Godfrey Thomson and the Rise of University Pedagogical Study

A recorded lecture delivered at the University of Edinburgh in November 1950 by Godfrey H. Thomson.

A transcript with commentary

Martin Lawnb, Ian J. Dearya,*, Caroline Bretta, and David J. Bartholomewc

bCentre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh, Scotland,

UKaMedical Research Council Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive

Epidemiology, Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh,

Scotland, UKcLondon School of Economics, UK

*Corresponding author, Prof Martin Lawn, Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh, St John’s Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ Scotland, UK. Email address: im.lawn@btinternet.com

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Godfrey Thomson 1881- 1955

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In 1950, Professor Sir Godfrey Thomson1 recorded a lecture at the University of Edinburgh on the subject of good lecturing practice. The lecture exists today in its original form, five 78rpm acetates [hard, black vinyl]. These fragile discs, the only known copy of the lecture, have survived nearly sixty years, kept by the widow of a close colleague of Thomson2. With this recording, our research project members heard Thomson for the first time. Over the last two years, we had searched documents, followed calculations, interviewed colleagues and students, trying to capture Thomson’s thinking, research, teaching, and personality3. Images were few in number. Finding sources through which to study Thomson was the first task. Later came the task of reconciling the different perspectives that came to light through these different sources. This recording offered the sound of his voice, an extraordinary and unique access to a person born in 1881, in the last years of his life, and offering a summary of his views on teaching in the university [an institution he had worked in since 1906, first at Newcastle and then in Edinburgh], Thomson’s combination of pedagogical interest, empirical concerns and analytical skill is at work in the lecture. It is structured around a series of points 1 Godfrey Thomson (1881-1955) began his career as a pupil teacher in the north of England, studied for a first degree in the UK, and then took a PhD in physics at Strasbourg in Alsace. He was a lecturer and then a Professor of Education at Armstrong College, Newcastle, the foundation of the University of Newcastle. He was the Bell Professor of Education at the University of Edinburgh from 1925 until 1951 and Director of the Moray House Teaching Centre. He wrote a major work on factor analysis of mental ability (Thomson, 1939) which ran to five editions. He was closely involved with the Scottish Mental Survey 1932 (SCRE, 1933)—providing the test and as chairman of the statistical analysis committee—and was the Chairman of the Scottish Mental Survey 1947 (SCRE, 1949). He and his team at Moray House College in Edinburgh produced and distributed hundreds of thousands of mental tests—the Moray House Test series—that were used for selection from primary to secondary school in England (Thomson, 1940; Sutherland, 1984).2 Vida McFarland was interviewed on 31st August 2007 & the records gifted then. The records are dated “Nov 1950” 3 Reconstructing a Scottish School of Educational Research 1925-1950 UK ESRC grant No. RES-000-23-1246

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about lecturing from somebody who thought lectures at Edinburgh were very good. Thomson speaks about knowing the subject, about audibility and watching the audience; he emphasises the need to arouse curiosity and the use of humour, and especially about talking to, and not reading to, the audience. His talk is full of asides and illustrations, nearly all humorous and to the point; he elicits laughter from the audience on several occasions. His own mannerisms are drawn attention to and he makes knowing references to them; they become jokes within jokes. At times, he chuckles to himself. It is a brave lecture as well. He lectures on the art of lecturing and offers tools for analysis by which his lecture can itself be judged, and he records the lecture so that others may do likewise.

His approach to teaching was research based. Teachers had to treat themselves experimentally as a subject and study their own teaching methods and approaches. In effect, he proposed a form of reflexivity in lecturing.

the only really bad lecturers are those who don't know they are bad….there is always hope if you feel that you would like to be better,, that you aren’t just satisfied with yourself’ [Thomson Lecture p6]

The lecture is interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, Thomson is known as an architect of mental testing in the UK and as a serious thinker and researcher on the nature of intelligence differences. His Moray House Tests are his legacy in many ways yet his practice as a teacher, and his interest in teaching and training, are not well recorded. References to his direction of Moray House, one of the largest teacher training centres, and its Demonstration School, are meagre. Secondly, the discs allow a rebalancing of the research profile on Thomson; they show him as a committed teacher, working in his chosen field, and managing the institution which many pupil teachers

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[of which he was one] aspired to. This recording shows him using his interest in the craft of teaching to reflect on the features of a good university lecture. The advice it offers may appear fairly straightforward today but the context is very different now. Advice on lecturing in 1950 was a novel topic among the elite group of university lecturers teaching undergraduates in Britain’s few universities. The tradition was that the subject was sufficient unto itself and needed only to be mediated by the tutor. Pedagogy was redundant. So, Thomson’s lecture has to be read as an innovative step in university teaching, probably about 15 years before the subject began to take hold with the expansion of the universities and the publication of the Hale Report4. The recording reveals a vital element in the work of a research professor, who, while managing a large training centre and teaching advanced research courses, is crucially interested in the work of teaching.

