How do you engage lecture-goers with the ideas of a classic novel? Try recreating the spirit of the era
One of the most basic human instincts is curiosity; everyone has seen the joy on the face of a small child suddenly grasping a new idea. At which point our educational institutions take over, and start killing all that joy. Children are tested until they believe passing the test is the reason for acquiring knowledge. If they do badly at tests, the world becomes a more difficult place to navigate. If they do well, their reward is to be tested in increasingly stressful situations. If their desire for knowledge survives all this, maybe, with luck and perseverance, they make it to university. At which point we hit them with formal education’s AK-47: the lecture.
Many of us have vivid memories of inspiring, engaged, dynamic lecturers, who make up for everyone else. The problem is everyone else. Until very recently, most universities did not train lecturers in public speaking. So people who knew a great deal about a given subject were given an hour (or more) to talk at a captive audience, without feeling any great pressure to make that talk interesting to anyone but themselves.
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