January i8, 19 12] 



NATURE 



)99 



THE FUNCTIONS OF LECTURES AND TEXT- 

 BOOKS IN SCIENCE TEACHING} 



I 



WISH to-day to speak of a tendency in education which 

 I think is increasing, and in my opinion is mis- 

 chievous ; it is one, however, which is much more 

 rampant with us at the universities than it is at schools — 

 I mean the practice of attempting to teach everything by 

 lectures ; of making to a continually increasing extent the 

 lecture supply the place of the text-book ; of learning every- 

 thing by being told it instead of reading it for oneself. 



Now I should be the last to maintain that the reading 

 of text-books is in many branches of study sufficient by 

 itself to give a man a real grasp of his subject. The 

 lecture, or something equivalent to the lecture, is in many 

 subjects, notably in science, an essential part of the 

 educational apparatus, perhaps more essential in science 

 than in anything else. By means of the experiments in 

 the lectures' (though these by themselves are by no means 

 all that is required) the students see the phenomena they 

 are studying ; the experiments make them realise that they 

 are dealing with definite phenomena, and help towards one 

 of. the most important results which the teacher has to 

 aim at to make their acquaintance with these facts as 

 intimate and vivid as possible. 



The position I am taking this morning is not new. 

 Let me quote here from Boswell's " Johnson " : — 



" People have nowadays," said he, " got a strange 

 opinion that everything should be taught by lectures. Now 

 I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading 

 the books from which the lectures are taken. I know 

 nothing that can best be taught by lectures, except where 

 experiments are to be shown." 



As those of you who are acquainted with that in- 

 exhaustible book are, I am sure, longing to hurl another 

 quotation from it at me, I will disarm them by quoting it 

 myself. It relates to an occasion when an Oxford don, 

 Dr. Scott, was present. Johnson lectures were once 

 useful, but now, when all can read and books are so 

 numerous, lectures are unnecessary. If your attention fails 

 and you miss a part of the lecture, it is lost. " You cannot 

 go back as you do upon a book. Dr. Scott agreed with 

 him. ' But yet,' said I, ' Dr. Scott, you yourself gave 

 lectures at. Oxford.' He smiled." 



I object to the lecture usurping so largely the function 

 of the text-book, because I think when this is done the 

 study of a subject has not the same educational value — is 

 not such good intellectual gymnastics, to use the cant 

 phrase, as when a student reads it for himself. This is 

 especially true when a student is new to the subject ; with 

 a book he can confine himself to the consideration of the 

 new ideas, and can take his own time, while in a lecture 

 he has to take in these ideas at the pace presented by the 

 lecturer, and, in addition, has to put them in writing as 

 fast as his pen can travel ; as a matter of fact, in many 

 cases he takes little trouble to understand, but confines 

 himself to taking down as many of the words of the 

 lecturer as is possible in the time, and trusts to finding 

 out later on what they mean. This practically amounts to 

 substituting a manuscript, and I think it would not be an 

 unfair description of many such notes to say a very corrupt 

 manuscript, for a text-book. Now it is oossible that in 

 some cases there is an advantage in doing this ; the 

 lecture may be so good that even the imperfect notes of 

 those that heard it may be better than the best text-book 

 available. I am assuming, of course, that there is a text- 

 book on the subject. This, no doubt, is sometimes the case ; 

 but I think those who have road lecture notes as they are 

 taken down will agree with me that a text-book must be 

 quite exceptionally bad if it is not more intelligible than 

 the majority of the notes taken even in good lectures. 



Another consideration which I think is of greater weight 

 is that if the student rewrites his rough notes, the task 

 of reducing them to sense and logical order is an excellent 

 mental training. I quite agree that it is, and if the 

 student attended only one such set of lectures a term I 

 think he might greatly benefit by doing this; but when, as 

 he often does under present conditions, he attends three or 



1 Presidential address delivered to the Association of Public School Science 

 Masters on January ii by Sir J. J. 'l"honison, F.R..S. 



