Are Lectures a Waste of Time?
Efficient Educating
WITH MORE THAN 50 YEARS' experience as a teacher and university administrator, I find Professor Ron Green's statement, "The hour or two spent with students in class is too precious to waste on lectures" ["Syllabus," Winter], to be stuff and nonsense. It reflects the thinking of many if not most younger college faculty members, who are too busy on so-called research, demanded by today's "publish-or-perish" institutional policies, to take the time to develop truly memorable lectures.
Classes largely devoted to student discussion, except at advanced levels, are often a pooling of ignorance, not opening and expanding of minds. Lecturing is a preferred way of teaching, especially introductory and interdisciplinary courses. In addition, its major advantage is the number of students it can reach. Professor Green is a teacher not to be missed, we are told; if he teaches three oneyear courses of 25 students each, he reaches 75 students a year, and potentially 300 of Dartmouth's 4,000 students. In my day at Dartmouth, several professors taught 300 students in one class, as in the Shakespeare class taught by the brilliant Brooks Henderson. Ten years out of college, my classmates voted him the professor they remembered most.
Out of this environment came a class of 500 graduates whose subsequent record was probably superior, percentage-wise, to that of any succeeding class. I would hesitate to ar- gue that the success of the class of 1930 was due to their having sat under a number of inspiring lecturers, but I would argue that having done so, they were not wasting their time, as Professor Green so arrogantly asserts.
Kingston, Rhode Island
Professor Green Replies:
With 24 years of Teaching experience at Dartmouth and more gray in my beard than I like to admit, I'm flattered to think that President Horn regards me as a spokesman for "younger college faculty members." His letter is a ringing defense of the lecture-method, but he needn't fear. The lecture is alive and well at Dartmouth. In the Religion Department alone, lecture courses predominate. Every year, I lecture to between 100 and 200 students in our very popular introductory religion course.
Nevertheless, I stand by my assertion that there are better uses of classroom time. Even at its best, a lecture is a passive experience for students. In contrast, a course utilizing a Socratic approach or the case method forces students to develop and defend their position before the instructor and their peers. President Horn misses this because he confuses these carefully structured approaches with free wheeling "discussion. Any of the fine teachers at the Tuck School who rely on the case method will tell you how different this approach is from mere discussion and how demanding it is on both students and professors.
Rather than our arguing about this in print, President Horn might attend one of my classes. However, if he chooses to speak up, he should be forewarned: his remarks must be informed by the reading and his "grade" will partly depend on the quality of his class participation.
Speaking to the Audience
IWAS PLEASED TO READ JAY Heinrichs's essay, "For the Sake of Argument." From two speech courses at Dartmouth, Informative Speaking and Public Advocacy, I gained much needed confidence and skill in public speaking. I learned practical lessons which are useful to me every day in biology graduate school. But it was fan to be reminded of the history and theories of rhetoric. Hopefully this will spark some academic interest in readers who haven't been introduced to the idea of audience-centered communication. Thanks for the informative and entertaining piece.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
IF JAY HEINRICHS WOULD SPEND less time researching rhetoric, its classical uses and applicability in today's world, and put out a magazine that recognizes that many older, experienced alumni aren't rubes, Dartmouth's future would be signally improved.
The use of words like epanalepsis, anadiplosis, chiasmus, antisthecon, proparalepsis, epanaphora, pereklasis, paradiegesis, and antimetabole may show the literary scholarship of the author, but do little but confuse his readers. And of course make them feel inadequate, the apparent purpose of the article.
I may be nitpicking about these "obesities" in rhetoric to which attention is called, but certainly Mr. Heinrichs doesn't expect many Dartmouth alumni to regard the passage on page 29 of the February issue as an important historical message. One has to understand it first! However, this is only the reaction of a former romance language major at Dartmouth for the sake of argument.
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
NO ONE WHO FOLLOWED THE Presidential campaign would dispute the thesis that reason and rhetoric are not features of modern political debate. In its stead we have been subjected to Shakespeare's "damnable iteration." I kept hearing "trickle down" until I thought my last meal would trickle up.
