This week's Academic Advisor is an excerpt from Kenneth Minogue's The Concept of a University.

In the excerpt, the author suggests the purpose of lecturers in the college classroom is to make the topic more 'vivid' to the listener, thus encouraging further exploration and independent pursuits. Do you agree with the author? Do your experiences validate his position?

I agree in part with the author's argument.
I believe that lectures should bring the subject matter to "life," but then the danger is that the lecture can end up being a mere display of passion, mere rhetoric without substantial philosophical content. The other downside that I find to lectures is their one-sidedness. The student's input is minimized in comparison to a class where students are involved in conversation, where they can bring up ideas, questions; we challenge each other in addition to the professor's questions, who expects an answer from us. This I have personally found to be the most rewarding form of learning.

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Having had numerous classes now (I am in my third year), I believe that (if size allows it) a discussion style class is better. I recently took a class on Experiences of War and it was the best class I have taken as we had some great discussions in class. Where a lecture is more necessary would be in 100 and 200 level classes, where a majority of students are going to be just starting their college experience and still need lectures to ease the transition. With that said, the lecturer needs to be passionate about their subject and deliver it in an exciting fashion so as not to bore the students and risk turning them off from the subject. Those with monotone voices run the risk of putting their students to sleep, especially in the winter time right after lunch in a warm building when you are prone to drowsiness. While I understand that discussion style classes are not as common at the large schools because of numbers, that is where having strong lecturers is essential.

While in part I agree that university lectures play a valid role in exciting the student to acquire additional knowledge, I disagree with the premise that they must be "vivid" to do so. Aside from the problematic associations and nuance associated with the word "vivid" and a really clear exposition of what that means, there is the more important problem that the lecture or discourse as conceived of in the classical world was more then a rhetorical device designed to cause a student to "read more." Rather, as I see it, all of Plato's renderings of Socrates discourses are intended to be a direct attempt on the part of Socrates to explore the nature of a specific subject and gauge its truth or validity.

Now, there are two aspects to the notion of discourse that I find relevant to the modern academic setting. First, in order for a lecture to inspire students there should be some interactive component; that is students ought to be encouraged to participate in an exposition; through the Socratic method of questioning, answering, refutation and continued discussion. Second recognition that students, by and large, educate themselves, not just through reading but also through experiencing life. Without direct experience of life as it is lived by those outside the hallowed halls of academia, I think there is going to be something missing from a students education.

I think Plutarch's maxim that education is not the "filling up the empty vessel of a student's mind" rather that it is a "fire to be kindled," reflects the dichotomy of the modern university system. In order to be effective, a modern professor may take weeks or even months discussing the basic facts about a subject, rather then offering true discourse, and in order for undergrads who take humanities classes- by and large as electives- this approach works. It makes the university money and keeps everything easy enough for students to comprehend in a formulaic enough way to know how to fill in a dot on a computerized test sheet.

On the other hand, the real question should be, does this kind of education motivate students to understanding something more profound about the understanding of history or their world. Something deeper then the ability to rattle off "1066 battle of Hastings" or other trite lists of battles and occurrences.

Not that these lists are not important. They are. The way I see it, it is the rote memorization of names, dates, facts, compositions in history that give rise to a broader understanding of historical processes. This, however, comes much later in the student’s education.

If we were to divide the process into phases, this would surely be phase I, identification and acquisition of data. The second phase, would be interpretation.

In this phase discourse is productive, the Socratic method can and should be employed, and the students should be asked for to form opinion and speculate, to substantiate their thoughts, use primary data to justify their assumptions; submit original research and draw conclusions.



In this sense, being "vivid"- as opposed to being a monotone speaker and hence boring- has very little to do with it, and an entertaining lecture may be a discussion about the nature of modern warfare, listening quietly to a new interpretation of classical subjects, a broader understanding of a theoretical concept- any and all of these should be encouraged. One man’s boring may be another’s first exposure to a real challenge.