Research and TeachingThomson had trained as a pupil teacher in Newcastle and after returning from doctoral studies in Strasbourg, he had taught at Armstrong College [the foundation college of the later University of Newcastle]. Sir James Duff, a colleague and friend, described him as

..a magnificent lecturer, whether to students or a learned society. And at the lower end of the scale I have seen him successfully persuading a class of rather backward children in a

4 The Hale Report was a fact finding study of undergraduate teaching methods, produced a year after the Robbins Report on Higher Education. Prof John Nisbet, in a personal communication, commented that ‘I was involved with the group who set up the Society for Research in Higher Education, having taken part in the first 'training' course for university staff in Manchester Tech in 1963 (run by Professor W E Morton). ..  So I can say quite confidently that the idea of researching university teaching began (in UK) with a radio talk (published in The Listener) by Nicholas Malleson in 1959. Nisbet corr. April 08

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village school to use their brains on a problem of simple arithmetic [Duff in Thomson 1969 p xi]

In his diary, Duff described how Thomson came to help him out when he was struggling to manage a rural school –

Oct 8th 1923. …. I went as acting-headmaster to Dunstan School on the Northumberland coast for just over a fortnight in July. It nearly broke me down – a fearful burden of most difficult work, under very trying conditions – great heat in an overcrowded school. I taught 40 children, divided into 5 standards, and the attempt to do so kept me feverishly busy from early morning til midnight. Thomson came down and helped for one day, to my great comfort….

At Armstrong College, Thomson was interested in the Dalton Plan and [WH Kilpatrick’s] Project Method [Duff in Thomson 1969 p23]: the latter emphasizing activity and utilizing the ‘laws’ of learning, a combination which linked Thomson’s teaching and research interests. His training course in Newcastle allowed a range of self organized activities in science [Thomson 1969 p23]. As a trainer of elementary school teachers, he acted as a master of method, the lead instructor on pedagogy, and taught geography, maths, blackboard drawing, psychology, as well as visiting schools for lesson criticism, and running the gymnasium for 3 years [Thomson 1969 p70]

I thoroughly enjoyed teaching my students – it was rather like teaching the upper forms of the secondary school - indeed there is nothing I have ever enjoyed more’ [Thomson 1969 p82]

In the summers, Thomson organized camps with the students acting as guides for the urban children. The camps were organized like military expeditions with Thomson the quartermaster. After a year working at Newcastle as their Professor of Education, Thomson went to Teachers College, Columbia, working with Edward Thorndike, in 1923- 1924. He enjoyed the experience, teaching on the

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summer school, lecturing to large classes and visiting many New York schools [Thomson 1922/23]. Towards the end of his time at Teachers College, Dean Russell offered him a Professorship. However, he rejected this ideal research and advanced teaching post, working with people and in an institution he admired, and returned to Newcastle. In 1925, he accepted the Bell Chair in Education at Edinburgh, which was joined that year with the direction of Moray House teacher training centre. This was certainly with his approval as it created a major educational institute in Scotland. His intention was to work broadly across education science in his work at Moray House but before long, he was focusing on his research on intelligence differences. But Thomson always taught and felt that his interests across the curriculum enabled him to manage the training centre better

In consequence, when I came to be principal of a college I felt like the conductor of an orchestra who can at a pinch play any one of the instruments [Thomson 1969 p76]

He had a heavy teaching load at Moray House and in the University Department [also at Moray House] [Inglis in Thomson 1969 p117]. Inglis, his deputy, recalled

few people in academic life found so much pleasure in teaching as Sir GH and it is therefore not surprising that he gave to its art and practice a high rank in his priorities. In his class for graduates in their year of professional training his lectures were a compound of history of education, doctrines of the great educators and a liberal addition of practical hints. Often he began by declaring that it was more important for his students to know what Plato or Rousseau or Dewey thought than what he thought and he would then embark on a careful exposition of his author. [Inglis p119]

His secretary, Marion Cooke, describes a typical morning

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he very often had a 9 o’clock class and he’d come right in and go right in, put in his things and go right along to the lecture theatre. And then he was there til lunchtime [Cooke Interview 2006]

Jennie Lee entered his postgraduate teaching course in 1926, expecting like her fellow students, all experienced in Edinburgh classes, to sit and take notes.

