Why Lectures Don’t Work

A lot of people insist that people learn through sight and sound. That is a lie. Sight and sound are strictly aimed at memorization rather than learning. Lectures may help children hear what we think they need to know, but they do not actually support the learning process.

There are a lot of different aspects to learning styles. Level of dependence, interests, general capabilities, and about a million other (sometimes miniscule) factors make each student unique. While not the most significant, pace is the most visible. Since all children have to be at the same level for lectures to have any benefits, these boring drawn out one-person conversations obviously do not address the needs of the individuals.

While the refusal to address variability of pace should be obvious to everyone, this flaw is usually not alone. Lectures rely on the idea that all children must learn the exact same thing in the exact same way at the exact same time. The same can be said of homework assigned each night and just about everything else that relies on children learning at identical paces. It is absolutely impossible to support individuality without supporting variability.

An argument could be made that the issues surrounding pace are necessary for the efficiency of teachers. The schools can’t afford to hire one teacher for every student, so teachers have to either address the entire class or work with students individually. Whenever we force children to sit through a lecture, we are telling the more advanced learners to slow down. Learning is more direct than teaching, and sacrificing learning efficiency for teaching efficiency is counterproductive. For this reason and many more, lectures will always do more harm than good.