To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Harvard College purports to be an outstanding exemplar of liberal education. It promises to be a place where an understanding of human ways is transmitted from teacher to student, which reason is honored and used to criticize convention and prejudice.

But this is not the view of Harvard College which I have gained from four undergraduate years and four more years spent as section-man, freshman proctor, and freshman adviser. My impression of Harvard College is that of a place ruled by convention and prejudice, not reason. Two aspects of the educational process are noteworthy: first, the content of the courses taught by the Philosophy Department, with which I was associated. Although philosophy is potentially one of the most important subjects in a liberal education, the philosophy courses at Harvard fall far short of promoting humanistic values to any important degree.

No one can question the scholarly ability and intelligence of the Harvard faculty; unfortunately, faculty members seem to consider it bad taste to apply that intelligence to their duties as at least part-time teachers of under-graduates. The faculty are expected to be the cultivators of reason, but the use of reason, but the use of reason is evident all too seldom in their teaching practices. The lecture system shows this most flagrantly.

The Lecture

Almost every Harvard lecture consists of the instructor orally transmitting a predetermined body of information to the students. The instructor comes with more or less elaborate notes, usually written out. For about 50 minutes he speaks from these notes, while students passively listen and take notes mentally or on paper. Only in a small course may students ask in a small course may students ask questions, and then only at the cost of taking time from the instructor. Much of what the instructor says is lost to the student, and the greater the amount of material which deserves to be noted, the less is the chance that the student will note it all. Furthermore, after the lecture the student normally for gets almost everything the lecturer has said, until and unless he crams for an exam, after which he probably forgets it again.

The lecture system was justified in the time of Aquinas, when in many cases the only way to learn the doctrines of the master was to sit at the master's feet. Since that time, Gutenberg has invented the printing press, and recently even faster means have been found for duplicating the written word. These developments have entirely deprived the lecture system of its raison d'etre.

I am not implying that it is undesirable to transmit information from lecturer to student. Presumably, the instructor has something significant to say-and if he doesn't, that is no fault of the system. Nor do I mean to suggest that personal contact between teacher and student is undesirable--indeed, I believe the more such contact, the better. But the combination of personal contact and transmission of information, in a oral lecture, frustrates the best purposes of both. The oral lecture is neither the best way to transmit information, nor the best way to use teacher-student contact.

Improvements

A far better way to transmit information is that of writing and duplication. Why can't a lecturer compose moderately extensive notes, have these duplicated, and give a copy to each student? Class meetings could then he used for other things. Such a procedure would transmit information much more effectively than the present paper-mouth-ear-pen-paper route. Furthermore. It would allow the lecturer to tranmit as much information as he desires, not being restricted, as now, to the amount he can orally present in two or three hours per week over the period of a semester.

Once class meetings are freed from the tyranny of oral lectures, the instructor will be able to find out what kind of discussion is best for each particular class. It would be unwise in structor will be able to find out what kind of discussion is best for each particular class. It would be unwise in most cases to use class meetings for answering questions by students (which tend to be uninformed and superficial) or for discussions initiated by students (which are generally pointless.) However--to give just a few examples--meetings might well be used for any of the following purposes: 1) making sure students understand important points in the lecture, 2) holding discussions on topics which the instructor thinks important, or 3) amplifying points in the reading which prove to be difficult for the student.

Some claim that oral lectures are uniquely valuable because they are dramatic. Supposedly, a lecturer can inspire enthusiasm for the information transmitted by giving form to his material and displaying enthusiasm himself. But I cannot recall even a single lecture in which dramatic value was achieved to an appreciable degree. And even if an oral lecture should have great dramatic value, this would not necessarily outweigh the values achieved by alternative procedures. Furthermore, I question the assumption that arousing enthusiasm in students, per se, really is a value. For if the student becomes enthusiastic simply by imitating the instructor, this does nothing to train him to reason his own way toward an understanding of the importance of the material.

Classroom methodology could also be improved by using questions-and-answers for the purpose of teaching, as well as testing. It is well-known that students often learn from answering questions on examinations, but hour exams and finals are scanty teaching instrument. Why not incorporate the asking of insightful questions into the regular procedure? Specifically, the instructor might regularly assign questions which deal with fundamental aspects of the course material and which are designed to stimulate insight, but which can be--and are required to be--answered in a small number of words, ranging perhaps from 25 to 150 (An example, concerning Plato's Republic: "What is the relation between Plato's Theory of Forms and the necessity for a class of Philosopher-rules as described by Plato?"). The question could be used as the basis for class discussion, after the students had a few days in which to think out their answers. Such a question-and-answer procedure would not only guide students to the important aspects of the course material; it would also make learning an active exercise--as opposed to passive receptivity, or to mere expression by the student of his possibly superficial opinions.

These improvements may all he instituted without affecting in any way the basic structure of the College. Additional improvements, of a much more radical kind, could certainly be suggested. The ideal situation would probably be to give all instruction individually or in small groups; yet economic restrictions will always preclude this. So formal courses will always be with us; but they need not always he poor.

Still, the faults of the formal courses remain. No matter how gallantly the faculty attack convention and prejudice in their academic fields of interest, most of them are quite content to let convention and prejudice determine the way in which they conduct their own courses.