NO. 2203, VOL. 88] 



four such courses, it is impossible for him to treat them 

 all in this way. Consider, for example, a case that came 

 under my observation last term. •\ student came to rne 

 with his time-table ; he had lectures or practical work in 

 the laboratory every morning from nine to one, and on 

 three afternoons in the week from two to five. His object 

 in coming to me was to find if I could not help him to 

 find lectures to fill up the three afternoons which he had 

 vacant. 



Even though the student attends lectures, it is, I think, 

 important that he should have training in learning for 

 himself, and not be encouraged to think that all he need 

 know about a subject will be told to him in lecture. In 

 after life he will have to acquire most of his learning from 

 books. He will not always find lectures available ; it is 

 possible, indeed, that he will have no passion for lectures, 

 and if he has not acquired the art — for there is an art of 

 learning from books — he will be at a serious disadvantage. 

 Is not an e.xcessive reliance on lectures likely to leave us 

 open to the reproach that we teach our students everything 

 except how to learn? I sometimes wonder when I see the 

 extent to which some students rely on their notes, and the 

 appallingly long list of lectures which appears at the 

 beginning of each term, whether the importance of the 

 invention of printing has not been overrated. 



Now I must express an opinion with which I think it 

 quite possible that many here will not agree. The view 

 is often expressed nowadays that students should be 

 examined by their teachers, and not by outside examiners. 

 I cannot agree with this ; so far as my experience goes, 

 the practice leads to one of the worst kinds of cramming 

 — the cramming of note-books — and not always the 

 student's own note-book. I think the teacher ought to 

 have the fullest power over the syllabus, and not to have 

 his method of teaching hampered by external authority ; 

 but when he is given this freedom I think he may be 

 expected to produce results which need not fear the tests 

 imposed by any sensible examiner. 



But although I am urging a freer use of text-books and 

 more independent reading bv the students, the last thing 

 I would do would be to abolish lectures, though I should 

 like to see them reduced in number, and in some cases 

 their objective changed. To my mind, the proper function 

 of a lecture is not to give the student all the information 

 he is supposed to require on the subject of the lecture, 

 but to arouse his enthusiasm so that he will be eager to 

 get that information for himself. A lecture ought to be 

 interesting and to arouse interest; dullness should be the 

 unpardonable sin. The lecturer should avail himself of 

 the " purple patches " of the subject to supply the 

 momentum which will carry his students over the less 

 exciting parts. Again, in a lecture it is possible to 

 emphasise the fundamental parts of the subject, to discuss 

 at length the ideas and assumptions involved, and to illus- 

 trate thetfi by a multitude of illustrations and examples 

 which would be impossible in a text-book of moderate 



If lectures were limited to these objects there need not 

 be so many of them, and there would be more time avail- 

 able for what I regard as the most important part of 

 teaching— the part when the teacher comes in contact with 

 his pupils, not as a class, but as individuals. If the 

 teacher could talk with his pupils, even for half an hour 

 a week, cross-exam iiK; them to see that they really under- 

 stand their work, make suggestions as to what they should 

 read, suggest points of view, sometimes even point out 

 that things are not quite so clear as they seem to appear 

 to the student, then I think he would have far greater 

 influence over his pupils— would educate them better than 

 would be done bv anv amount of lecturing alone. 1 am 

 aware that what I am' advocating is done by many teachers 

 already but I think there is still room for expansion of 

 a method which the collegiate system and the large educa- 

 tional staff at manv of our colleges m.'tke especially 

 feasible at Oxford and Cambridge. I would like to utter 

 a word of warning against allowing this kind of tuition 

 to degenerate into an explanation of ditVuullies brought to 

 the teacher bv the student ; puzzling over a difficulty is 

 often a very good way of getting clearer ide.is on a sub- 

 ject, and a good te.ncher will not solve these difficulties 

 until ho r .N Mif th.it tho -student will not, perhaps with 



