Don't apologize, Sheridan Blau!

Sigh. I love it when dynamic speakers talk to us for awhile and then apologize for "lecturing." Sheridan Blau did just this a couple of weeks ago when he spoke to my "fellows" and I at the UCLA Writing Project.

I know why he did it (the apologizing). "Lecture" is a naughty word in school of ed culture. Should you even bring up the term, you must do so with a disclaimer. Lecture is so taboo now, that it's almost got the aura of "religion and politics," which my parents used to tell me not to discuss outside the family.

It feels like in  America now if you do anything for a sustained period of time (read, write, EVEN TALK), you are a weirdo. And should you try to push any of this weirdness on others, like your poor students, this is nothing short of cruel. Before you can say the L-word, you must be sure you're among "the family."

[Anecdote: As a high school teacher, I had called in sick at the last minute and my instructions to the substitute were only, "Have them read from their novels" for the 52-minute period. Upon my return, the students told me that the sub had said it was unreasonable of me to have asked them to read for that long. My response at the time was simply, "Who wants to go to college?" Most of my Simi Valley 10th-graders' hands shot up. "Then you're going to have to learn to read for a lot longer than that."]

Well, let me say this: "Lecture" is like any other medium. In itself, it isn't bad. Sure, there are bad books, bad poems, bad TV shows, and bad songs. But there are also good books, good poems, good TV shows, and good songs. When kids tell us they don't like books, what do we say? We tell them that, as one of my fellow fellows put it, they just haven't found the right book yet. Just because you hear a bad song on the radio doesn't mean that you give up music.

There are good lecturers and bad. Sheridan Blau's 20-minute talk, if it could even be considered a "lecture" considering that in the past lectures used to last for hours, was certainly nothing to apologize for. When he spoke to us, uninterrupted and funny, that was my favorite part of the day. What other way would he have conveyed his experience and his humor? We couldn't have worked in groups and "actively discovered" his personality. It's common sense; you pick the best medium for your message. People shouldn't give bad, boring lectures or lecture when there's a better way for the audience to learn the material. But people don't need to stop lecturing altogether.

Some say lecturing isn't active learning. During Sheridan Blau's talk, I was smiling. Sometimes that's active enough.