THE VALUE OF LECTURES.

Enforced attendance on college exercises, especially lectures, has for a long time been a source of disagreement between the authorities and the students. But the fact that attendance has to be enforced ought to raise the question of the justice of such a proceeding. Is it fair to force students to attend lectures if they do not find the lectures worth attending? It may not be possible to make all academic lectures attractive, but it should be possible to make them so valuable that the student would regard a cut as a misfortune, rather than as a liberation. It need hardly be said that this feeling is not now prevalent among the undergraduates. The chief reason why so many lectures strike the average student as useless is that he finds in his lecture notes little or nothing that is not better stated in books of reference. Often his notes contain serious errors, due to haste or confusion of mind; more often still they omit the most important facts. There can be no doubt that facts can be learned far more thoroughly and accurately from printed than from spoken words. Criticism, comment, and explanation can, on the other hand be admirably conveyed in lectures, provided the hearer is already acquainted with the facts upon which the comment is based. In an elementary course, for instance, the lecturer rarely sets forth facts not easily obtainable in books; his explanation of these facts, may, however, be entirely original.

If every lecturer could feel assured that his students had already grasped the general facts which he was about to discuss, he could devote his time wholly to demonstrating the real significance of those facts; and thus there would be none of the duplication of work, which at present makes so many lectures seem unprofitable. This result could be more easily obtained if all prescribed reading were done and tested before, instead of after, the lectures covering the same ground. Until some such method is adopted, by which lecturers may be enabled to tell their students things of real value to them, the undergraduate attitude with regard to the cutting of certain courses can not be considered wholly unreasonable.