We trooped into his introductory lecture, produced our notebooks and pencils, and settled down as usual to an hour’s industrious note taking. Straightaway the professor gave us an uncomfortable jog. We were to put away our note books and pencils. They would not be needed. He did not intend reading aloud to us at dictation pace. It really was not necessary. The material we may have expected to have read out lecture by lecture was at our disposal in book form. This said, smiling in the friendliest way, he paused for a moment. The poor devil may even have expected some sign of approval. Instead there was mutiny in the air. Not noisy mutiny. Just sullen, anxious dismay. No notes? What did that mean? How then could we memorize our pieces in readiness for examination time? His next announcement was a degree worse. We were to form ourselves into groups, each group doing a special piece of reading and research, and later in the term, reporting to the general class.

A later student, Catherine Hunter, described his lectures as very popular with the students in training.

it sounds very patronising to say that he obviously had prepared his lectures very well. He hardly used notes, it seemed as if it just came and, as you can hear from his voice, very clear and distinct. And he had a fetish if you like for pronunciation.

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For one lecture he had the students in stitches and I can’t remember all the words but because he’d done a lot of work in America, it was the different pronunciation. [Hunter Interview]

Research and teaching came together for Thomson in Kilpatrick’s argument about the way in which the ‘project’ works -

it is a tenet of the upholder of the project teaching that the pupil will turn willingly to the study of the necessary intellectual tools because he needs them for his main purpose, and that he may indeed become directly interested in the tool subjects themselves on further acquaintance. [Duff in Thomson 1969 p25/6]

In his obituary, in the Eugenics Review, CP Blacker5 made some comments about Thomson’s lecturing which confirm his interest in the practice in lecturing –

His Galton lecture [The Trend of Intelligence 1946] .. was most carefully prepared and committed to paper before the occasion of its delivery… Thomson held strongly that lectures should not be read but delivered. The lecturer’s eyes and attention, he said, should not be fixed on sheets of typescript but upon his audience. Thomson accordingly delivered his lecture without a note in his hand. I was sitting on his left. My most vivid picture of him now is of his profile that evening. He stood erect, his hands in his coat pockets; and he spoke unfalteringly, vigorously and humorously for exactly fifty minutes which was the period which, at his request I had earlier prescribed.

Thomson mentions at the beginning of his talk that he had been invited to give the lecture a year before. The audience was to be ‘young and inexperienced lecturers who had recently been appointed

5 CP Blacker was the secretary of the Eugenics Society, and later a Director of it. He published a large number of papers on population control, and worked at the Maudsley Hospital.

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to the university’ [Thomson Lecture p1]. Thomson, as the holder of the Bell Chair in Education, the senior education post in Scottish Universities, would represent good practice in teaching. He was also known as being interested in teaching and the training of teachers. The choice seems natural.On a copy of the lecture transcript, found in the private papers of Thomson’s son, Hector, there is a note, written by Lady Thomson

The first audience were medicals [far more than the young surgeons Sir James had suggested]. Sir James Learmonth [Surgeon] asked Godfrey to do this for him and to give it quite early in the morning, 8.30 I think. The lecture was so successful that the chair [of the] faculties Arts and Sciences persuaded him to repeat it for them6

Recording a Lecture7

Why should the talk be recorded? This was a pioneering and time consuming additional element to what was an innovative event. Thomson said that his audience should engage in the same practice; there was an opportunity in the university for new lecturers to learn about teaching skills by recording their lectures.

it has been suggested that it would be desirable for young lecturers to have one of their lectures recorded and then go and listen to it played to them [Thomson Lecture p1]

