other I suggests that there is nothing in the environment which might evoke one's intense attention, including the terms that consumerism can sometimes take among those who are apt to be its critics in the society at large. David Riesman '31 Henry Ford II Prof. of Social Sciences