rd for judging a method of teaching, we must stop to sum up
the relative worth of common methods of college teaching.

=Lecture method evaluated=

The _lecture method_ has been the target for much criticism for many
centuries. Socrates inveighed against its use by the sophists, and
educators since have repeated the attack. The reasons are legion:
(_a_) The lecture method tends to discourage the pupil's activity. The
student feels no responsibility during the lecture; he listens
leisurely, and makes notes of the instructor's contribution. The
student's judgment is not called into play; he learns to take
knowledge on the authority of the instructor. The sense of comfort and
security experienced in a lecture hour is fatal even to aggressive and
assertive minds. Sooner or later the students succumb to the inertia
developed by the lecture system.

(_b_) A second limitation of an exclusive lecture method is its
inability to make permanent impressions. Many a student, entering the
lecture hall, has completely forgotten even the theme of the last
lecture. Knowledge is retained only when it is obtained by the
expression of self-activity. To offset this weakness notes must be
taken, but these prove to be the bane of the lecture method. Some
students, in their efforts to record a point just concluded, lose not
only the thought of what they are trying to write but also the new
thought which the instructor is now explaining; they drop both ideas
from their notes and wait for the next step in the development of the
lecture. This accounts for the many gaps in the notes kept by
students. Some instructors, dismayed by the amount of knowledge lost
by students, resort to dictation devices. Others, realizing the
pedagogical weakness of such teaching, distribute mimeographed
outlines of carefully prepared summaries of the lectures. Now the
student is relieved of the tedium of note taking, but the temptation
to let his mind wander afield is intensified. An outline, scanty of
detail, but so devised as to keep the organization and sequence of
subject matter clear in the minds of students, is, of course, helpful.
But detailed outlines distributed among the students discourage even
attentive listening.

(_c_) In teaching by lectures only there is no contact between student
and teacher. The student does not recite; he does not reveal his type
of mind, his mode of study, his grasp of subject matter. He is merely
a passive recipient. To this t