August 05, 2007

THE method of lecturing has not been challenged throughout the world, albeit there is some stress on activity-oriented teaching. Teachers continue to lecture and students continue to jot down notes much as they did in the thirteenth century, when books were so scarce and expensive that only a few students could afford them. Some educationists believe that the time has come to abandon the lecturing system – seen as boring by teachers and students — and turn to some other effective methods.

The problem with lectures is that listening intelligently can prove really difficult. Reading the same material in a textbook is a more efficient way to learn because students can proceed as slowly as they need until the subject matter is made clear to them. People can listen at a rate of 400 to 600 words a minute while a professor talks at a third of that speed. The time lag between speech and comprehension leads to difficulties. Watching television has, to a great extent, sabotaged the faculty of attentively listening to a thoughtful lecture. Besides this, the first law of motion applies to a professor i.e. he would continue lecturing, oblivious of time till he stops for a break. It may be a loud jingling of the bell or a reminder from the students that time is up.

The availability of text books has motivated teachers to abandon lecture method and take other extreme measures like teaching from the text books, as in reading and explaining things word for word. This is incorrect practice. Even the text books in languages like English, Urdu and Sindhi should not be taught, reading line by line and explaining except at the primary level. The teachers take to text books in science and social studies subjects and start explaining line by line from them at the secondary and higher secondary levels, which is wrong. The topics in these subjects can be explained, for instance, by using a black board/soft board. This need not be seen as a lecture method. Teaching should imbibe activity-oriented methods along with the lecture one. At the college and university levels, a discussion should follow the lecture, or the lecture and discussion should go hand in hand.

Attending lectures passively on the part of students is not desirable in the context of real learning. Active learning can be quite useful; students solve exercises, write essays or answer questions on topics given by the teacher and finally the same is evaluated and assessed within the class which can prove to be beneficial.

Students need to question their professors and have their ideas taken seriously. The teachers should liberally allow the students to ask questions in order to allow free inquiry into knowledge. Some teachers get annoyed if their students ask any question or give their opinion which is contrary to what the teacher has given. This tendency kills creativity and originality in students. This also amounts to an appalling contempt of scholarship. Students ought to be encouraged to develop their analytical skills and think intelligently and creatively, putting an end to their passivity. They are likely to learn best by engaging themselves in frequent and heated debate, not by scribbling down a professor’s summary of complicated issues.

The lectures may equally be harmful to teachers, insulating them from even the beginner’s naïve question which, if entertained, could result in a fruitful line of thought. An exclusive dependence on lectures minimises feedback from students as the teacher may not know what difficulties students are facing. He/she is oblivious of the fact whether his students have understood him or not. This show the teacher’s lack of concern and his/her non-committal attitude. Oliver Gold Smith, in his poem, ‘The Village School Master,’ enumerates two outstanding qualities of a teacher. Firstly, he knows more than the students and secondly, he feels like crying if his students fail to understand him. The commitment and the concern on the part of the teachers are quite essential without which any learning can take place.

To deliver a fairly consistent lecture is not that easy, particularly at college and university levels. At the latter level, I came across two teachers who were diametrically opposite to each other as far as delivering the lecture was concerned. They were both really learned persons: one was slovenly in his attire, informal, helpful, scholarly person with such a bright memory that he could quote passages after passages, highly analytical and intellectually a giant, and a writer par excellence both in English and Urdu literature. He was a burning enthusiast for literature, art and all products of man’s creative genius. As students we were all dazzled by his enthusiasm; he held forth with humour and intelligence on Micawber, Don Quixote, Uncle Toby, Hamlet, Hogarth, Titan, Plato, and Aristophanes. One thing would lead him so consistently to another till the clock would sadly tell us that the hour was over.

The other teacher meanwhile was an equally learned person, but was more scholastic rather than scholarly. He talked about every thing but his talk was consistently inconsistent and his method of teaching was so unique that it didn’t touch the subject!

A student’s brain shouldn’t be considered a cold-storage chamber; instead it should be seen as a power-house. The teacher should possess imagination and sympathy in order to light up students’ humour, their essential humanity, their inalienable hunger for beauty and their inborn desire to create beauty for themselves. This, in fact, is the final business of education to educe. Students need energy, imagination and commitment from teachers besides their own enthusiasm. Teachers can pretend to teach by lecturing just as students can pretend to learn by attending lectures, with none of them wiser at the end of the process.

The learning process comes to a stand-still if it is solely dependent on lectures in the traditional sense. There can hardly be a lecture on mathematics, physics and chemistry. In these subjects, the concepts have to be made clear by taking recourse to the blackboard and lucidly explaining things. There is absolutely no need to read from the book as far as these subjects are concerned. In the 1950s and late 1960s, students were not supposed to bring their books on these subjects into class and as such students’ school bags were much lighter then.

Student-centered education, making an allowance for students to learn freely on their own initiative, in accordance with their natural tendencies, involving themselves in group discussion, projects, field trips, seminar-like activities, would grant a new lease of life to them and we would be able to produce better educated individuals. However, this does not absolve the teacher of his/her duties of providing a beacon of light to students. It is a teacher’s responsibility to fit a child into his/her environment so that he/she may live wisely.

Rousseau’s Emile, an imaginary child, was not furnished with knowledge – bare facts, but taught the method to learn. To John Locke, the purpose of education was to furnish the child’s mind with that freedom and that disposition to enable him to attain any part of knowledge which he shall apply himself. The child should take the whole world for his province as Francis Bacon suggests.

If we aim at educating the whole child, we must educate him/her for a positive change: his/her opinions must be fluid, but his/her principles ought to be firm and it must be teacher’s endeavor to enhance the elasticity of the former and the strength of the latter.

The traditional lecture, of late, has been camouflaged by multi-media and overhead projectors behind which a teacher takes refuge, because the traditional lecture requires a felicity in expression and a fairly vast knowledge of the subject. As such it is believed that the traditional lecture(s) given by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and under the shade of a tree and then onwards formalised a way of teaching. Methods are hard to teach, but the methods adopted by born teachers and educationists can be profitably studied and used. The purpose of education is to defeat the discordant elements both in the teacher and in the student so that order rather than anarchy may prevail in our society.

The writer is a former Dean and faculty member of the University of Sindh