6 This note was found in mid July just before this paper was sent to the Journal. Until that point, it was not clear who had asked him to lecture on university teaching. Sir James Learmonth held the Chair of Systematic Surgery [founded in 1831] and the Regius Chair of Clinical Surgery [founded 1803] in Edinburgh University7 We would like to thank Roger Beardsley for his assistance with this section. He is a member of CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music), and a technical advisor to the music departments of Kings College London and York University

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Immediately afterward he refers to the key person who would help them, Mr [later Professor] Abercrombie in the Phonetics department. David Abercrombie had only established the Phonetics Department at Edinburgh two years before and it was to become an important unit in the development of this field in the UK and beyond. During the recording the technician was James Anthony, who later became a senior academic in the department. Anthony was an ex telephone engineer [the key communications technology profession at the time] and member of the Royal Signals [Anthony 1998]. He was chiefly concerned with setting up the Phonetics laboratory, finding the right sort of equipment and also inventing and making speech research apparatus. On appointment, he had been sent to a disc recorder company in England to learn how make gramophone records. Again it is likely that a significant third person, perhaps Sir James Learmonth, brought the two elements together, Thomson and the recording equipment, to solve the third element, the problem of new post war university teaching staff and their teaching skills. Thomson records in his talk that

I’m a little bit handicapped by this thing which is a recording apparatus. This lecture is being recorded in a room behind there which makes me more nervous than I would have otherwise have been. [Thomson Lecture p2]8

At one point, he refers to having to “stand within 3 feet of this thing “ [Thomson p2]. It is not clear from his account if there were any more instructions or constraints which he had to overcome to do the lecture. The assumption must be that he was alone with a microphone stand in front of his audience and that cabling went to the recording machine 8 Vida McFarland, in the June 2008 interview, said that it was quite difficult and complicated to make this recording [although Anthony was quite au fait with the procedures] and that Thomson sounded nervous, as not until the fourth disc did his voice sound normal.

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and engineer in the next room. At the time, the Phonetics dept didn’t have a proper sound studio but a small lab which had sound equipment to hand. The recording will have taken place in one of the main University lecture halls in the Old College or the Medical School.

Sound recording equipment was rare in Britain in the 1940s. The BBC often made its own equipment in the absence of any commercial production. The engineer had to have a machine, on which acetate covered aluminium discs were ‘cut’. In this case, the reference to the engineer ‘next door’ suggests that this was either a portable recording machine, which was also very rare, or a heavier set of machinery, which may have included an amplifier, a recording machine, a loudspeaker, microphones, microphone hand-grips and stand, drums of microphone cable, a talk-back unit, test records, interconnecting leads, spare parts and a tool kit [taken from a description of a contemporary sound studio]. It is unlikely that Phonetics had all this. This range of equipment would cost around £250 in 1949 [a new Austin A40 Devon

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would have cost just twice as much that year], approximately £7000 in 2007 values. This would have been a significant investment for the University in this area.Anthony [1998] described recording then as a ‘human mechanical process’ involving lists of actions and responses to be made by the engineer. There was a likelihood of error between neophyte engineers, a lecturer new to recording and a live, unpredictable audience. The obligation was that the engineer and the speaker got this lecture right first time, unless a commercial editing service was to be used later to create final edited discs. There were five double sided discs, each side lasting for about four minutes. The speaker had to stop at an arranged place or by a signal so the engineer could place a new acetate on the recording machine. It is not clear if Thomson used a script, indeed his lecture was about the necessity of talking to an audience and not reading to or at them. Signalling between the lecturer and the engineer [in the next room] would be needed to produce the stops in the recording [which are well hidden even though each 78 begins and ends cleanly].Thomson didn’t make things easier for the engineer though. At one point, he speaks to latecomers telling them where vacant seats were in the room. Thomson encouraged the audience to participate; he asked them to ‘stamp loudly’ with their feet if he said ‘you know’ to help cure him of the habit. While he seems at ease and self- confident with the microphone and the recording processes, in the adjoining room the engineer must have been very concerned about noise levels, adlibs and signal codes.

