What the Fox?

Does Fox News (of all places) have lessons for higher education?

Lecturing is out of vogue among educationists. The rule I hear is that no "chalk and talk" (as it is disparagingly called) should ever last more than twenty minutes, or it outlasts everyone's patience attention span.

This seems wrong. Firstly, the lecture has been standard educational practice in just about every culture for the past two or three thousand years; it seems unlikely that all the smartest of our ancestors could have been so wrong. Secondly, this surely has to vary with the skill of the lecturer--some people are a lot more interesting to listen to than others. Thirdly, Glenn Beck.

Like him or not, Beck currently has the highest rating on American all-news TV. And what he usually does is nothing but a good old fashioned traditional lecture, generally about history or civics, complete with chalk and blackboard--and yes, also with some nice audiovisuals, just as are currently available to anyone in any classroom with a computer and projector.

Beck is as aware of this as anyone--he's recently launched "Beck University," where avid viewers can get more of the same, from other lecturers.

Imagine that--attending university lectures not just as a purely profit-making venture, sans state subsidies, but a media sensation. Try that with your own undergraduates.

Perhaps Beck overdramatizes; perhaps he employs a lot of rhetorical tricks. But so should any good lecturer. There is no virtue in being dry.

Ironically, Beck himself claims to suffer from attention deficit disorder. That may have been his best teacher.

In an important way, this is a return to the origins of the university itself. In ancient Athens, teachers won their students by lecturing in the public square--just as Beck is doing. In the Medieval university, public lectures were still public entertainment, and professors built their reputations on how many listeners they could draw.

There was one other component to the Medieval university: disputation. Public debates were commonly held, widely subscribed, and holding forth competently in one was the test for graduation. This tradition remained important into the nineteenth century, in, for example, the Oxford Union.

Interestingly enough, this too is something Fox News has revived: having representatives for both points of view on camera at once, presenting point and rebuttal live. And this too audiences clearly still love: it is Bill O'Reilly's standard formula, and he ranks number two in ratings for all of American all-news TV.

So, put aside all political considerations: I propose Fox News as a model for making university good fun, and for forcing all academic ideas to be tested dirctly in the crucible of the marketplace. It would end the odd and ever-growing separation between the gown and the town, which ill-serves both. And the Internet, above all, makes it possible.

All lecturers should and probably soon will attract students by posting sample lectures online for free. The best will prosper.

Students will choose courses lecturer by lecturer, rather than signing up for one college and taking what they get. They will then combine credits as they go to achieve a certification.

Live debates among major figures in each field, with live questions from the audience, could and should be held regularly; students and the interested public could track the developments without the superimposition of any distorting lens.

True, all this is only half of the equation, or less: there is no interactivity in any of it. True learning is not just a spectator sport. But for dealing with the spectator part, all this seems pretty ideal. And the Internet's ability to generate interactivity and constructivism, the other part, is already pretty well understood.