My friend Fowkes, tells a story of a class he took in 1930s, when books were short and expensive. On the first day the professor marched up to the blackboard, looked through his notes, cleared his throat, and began. Fowkes was the only student in the course. Once Fowkes fell ill and missed a class. When he returned, to Fowkes' s astonishment, the professor began to deliver not the next lecture in the sequence but the one after. Had he lectured to an empty hall in the absence of his only student? It was perfectly possible. Today, professors continue to lecture and students to listen much as they did. It' s time for us to abandon the lecture system and turn to methods that really work. Attending lectures is passive learning ,at least for inexperienced listeners. Active learning, in which students write essays or perform experiments and then have their work evaluated by an instructor, is far more beneficial for those who have not yet fully learned how to learn. Most students learn best by engaging in debate. They need small discussion classes that demand a joint effort of teacher and students rather than classes in which one person, however learned, expresses his or her own ideas. The lecture system harms professors as well. It reduces feedback to a minimum, so that the lecturer can neither judge how well students understand the material nor benefit from their questions or comments. Questions that require the speaker to clarify unclear points and comments that challenge inadequately constructed arguments are indispensable to scholarship. Without them, the liveliest mind becomes dull. If lectures make so little sense, why have they been allowed to continue? The truth is that lectures are easier on everyone than debates. Lectures give some students an opportunity to sit back and let the professor run the show. In a classroom where everyone contributes, students are less able to hide and professors have less room to show off how smart they are. Worse still, the lectures too frequently come at the wrong end of the students' educational careers -- during the first two years, when they most need close, even individual, instruction. If lecture classes were restricted to junior and senior undergraduates and to graduate students, who are more academically independent and more capable of working on their own, they would be far less destructive of students' interests and enthusiasms. After all ,students must learn to listen before they can listen to learn. What can we learn about the current lecture system?
Students take passive part in small discussion classes. The professors need more room to present their talents. Lectures are mainly intended for junior and senior students. It is far from beneficial for those academically inexperienced students.