[amonroe0805]

I’ve felt since college that lectures are best likened to meetings, with all of the usual criticisms. If a lecture is merely a monologue of prepared information (usually available in the textbook anyways), the same “Why couldn’t this have been an email?” concept applies.

There are _legitimate_ reasons to pulling everyone into the same room at the same time to learn something, and those reasons almost entirely include frequent and direct interaction between the attendees.

The value of the classroom is that you are surrounded by individuals who are all ostensibly trying to learn the same thing as you, with a similar current amount of knowledge, all the while having immediate access to a bone fide expert in the topic. I would suggest that this is an obviously great setup for learning! It’s a shame to see it so often squandered by having a glorified textbook read-along session instead of genuine curious discussion.

Great quote from the article: “A lecture has been well described as the process whereby the notes of the teacher become the notes of the student without passing through the mind of either.”