I loved my time at Westminster Theological Seminary and had a deep respect for the positions my professors took theologically; however, I found over and over again that the information that I remembered and that would later shape my thinking was not the notebooks filled with diligent lecture notes, but the raucous conversations I had in the student lounge.
What the seasoned professors spent their careers developing and expositing for us in lecture never proved as compelling as the wisdom found through the verbal wrestling matches with my fellow yahoo peers around the ping-pong table.
Though I know my professors would be better men if they played more ping-pong, I am even more convinced they would find their students far more convinced if their classroom environment resembled the platonic dialogues rather than political oratory.
Socratic education is built on dialectic— or simply the process of talking things through. I remember very little that I learned in lecture setting, but what I discussed with others in the vigorous interchange of ideas, rarely was forgotten.
Good teachers are not paid to listen to themselves talk; rather, the real money should be reserved for those who can get their students talking intelligently. Though teachers should be able to explain a subject well, it can be a self-indulgent pleasure to simply explain in detail the knowledge that one has acquired before a group of captive students.
The importance of discussion seems all the more obvious in our day when inexpensive books and widely distributed video lectures on the Internet provides a fine alternative to classroom lectures. For $120 a year, the www.thegreatcoursesplus.com will sell me 8000 very fine lectures— why I would use my classroom time to lecture to my students needs a careful justification. I have been glad to see how many good lectures are available on the Internet now so that valuable class time can emphasize discussion.
Though it is the goal of a good teacher to help students to the point where they are able to carry the discussion in class, it takes time to bring them to the maturity level to be able to do so profitably, particularly when class focuses on ancient literature that is far outside of the students’ native cultural understanding.
Knowing how to balance the right mix of lecture and dialogue is often a matter that takes a good deal of experience for a teacher to master. Not only must one understand the capacity of students to grasp the various issues to be discussed, but it also involves knowing how the various topics are related to one another and in what order they are be presented.
There is the important balance between understanding how much material can be presented in lecture while holding the students attention, and how much they must be taught through the more engaging medium of conversation.
It is in the context of discussion that the significance and weight of various questions is best understood. The heavy starch of answer-crammed lectures is a tempting substitute for more agile diets fortified with a nutritious regimen of engaging questions and dialogue. It is tempting for teachers to provide answers to questions students have not yet begun to ask, yet such answers are rarely compelling even though dutifully memorized.
