A SPUR FOR THE LECTURE SYSTEM

The course lecture, in spite of upstart rivals in the tutorial system and in the reading periods, remains the central medium of university instruction. It is, accordingly essential that everything be done to counteract the inherent tendency of mass lectures to degenerate into a dull substitute for student reading. One valuable pedagogical instrument of which too little use is made is the class discussion.

That lecture courses need the added stimulus of class discussions there can be little doubt. In some courses the student's interest is systematically deadened by an atavistic throwback to the days before printing when lectures necessarily fulfilled the functions of text-books. Even when professors are careful to present something more than standard text-book material, their courses are likely to lack vitality. There is an inevitable tendency toward that familiar process, the transfer of information from the teacher's to the student's notebook without passing through the head of either. The greatest influence on that tendency is, of course, the personality of the instructor, but too many have neglected the most effective stimulating tool available, class discussion.

Nothing, of course, could be more futile than class discussions at their worst. The average section meeting, too often led by an inexperienced man, almost invariably ploughs laboriously and ineffectually in a circular direction through a morass of conflicting, ill-considered, irrelevant opinions. The failure of section meetings need, however, be no criterion of the probable success of class discussions; it does stand as a warning. To avoid fruitless expression of opinion on everything from communism to room rents in the Houses, the topic for discussion should be strictly defined. It should if possible be based on the study of an assigned text, short enough to be thoroughly considered before the class meeting.

It should be the goal of these meetings to raise questions on the underlying ideas involved in the course. For only when the basic ideas of a subject are made real to the student can he appreciate the meaning of the mass of information which he is expected to absorb. If the substance of lectures answers questions already in the student's mind, he will be mentally alive, and not passively receptive. It is, accordingly, a prime function of an instructor to raise pertinent questions about his field. As a means to that end nothing could be more effective than rightly organized discussion at weekly or biweekly meetings.