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The discussion list VICTORIA is following a thread on lecturing, which is really a two-ply one, one aspect being Victorian lecturing, its techniques, its popularity, its effectiveness, the role of the "sage" etc etc; the second, being the effectiveness of lecturing in the classroom. This second ply has provoked a number of comments about collaborative learning, group discussion, etc etc. There is a great deal of enthusiasm for collaborative learning, but also a number of curmudgeonly comments that both pain and amuse me. I see no need to respond to such posts as this, but I thought some of my CASLL colleagues might be interested. ANd no, David hasn't yet answered the query, "what exactly is the Madras system?" Cheers, Susan Drain ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Sun, 21 Jan 1996 21:10:13 EST Send reply to: VICTORIA 19th-Century British Culture & Society <[log in to unmask]> From: "David E. Latane" <[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Braying sages To: Multiple recipients of list VICTORIA <[log in to unmask]> The discussion of classroom teaching confirms me in my bricolage; what I object to in "student-centered" learning is not the practice but the faux moral high road of student "empowerment" that seems unable to proceed without setting up straw figures of dryasdust pedagogues who are unable to find the groove. Thus the literature of comp. & rhetoric, informed as always by the perception of disciplinary inferiority, represents over and over again case histories of stunning success cast against the miserable record of pedagogical failures--the sort of teaching that produced, presumably, all the educated people of the past. (I also have a suspicion of people who teach classes of 15 looking down at the methods of those who teach classes of 40.) I sometimes look into portfolios produced through the latest methods--peer revision, no grading till the end, collaborative learning, etc.--and what I see are essays that look and smell very much like freshman essays, remembered from of yore. I personally think that some good Victorian methods--recitative, the Madras system, caning, memorizing Horace's odes in order to be allowed breakfast--would do just as well. Has anyone had any success with these or other period relicks? D. Latane' [log in to unmask] ********************************************************************** Susan Drain 902 457 6220 Chair, English Department FAX 445 3960 Mount Saint Vincent University Halifax, NS B3M 2J6 [log in to unmask] Canada **********************************************************************