Researching University TeachingHarry McFarland, a student and colleague of Thomson at Moray House, was given a copy, the only other copy, of the recordings. He had been a member of the Thomson B.Ed group in 1948 and had trained as a

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teacher at Moray House, becoming a close friend of Thomson. The cardboard 78 covers had a note on them from McFarland -

These are the copies’ and my husband’s initials underneath them so he must have collected them from the Phonetics department.[V McFarland Interview]

According to Vida, his wife, McFarland joined Thomson in a project on University teaching and learning. Initially, McFarland had been proposed by Thomson for a post in the Schools Inspectorate, which he didn’t get because he was too young

‘Godfrey said “Well, never mind, I think I’ve got a project coming up shortly and I’ll be in touch” and this was the project. So when Godfrey knew he’d got the funding for it he approached my husband and said would he come and assist. [V McFarland Interview]

So, the recording appears to be part of, or the first step in, a funded research project, organized by Thomson. Funded research projects were rare in this period and it is not clear where the funding came from. Thomson used the proceeds from the Moray House tests to support educational research at Moray House but this project sounds larger in scope. It is possible it was funded either by the Ministry of Education or the Fulbright Foundation. McFarland worked for Thomson for about three years, from 1949 until 1951. It is possible that Thomson was intending to develop university entrance tests, through his Moray House ‘brand’; tests like these had been used in the US since 1901, first as an achievement test and then, by the 1920s, as an aptitude or intelligence test, but they were not used in the UK.

He had to visit various university departments. I think they did quite a big project in testing students at Edinburgh. I’m not sure whether they did anywhere else but certainly in Edinburgh, they probably sat the Moray House Test that was known as Adult 2. And there was a fair amount of statistical work that had to be

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done on this. And my husband was away for fairly long periods of time visiting universities in France, in England, in the United States…. He was sitting in on lecturers and seminars and tutorials and things of that sort. I think he was pretty well received almost everywhere, he was certainly in either Oxford or Cambridge for a period and probably Manchester. And then he was in France for a period and the French, which is a very centralised system, allowed him to go into some of the provincial universities in France as well as to the Sorbonne. And he was attached as a visiting professor to Sorbonne and as a visiting fellow at Princeton in the United States. … He went to Princeton, he went to Harvard, he went to, now I’ve forgotten what it’s called, Cleveland in Ohio [Case Western Reserve University] [V McFarland Interview]

McFarland’s research went on beyond the retirement of Thomson, in 1951, and he produced notes or a report which went to the Hale Committee; the Hale report is regarded as one of the foundations of the study of university teaching methods

However, at the time of lecturing, Thomson had just read in the British Medical Journal articles about aspects of university teaching [Volume 2 No.4677 August 26, 1950]9 and he made reference to papers by Sir Henry Cohen [‘if the lecturer hasn’t learnt his subject well enough to talk about it without reading, why should I?’ Thomson p410] and Patrick Meredith. Meredith’s essay on techniques, from an interactionist perspective, was in accord with Thomson’s own view on teaching, that it depends on the vitality of the lecturer. It is possible that Thomson’s interest went back towards the testing of university students, and not

9 Recently, in July 2008, copies of both papers were found in the Thomson papers in the estate of his son, Hector.10 Cohen 1950 p479]

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just their teaching. This is unclear. This approach would follow from his work with the English Committee of the International Examinations Inquiry in the 1930s which published several studies of university examinations [Hartog 1935, 1936, Lawn 2008]. However, Thomson, and the IEI Scottish Committee, of which he was also a part, did not study university examinations as they were more involved with testing and large scale mental survey [SCRE 1932]. Thomson may have wished to follow more closely the issue of university entrance in relation to bright but poor entrants, his great interest, and even as predictors of success, and on how the Moray House tests could be put to another use within the university entrance examination, something which was more common in the US.

The Sound of ThomsonDuring the course of the project on ‘A Scottish School of Educational Research’ of which Thomson is part, the project team has had to search for archive material about the subject. An archive has been created from a range of often hidden sources, in this country and in Europe and the US, with some difficulty. Thomson has been an enigmatic centre of this study. Most of the found sources are his published papers, there are few personal notes or letters, very few images, and cryptic notes, often in statistical or algebraic code. Thomson has been difficult to observe at work; sometimes he was diffident, spoke in few words and wrote without personal contexts; at other times, he enters rooms singing Gilbert and Sullivan, lectures in his tennis clothes and is witty in conversation. His writing was problem-based and the problems were treated with analytical and statistical rigour. He did not write with humour, he wrote within the educational science/ psychology tradition, and he worked in formal settings. The picture which was emerging was multi faceted and even contradictory.

