lecture
I recently heard someone say that the lecture is an outmoded form of communication. No-one, said the speaker confidently, wants to sit and listen to someone talk for forty five minutes. We have newer, better ways of teaching now – people need interaction in order to learn, and no-one can concentrate for more than ten mintues.
Well, I’ve heard some pretty bad forty-five minute sermons in my time, and I’ve heard both good and bad lectures. But does the lecture continue to be a good format, or is it outmoded?
In the ideal world a lecturer will deliver some well-thought out, properly researched ideas and material in such a way that the listener will be informed, but also intrigued and perhaps inspired. Of course it doesn’t allow for dialogue, disagreement, conversation, or space to ponder. It doesn’t allow for meditation, savouring the moment, or multiple options for the direction of the information. Nevertheless, I think the world would be a poorer place without it. I would hate to see good lectures abandoned (and in order to have good ones you have to put up with the mediochre – it’s a rule of life). Where else would we access, live, the distilled thought of someone really worth listening to? Where else would we get behind the text to see the light in their eyes?
I can recall the grey, wearisome mists of hundreds of useful but not fascinating lectures where I mopped up large consignments of information I needed. Yes, even rather dull lectures have their place; as an undergraduate I used to reckon an hour spent listening to one functional lecture could not only save you several hours in the library but maximise the usefulness of the hours you did spend there. But I’ve also attended lectures that I can still remember with crystal clarity – lectures that not only disseminated information, but offered a point of view, a narrative that threaded the ideas together. Fifteen years ago I heard Nicholas Lash talking about cultural collapse and theological continuity, and it changed the way I thought about theology forever. I remember the mental gymnastics required to keep up with John Millbank threading together the thought of Schleiermacher, Coleridge and Vico all in one lecture. And the theological ground shifting under my feet listening to Janet Soskice on the impact of the names of God, including why a feminist might still want to call God “father”.
The lecture is not dead. I’m sure of it. And as for not being able to concentrate, well… I’ll add more tomorrow.
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Maggi has kept a blog since September 2003, writing about theology and faith, the arts and literature, and a little about life and random nonsense...
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just musing aloud here, and this is maybe a bit tangential, but as someone who’s confidently proclaimed that sermons are dead in the past [and has since decided to backtrack a little way from that position!] i’m wondering whether there’s a difference between a sermon and a lecture? and if so, what is it? what do you reckon?
I find myself in the rather dubious position of regarding most sermons as dull and listless affairs, yet lectures as fascinating and extremely stimulating and helpful. I suspect it probably goes with experiences – most of my time has been in a little Methodist backwater (with all due respect to my lifelong chapel and circuit), with only a few talks by people of Rowan William’s and Pete Ward’s calibre elsewhere to liven things up.
I love good lectures, good sermons and good dialogue. I’m hungry to hear new ideas or new dimensions of old ideas in any form that they come. As long as the method delivers the material in an understandable way and makes it clear why it’s important, then I’m happy. The lecture is not dead for me at least.
do you have any MP3s of your lectures ?
post one up ! I enjoyed our conversation the last time we hung out with Jason Clark. And I’ll miss your plenary in Kentucky.
Good lectures are very good, like a fine article but with personality. But good lectures are not occasions to pass on information to average students – they are opportunities for fine minds to engage…
As a teaching medium the lecture should only be the icing on the cake, the cake itself needs mixing with more interaction.
I feel a shiver of trepidation whenever this subject comes up, as I’m by vocation both a preacher and a lecturer. While I fully endorse innovation in pedagogy, and experiment with various alternative approaches, the gravitational force of lecturing always brings me back. I haven’t yet found the tactic that engages the benefits of constructivist pedagogy with the benefits of drawing on my full capacity as a teacher.
I’ll keep trying — but until I hit that hereunto-hidden teaching maneuver, I’ll also keep lecturing.
Hi
I’m going to give a lecture tomorrow!
So I do see a space for lectures
It’s just that I don’t see them as the core of learning, or being a disciple./ They have a part to play like the chocolate bar I’v just eaten
but theyshouldn’t be the norm
the danger is that they encourage subject-object relations, where the lecturer is the active subject determining what is to be learned, how it’s to be learned and when it’s to be learned. THe learner is rendered passive, I just don’t think that that goes to create active discipleship
Please 4give bad spilling, must dash
(if for no other reason that I’ve got a whole PhD to offer on this subject, and I assure you .. you don’t want to hear it!
In smaller settings a kind of interactive but structured question-answer session that assumes no prior knowledge can sometimes provide a good compromise between seminar & lecture. The spontaneous discussion is here to stay, but other settings are needed for where people (experts) have prior research which they need time to explain.