Dualism for the Dynamo

From time to time the virtues of the lecture system have been questioned sharply. The material in lectures could be covered much faster if it were mimeographed and read privately. And many lectures seem to have no value except as a convenient rehash of reading material, relieving students of the necessity of consulting their reading lists. If lectures have any utility it is when professors use them to express particular points of view forcefully, thus stimulating the sluggard mind of the undergraduate.

The expression of a point of view, however, raises major difficulties. Some subjects, such as natural science courses, are not readily adapted to the expression of a controversial viewpoint. In other fields, many professors, deeply immersed in the complexities of their specialties, feel that any particular orientation would distort history and disfigure art. Knowing all the brambles which invalidate any particular theoretical path, they search for a close approximation of scholarly objectivity. This seems important, not only to avoid spoonfeeding ovine undergraduates, but also because in a world of rapid fluctuation, the only truth is a relative one, the only value, one which is changing.

Scholastic "objectivity" then is important, and most history professors attempt to attain it by presenting a number of possible interpretations. While this approach is certainly a valid one, it is not always the most stimulating. The various possible interpretations tend to merge as one scheme of thought--there is really more danger of spoonfeeding, even if it is a spoonful of relativism.

The problem of presenting relative truths in a stimulating form is not a new one. Henry Adams in the 1870's faced it, and came up with an interesting suggestion--lectures given as a dialectic between two professors with a student question period. Through this balance of opposite views a social science, or possibly, a humanities course could present all the facts necessary for an "objective" approach, yet in a form which would command more than stenographic attention, compelling students to become fully aware of the issues at hand.

The double-lecturer system, of course, could not be used widely--a new associate professor obviously could not be hired for every history and social science course. In many courses and for many topics two points of view would be pointless, or, at least, unfruitful. But, in courses in which several viewpoints are possible and in which there are already assistants, a double-lecture system might be most effective. It would require a great deal of unwonted pre-class preparation for students to learn facts now contained in expository lectures, and which would be excluded from shorter debate-type lectures. In spite of this inordinate demand, however, dialectic lectures in some cases might prove an interesting and fruitful experiment. They might also give lectures some advantage over reading besides dramatic coloration, thus providing a new justification for the existence of the lecture system.