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The sound recording emphasised a side of Thomson which is present in interviews and recollections; he appears confident, friendly, humorous, social, and self-deprecating. Laughter was a common response to his lecture and it often echoed or interrupted him. He was at ease in the lecture hall and so was his audience with him. Without the recording, Thomson would have been viewed through a range of limited sources and particular media. The recording allows us to see him in meetings, quietly observing, laughing quietly; we can see him teaching and talking to colleagues; we can hear him in argument, tolerant but consistent. Without this recording, it would have been harder to connect the romantic and classic part s of his personality, and his work in teaching would not have been as visible as his work in research.

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Thomson Lecture Side 111 Ladies and Gentleman, I’m somewhat surprised by the size of the audience and by the mature appearance of some members of the audience! The original invitation to give a lecture of this sort, which came to me quite a long time ago, almost a year, was that I should speak to young and inexperienced lecturers who had recently been appointed to the University (laughter) and with your permission I still propose to speak chiefly to them, and because of that what I have to say will be very elementary.

Much of the advice one gives, and one ought to give, to a young and inexperienced lecturer is the sort of thing to which you will say “Yes of course, I know that”. For instance then I shall begin in a moment by saying that they must take great pains to be audible, to be heard by their audience, and that of course is obvious and they may say so. But so many of them aren’t audible and therefore one has to keep on saying it frequently and with emphasis. The things I’m going to say, and I repeat, are rather going to be of a humble kind and I in a sense apologise for that, but intend nevertheless to stick to my first instructions.

I’m a little bit handicapped by this thing, which is a recording apparatus. This lecture is being recorded in a room behind there. It makes me more nervous than I would otherwise have been. There is room over at this side here, if you can pass the front, I don’t mind at

11 The transcript was originally created within our project and based upon the recording. Recently, another transcript was found, most probably undertaken by Thomson’s secretary, Marion Cooke: it must be assumed that the transcription was made in shorthand from the disc. It excludes the direction by Thomson to latecomers to vacant seats. This transcript follows the original transcript in the main.

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all. I have consented to do this and to have it recorded in order to be an example, because it has been suggested – and I think with great, a good thing to suggest – that it would be desirable for young lecturers to have one of their lectures recorded and then go and listen to it played to them (laughter). That can now be done – anyone here in this University who wishes to have a lecture recorded only has to tell Mr Abercrombie of the phonetics department and he will send Mr Anthony who is at present behind there recording this one, and he can have it recorded and played over to him and see how good it was. (laughter).

Now, the first thing I want to make perfectly clear is that when I responded to this invitation to give such a lecture, I said at once “I’m not one of those who think that the lecturing in the universities is bad. On the contrary, I think that much of it is very good indeed. There wil,l no doubt – I know there are – lecturers whose style might be improved but the essential thing about a member of a university staff is not that he should lecture well, although it’s desirable, it is that he should know his subject well, and I’m not going to be put myself into a wrong position by being thought here to be one of those who thinks it doesn’t matter whether you know much as long as you can speak well about it – that is not the case. At the same time it is desirable, of course, that one should be able to speak clearly and well, and the first thing, I think, after someone knows his subject well and believes in it, and believes in it, so he gives the impression that he is really keen, is that he should be heard. Now, as I said, that is easily dismissed by saying “yes of course, he should be heard” but so often he isn’t, and that is for several different reasons. He may, of course, be the unfortunate possessor of a voice which doesn’t carry very well, in which case he must try to see if he can get exercises and assistance to make that better. But often people whose voices do carry well are not well heard

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because they will talk to their book, or they will turn around and talk to the blackboard, or to a diagram, and not talk to the audience.

