To the Editor:
Molly Worthen’s essay “Lecture Me. Really” (Sunday Review, Oct. 18) makes a compelling case for lecture courses and reminded me of a few I have treasured for more than half a century.
In my first class in American history as a college sophomore, the professor noted that we had only an hour, and since he was the expert, he would talk and we would listen. Every now and then, he said, he’d set aside a class to ask questions and discuss what we had learned. I still remember being dazzled by his lecture on the role that barbed wire played in “taming” the Wild West.
As a vice president at Brown University in the 1970s, I sat in the amphitheater when Stephen Graubard (then editor of Daedalus) gave his final lecture in an intellectual history course. When he finished, students gave him a standing ovation, and many left gifts of gratitude.
But just as the critics Ms. Worthen cites overstate their case, she does a bit when she implies that the humanities can be taught only by lecturing. Well-led seminars, deep study of texts and real-world observation can also be effective.
RON WOLK
Warwick, R.I.
