The lecture has become one of the most despised of educational tools. Obsessed with the mania of group dynamics, educators have vilified the lecture for boring the student, for wasting his time, for separating him from his instructor, and even for retarding his ability to think.

Yet the lecture system remains firmly entrenched as the chief method of teaching at Harvard. Most lower-level courses are taught in some combination of lectures and sections, and the greater number of upper-level courses at the college are taught entirely by lecture.

Believers in the status quo often consider this sufficient reason for retaining the system. Clinging to a method which is hoary with tradition, they point out that the great names in the University's past have also in large part been its great lecturers.

But this argument is essentially illogical, for it ignores the fact that the great men would probably have been great under any system. The real problem concerns the lecture as a method of instruction, and now that the University has embarked on the greatest educational drive in history, it seems appropriate to reassess the lecture's role in the learning process.

Anyone who advocates abolishing the lecture system might change his mind if he asked himself two simple questions: "Who is the greatest lecturer I have ever heard?" and "Would I want him to be available to a greater or to a smaller number of students?"

For it is one of the undeniable virtues of the lecture system that it makes the great minds of the University available to a large number of students. It would, of course, be fine if each student could meet with a distinguished professor in a small group, but it seems obvious that such a man could not possibly handle the 200 students he now lectures to in groups of ten each. He simply would not have the time.

In the Humanities and the Social Sciences, this "availability of the great mind" is especially important. For in these two areas the aim of the ideal lecture is not so much to cover a certain amount of material as to line up the problems in the field and get the student to understand how one goes about dealing with these problems.

In this sense the lecture is an avenue into the speaker's mind. It gives his listeners an opportunity to see how he handles his material, and how his mind works. It is different than a book, which is a finished product and has the answers set down, for in a lecture the speaker can treat his subject as if it is heading toward being definite, while at the same time he can explain the difficulties and problems which are still unsolved.

This insight into the speakers mind is regarded as one of the real contributions of the lecture system by Harold C. Martin, Director of General Education A. "One thing you can't duplicate," he says, "is the intelligence of the lecturer. Large numbers of students are introduced to a subtle mind working in a fashion never before met. They encounter kinds of human activity they never dreamed existed."

Lack of Thinking?

But the proponents of small groups have seized upon this aspect of the lecture system as an evil thing. Although they feel it is good for the student to encounter a subtle mind, they contend that under the lecture system he becomes so concerned with what the subtle mind is thinking that he neglects to do any thinking himself. They argue that the lecture system makes the student merely a passive blotting paper who absorbs the speaker's thoughts, rather than a creature who thinks actively for himself.

In its polemical issue of last spring, I.e. had this to say about Harvard lectures: "The most frustrating thing about lectures at Harvard is the impossibility of disagreement or questioning. One must suppress one's doubts in order to hear and copy down; if one thinks about one's questions one loses track of the babble, and when it is over one has the sense of having missed something, though undoubtedly one hasn't. Not only does one not learn from lectures, one also loses the ability or the urge to ask questions."

The difficulty in countering this argument lies in the fact that there is a good deal of truth in it. One defect of the lecture system does lie in the relative passivity of the student. It is one thing to follow a lecture carefully, concurring step by step in the argument, but it is obviously quite another thing to assume the role of the lecturer himself and carry through the argument on one's own.

In defense of the lecture system, however, it might simply be pointed out that there is no virtue in mere activity, and that it is often profitable to sit at the feet of a greater than to pursue one's own confused through.

It might also be pointed out that for some people lectures can be a very active and experience, even more so than a small meeting. William G. Perry, Jr., Director of Bureau of Study Council, feels that something who are inhibited in small groups by the stand need to keep on their guard and the part of the conversation, are able to in a lecture and become very involved and emotional. They manage to with the speaker and get an empathic feel that he is going.