Listening to Lectures

Abstract

You have to accept the lecturers you find in the college you attend — hardly an original thought but nevertheless an illuminating and sobering one. In the time you have at college, you cannot alter them. Any time you spend on agitating about the system of teaching or lecturing is time altruistically spent, for it will benefit only your successors. It takes at least three years to put into effect any major alteration in a course, and by that time you will have left college, we hope, with a completed degree. So don’t grumble about your lecturers; learn how to train them. Many of them certainly need a good deal of instruction in the art of lecturing. This deficiency is recognised, not only by you but by the body of lecturers themselves and by the college authorities. Courses, seminars and discussions are held at intervals within an individual college or within a broader catchment in order to improve college teaching. Deficiencies are there but you can counteract them to your personal advantage. This book deals only with your tasks in communication, and not with those of the lecturer; he needs another volume.