But it is of interest to note that even in the prime of Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, and Stephen Douglas there were those who did not believe persuasive oratory was the most effective weapon in a political battle. Wendell Phillips, a Boston abolitionist (and from his treatment of our most distinguished alumnus surely a Harvard man) declared, "The great mass of the people can never be made to stay and argue a long question. They must be made to feel it through the hides of their idols. It is on this principle that every reform must take for its text the mistakes of great men. God gives us great scoundrels for texts to anti-slavery sermons. See to it when nature has provided you a monster like Webster that you exhibit him himself a whole menagerie throughout the country. We will gibbet the name of every apostate so black and high that his children's children will blush to bear it."
Webster's crime was urging a compromise with slavery to preserve the Union. His motives were impugned and William Lloyd Garrison called it "a Satanic speech."
The tactic, of course, is as old as politics. Wendell Phillips was merely its most unabashed advocate. We have always tended to identify ideology with morality. Until the appearance of Anita Hill, the Clarence Thomas hearing concentrated on his Constitutional philosophy insisting that he must have discussed Roe vs. Wade. But once Miss Hill began to testify his legal philosophy became irrelevant. No one bothered to ask the women whose title was "legal advisor" whether they ever discussed the law. Scandalous conduct was all that mattered.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Myopia Toward ROTC
DARTMOUTH HAS PREPARED AN ultimatum to the military that, unless die ban on homosexuals is eliminated, ROTC will be banished from the campus. This ultimatum has been delayed pending implementation of President Clinton's policy, but it nevertheless warrants discussion.
As students we learned to fudge the merit of an institution based, not upon its individual components, but upon the synthesis of those components and the resultant whole. As alumni, we are implored to support and contribute to the College based on its overall contribution to society, not our individual political agendas. We may not personally agree with the College's approach to women or Native Americans or blacks or white males. Yet we support Dartmouth because we recognize its overarching contribution to society.
Much the same can be said about the military. One can make an argument for the necessity and value of the military, citing the elimination of slavery, the defeat of Hitler, and the relief of Somalia and Bosnia. Moreover, the military has been at the forefront of U.S. racial integration since the early 1950s, and it is making strong headway toward integrating women.
Yet, at a time when there is a marked dearth of Ivy-group representation in the officer corps, Dartmouth has chosen to withdraw ROTC support based on the single issue of homosexuality. Has the College myopically focused on one issue at the expense of the big pictare? Is it a convenient excuse for the College to drop a middle-class institution of waning political fashion? Could someone please help me understand this?
WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA
Correct Giving
INOTE THAT THE ERA OF Political Correctness has now triumphed on the campus in the College's divestiture of its investment in Hydro Quebec as reported in the February issue ("The Campus Takes a Crack at Dartmouth's Portfolio").
It appears that the next target of "correctness," as intimated by the author, will be divestiture from "morally incorrect ventures" such as "despoilers of the environment and in military contractors." While all of us may be despoilers to some extent or another, a certain percentage of Dartmouth's alumni/alumnae (note the correctness), albeit a small percentage, find that they have spent their years since leaving Hanover as officers serving in the military. The abbreviation in the Alumni Directory "MlLl" would indicate that at one time certain of the alumni/alumnae thought such service to be an honorable profession. Our income came in return for that service, provided a roof for us, food on the table, educated our children, and now provides for us some respectability in our retirement.
If it is to be morally incorrect for the College to garner an income from its holdings in military contractors, logic would follow that it would also be as equally inappropriate to accept contributions to the annual fund drive conducted by the College from those whose income was derived from military resources.
I trust that the Alumni Association will inform those listed in the Directory as "MILI" when their contribution, however small, will no longer be morally accepted.