At the same time, the role of discourse should be used when appropriate. I think society places an interest in the faculty at a university to have the discretion to know when to use discourse and when not to. Not to sound cynical, but I am sure that after the umpteenth lecture on "materialism, race gender and status" by many a post-modernist, society would be discouraged. I see the increasing reliance on dispensation of knowledge without question as problematic on both sides of the political isle. In the university that largely tends to be from the left, but not exclusively. Rational and free discourse should lead to disagreements and ultimately some kind of synthesis. If it takes being "vivid" to make reawaken students desire to learn, then I say try it, see if it works.

Maybe the pop culture that surrounds students has conditioned them to respond only to the things they look flashy or sexy.... but without the open discourse, rational inquiry and free debate that is ultimately the foundation of learning it may do more harm then good. It may indeed be all show, no substance.

My own experience as a student suggests that most of the learning that takes place in a university setting falls into one of these two categories- and as anachronistic as I am- I always prefer the debate and discourse of the classical education. I think that is prima fascia the best way to learn. Second, I find that as a student you need to be self-reliant to really read and interpret complex literature on your own. And while the university provides a setting to read, it does not offer an accurate portrait of the travails and maturity needed in adult life. Any real education that does not encourage you to explore your world, and to learn as much as you can on your own, probably will not be helpful. I think the most important thing for students is to work their own mind around a problem and see it in ways that may be very different from a prevailing point of view. I find that the mental dexterity to do that comes more from living and experiencing the world, its hardships, disappointments, triumphs and the maturity that comes along with that, then from simply reading and regurgitating what someone else argues.

Vivid lectures may entertain, and may be provocative, but I would argue that if you are interested in learning and knowledge, and not raw material acquisition, then any learning whether reading, listening or debating might be deemed “vivid.” That said, veryone knows a boring lecture when they hear it. Right?

To me learning should be divided into at least two phases, the acquisition of data and its interpretation, and that if you really want to learn anything ultimately you have to teach yourself through the trial and error and rigors of life. Your work should be open to debate, questions critical inquiry. A point that many people, often forget when we talk about something as ethereal as the role of a “vivid” education in the modern university, is that men like Socrates, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Ovid, Caesar, Thucydides, and others wrote largely from the point of view that is intimately connected with their direct experience of pre-industrial life, work, war, faith and all the attendant hardships those things bring to bear on daily life. That is what makes their work so exciting and challenging. As Victor Hanson wrote somewhere, “One would do well to remember that Socrates once stood behind a shield at Delium and killed another human being.” The way I see it, there can be no excitement in education without these elements. In other words do not sacrifice the intellectual pursuit of a truth, for even a finely crafted image of it.

Brian, I think you made some very good points. In my first post, I pointed out the danger of lectures becoming mere rhetorical displays. Such a danger became clearer to me after reading Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University when he mentions in the section entitled Discipline of Mind how back then, in the nineteenth century, the Mechanic's Institutes of the UK gave startling lectures, full of oratorical skill, but empty of substance. Allow me to quote some of his ideas on lectures and the reciprocal roles of teacher and student as I find these to be "gold mines" from which we can learn:
"A man may hear a thousand lectures, and read a thousand volumes, and be at the end of he process very much where he was, as regards knowledge. Something more than merely admitting it in a negative way into the mind is necessary, if it is to remain there. It must not be passively received, but actually and actively entered into, embraced, mastered" (p.368).
The lecturer "tells you a thing, and he asks you to repeat it after him. He questions you, he examines you, he will not let you go till he has proof, not only that you have heard, but that you know" (p.368).
"I should not rely on sudden, startling effects, but on the slow, silent, penetrating, overpowering effects of patience, steadiness, routine, and perseverance" (p.372).
The object of lecturing is to teach, and not just to teach anything, but to teach the truth. The teacher has to appeal both to the heart and the mind.

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