To the Editors of The Crimson:

In his guest editorial (The Crimson, Dec. 5, 1972), Mr. James Muller has attempted some thoughts on educational reform. A few of his more pontifical remarks lead me to believe that some of Mr. Muller's ideas might be just those barriers to learning he encouraged students to eliminate.

I am particularly repelled by his comment concerning lectures. Mr. Muller seems to assume that every lecture has an intrinsic logical thread which any mature student can discern even if the lecturer's delivery is unintelligible. Superficialities aside, Mr. Muller apparently contends that the proper role of the student is to listen but not to be heard and that of the teacher to discourse but not reply.

Communication and learning, however cannot occur unless the educational system contains feedback. Nothing is more deadening to student-teacher interaction than the lecture structure, especially if the lectures are lazily prepared and inarticulately imparted. The lecture format also does not encourage the development of the student as a self-teacher for it demands more passivity than activity and inhibits student-student interaction in class.

If students say lectures are dull, they probably have good reason. Many lectures are dull because they are burdened by their traditional function of information dissemination. Yet the printing press essentially rendered the traditional transcription of a professor's words obsolete, and modern technology--such as videotapes--has escalated the obsolescence. It is ironic that university teachers have been so sluggish to acknowledge these communication channels as resources to relieve them of boring educational burdens.

Certainly some lecturers are more scintillating than others, but by peddling lectures as the primary mode of learning, some so-called teachers convey distance from and disinterest in their courses and students. Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote that to lecture is "to instruct insolently and dogmatically." If Harvard students call for more personal education, it is because they have found this dictum out for themselves.

Michael Zeilik II

  Teaching Fellow in

  General Education