NEW LONDON, NEW HAMPSHIRE
De Facto Segregation
I READ WITH SKEPTICISM THE Accounts of the works of the Committee on Diversity and Community at Dartmouth. Its protestations fly in the face of the de facto segregation of African-American Dartmouth students at Cutter Hall. It's sad to reflect upon the struggles of the post-WW II era respecting the fraternities at the College and the efforts of so many to integrate the membership for all Dartmouth students, and then compare the College's condemnation of de facto residential segregation today. That's progress?
SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA
Playing God
I HAVE NO DESIRE TO ARGUE WITH Lori Ann Daigle '85 ("Letters," March) on the abortion issue; those who acknowledge themselves privy to the Creator's will and purposes have thereby preempted the outcome of the discussion. I must, however, express dismay that someone who was afforded the opportunity of a firstrate education should evince so flagrant a disregard for elementary logic.
To posit that it is "His job" "to decide when and where life will be allowed" is to indulge in an anthropomorphism so common as to be almost excusable. To follow this by stating that "intelligent, free-willed women" make their "important reproductive decisions...before conception" clearly reassigns the choice. It is either risible naive self-contradiction or a presumably inadvertent self-deification.
Indeed, as Ms. Daigle observes in closing, "it is dangerous to play God."
FOSTER, RHODE ISLAND
APROPOS? PERHAPS THE KOOP Institute could give a course to Dartmouth Medical Students on firearms defense with special emphasis on how not to be shot in the back. The two recent correspondents of pro-life persuasion may not wish to be instructors.
SONOMA, CALIFORNIA
Deke's Sad End
I FIND IT IRONIC AND PERHAPS prophetic that AKE was chosen as the graphic to accompany Ross Nova's piece on fraternity rush in the Winter issue ["Rush Takes Its Time"]. Ironic because the Deke house has been a West Wheelock Street parking lot for many years and prophetic because perhaps those fraternities that still exist may follow suit.
I recall when our house was demolished and my strong feeling that either the College or the town of Hanover orchestrated the whole sad process and gained from it. As pledges we had to memorize all the plaques on and in the house. My recollection is that the house was Hanover's oldest, the home of Captain Aaron Storrs. When the fraternity finally decided to close, the solution to what to do with the house was, we thought, neatly solved: The property would be given to the town, which would renovate it and adapt it for use as a children's library. With Howe Library next door, this seemed a natural and happy solution. But for some reason the town decided instead to build a new library elsewhere; the old Howe Library was sold and the Deke house came down to provide parking. I understand that the records and memorabilia of the fraternity went to the College archives. The word went out through the grapevine and some of us Dekes were lucky to salvage from the secret Goat Hall one of the heavy oak chairs, the arms of which were festooned with an engraved nameplate of brothers long gone. Soon after, die house was opened to any and all and apparently it was stripped bare of all usable building materials. The last step in the ignoble end of Hanover's oldest building was its demolition.
Let's hope this process isn't repeated in the future, either physically or symbolically.
JAFFREY, NEW HAMPSHIRE
Houses for Small Fishes
THE DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER all fraternities and sororities should be coed, "Editor Agonistes" (Winter), shows at least a spark of promise for going beyond the Politically Correct vs. Neanderthal characterizations that usually color such discussions. Both views seemed to agree on perhaps the most fundamental point that the decision ought to be left to the students. Happily, the administration seems to be listening.
It may be too much to hope that the debate could advance a little further still, by focusing on students as individuals rather than as indistinguishable members of some larger group. In "The Houses Should All Go Coed," the author dismisses the needs of those comprising an unstated, but fairly evident group, because they are "members of a large and powerful majority." Maybe so. But that's small comfort to the kid arriving in Hanover, on his or her own for perhaps the first time, largely among strangers. Being a small fish in a big pond may be a problem, not an answer, on an individual level.
Every student has his or her own unique characterisitics and needs. Diversity demands a tolerance for those differences. It doesn't mean everyone marching inexorably to the beat of the same drummer. As long as there is sufficient interest by students, there ought to be support by the College for different paths to building friendships.
MARBLEHEAD, MASSACHUSETTS
