Professors simply can't discuss a thing. Habit compels them to deliver a lecture.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People don't listen when you lecture. No one wants to be talked down to or scolded.
I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut.
This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.
I never lecture, not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don't want to meet them.
A lecture is an occasion when you numb one end to benefit the other.
If I disagree with someone, I let them have their say and move on. I don't want to be the one to lecture.
When I lecture, under almost all circumstances, I write a new lecture for the occasion. It helps me think. It helps me make demands of myself that I would not otherwise make.
Well, first of all, no professor should be able to say, I refuse to defend my position. I refuse to debate my position.
Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know.
Efforts to develop critical thinking falter in practice because too many professors still lecture to passive audiences instead of challenging students to apply what they have learned to new questions.
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