The title of this post is of course a pathetic attempt at spoofing a well-known oldie containing the phrase “What’s forever for?” Having become acquainted with several online conversations, mainly from the Hoover Institution and many others, I have often wished that all lectures, sermons and the like be conducted in a similar fashion from undergraduate classes onwards, and perhaps even starting from High School.
What’s YOUR experience of sitting in a lecture? Why were you there? Were you there because you HAD to be there, you WANTED to be there or you GOT to be there? How often have you wished that the lecturer would just get on with highlighting what the likely examination questions would be, or what the thrust of your thesis ought to vector towards? Did you raise your hand for questions after the lecture, and did anyone else? Did your lecturer ask bewildering questions of you all, and did your lecturer expect and demand answers which demonstrated your nascent competencies within the realm of whatever the subject matter was about? Did you 
actually finish reading what was on the “essential reading” list you were handed at the beginning of your course? Whatever your answer, I come back to the same question. What’s a lecture for? Is it for downloading more and more data? Is it to fill your hitherto empty noggins with delectable nuggets of knowledge, understanding and wisdom that could only have come from your Professor? May it never be! A lecture is meant for your lecturer, or a panel of lecturers, to present their more enlightened and hopefully updated views and beliefs about a topic you might be interested in. The panel of lecturers broadly agree on the underpinnings of a given topic but have differing perspectives as to implications and applications. In other words, they agree in principle but disagree in practice. They uphold the same orthodoxy but can disagree violently on the orthopraxy. Again, for such lecture modes to be useful, students, or the audience, must have already read up on the subject matter so as to have at least a modicum of understanding. An example of how such a lecture could be conducted is the discussion by three eminent historians on the “Big Three”, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, during the Second World War. The video is embedded below this paragraph.
Do you deliver lectures? What do you think lectures are for? Do you expect your students or your public audience to be at least conversant with the subject matter being presented, whether via monologue or via a discussion within a small group of say, three or four lecturers, perhaps with a moderator present? Do you agree that lectures are not for downloading but expansion of erudition? Let me know, or come and teach me what lectures are for. You’re welcome!
I offer SAD student or SAD audience services so that you can come teach me or convince me about some subject matter either currently in the news or something you think you feel passionately about, and that the whole world ought to be converted to your views. For a small fee, of course, over the course of an hour.
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