Side 2.It is one of the elementary things that one talks to the audience for more than one reason. Partly of course because one wants to be heard, but partly also because one wants them to feel that one is talking to them and not talking to a book, or to a set of notes. The lecture which is what someone has called the ‘vocal textbook’ is not a good lecture. The textbook is there, students can get to them and they can get the information but it is the rapport between the lecturer which is assisted by him first of all looking at his lecture audience and by that means, among other things, making it easier to be heard. There often also is a fault in not making oneself heard because although the lecturer can be heard, he drops his voice at a key word or at a new word. When there is a new word or a name obviously it must be emphasised. Often it must be repeated, as the preacher repeats his text. Or sometimes, of course, it is wise to write it on the blackboard. I can’t do that because I’ve got to keep within 3 feet of this thing (laughter)! But that won’t be a degree of freedom lost for most of you – most of you will be free to go – but don’t talk to the blackboard, put the key words there – the technical term, the proper name which won’t be understood, spell it if necessary – but above all, of course, one must be clear and it must be heard. I don’t wish, of course, that anyone should bellow. I know a preacher who bellows and it’s somewhat painful sometimes, but it’s much preferable to being inaudible. Clear speech, then, loud enough speech, speech addressed to the back of the class, where those will be sitting who, like the two American students who once came to the Professor of Psychology and thanked him for his course, and he was so pleased, then they said “Yes, you know, sir, we both took Psychology with you and we got engaged in the back benches!” (laughter) Well to

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those who are in the back benches and who may be engaged in such a process it is desirable to look at them to see that they at least can hear in your class – there may be such in your class.

And then the second point I’ve spoken about – watching the audience, knowing when to repeat, knowing when to emphasise – and the third point is the matter of reading or speaking a lecture. Now, there is no doubt whatever – and it is not only an opinion which many competent people who are competent to express an opinion have said – there is no doubt whatever that a lecture which is read from manuscript never gets over, or very seldom gets over as well as one which is just talked. Experiments have been tried and proved that as well. Of course, there are limits to just freedom in talking, there are pros and cons to be weighed up. The lecture which is read has certain advantages: it gets through the stuff just in the right time if the person has been careful to plan it so; he is sure afterwards that he has covered all the points he wanted to cover. But it is liable to bore. He is tempted to talk to the paper; I’ve seen Gifford12 lecturers talking away to paper when – I suppose in many cases, of course, if a Gifford lecture could be heard we still wouldn’t have understood (laughter) but one couldn’t even hear occasionally these things. The reading of a lecture is not generally a good thing. Of course it may be so very important that the very words should be those which have been carefully planned – as is the case sometimes with a political or a diplomatic speech – that it could be read. But in general, no. In general it should be something which is talked to the audience and that means, of course, notes. If ever you have to read a lecture or wish for some special reason to read a lecture – sometimes in a ceremonial one has to read it because it would be rather undignified to converse with the audience.

12 The Gifford Lecture series began in 1888. It is one of the foremost lecture series in Scotland dealing with religion, science and philosophy.

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Side 3If you have to, it’s desirable to see that the notes are set out in some way helpful, as Churchill does, or as Alexander Gray13 does, for instance, I have noticed, in having them set out with spaces, and emphases, and a bit of red chalk under one word and things of that sort so that although you’re reading it at any rate you have, and it also helps you to find the place if you have marks and gaps of that sort instead of just a steady piece of manuscript. But if you’re not going to read it, then you need notes. Now, I have learnt by long experience that if you want to get a certain amount of matter into a lecture it is fatal to try to compress and it’s necessary to select. You have to pick your points, you have to make the lecture the right length not by packing it tight but by seeing what are the points you want to make and leaving the details to the spur of the moment. So that you want to have a good lecture, to have notes but not too many, you want to have the headings down, the main headings. The detail, the subject is one which it is, one can presumably assume that you know very well and the details will come. The headings and the order is what you want and nothing more, or not much more, an occasional little note. I’ve got a sideways one here for instance, it is a quotation which reminds me of something which I suggest to you it is worthwhile reading – a set of articles in the British Medical Journal from August the 26th of this year when there was a symposium about this very matter of giving lectures and of University teaching, true, in the Medical Faculty, but there Sir

13 Professor Sir Alexander Gray CBE, FRSE (1882 – 1968) was a Scottish civil servant, economist, academic, translator writer and poet.. In 1921 he was appointed professor of Political Economy at Aberdeen University, and whilst there he published one of his most important economic works, The Development of Economic Doctrine, in 1931. In 1934 he took up the equivalent post at Edinburgh University, which he held until his retirement in 1956.

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Henry Cohen14 was saying “if the lecturer” – the student is liable to say – “if the lecturer hasn’t learnt his subject well enough to talk about it without reading, why should I?” (laughter). The selection of a few notes and speaking from them with your eye on the audience and with the feeling that you are knowing what they are thinking. You see, a good lecturer knows what his audience is thinking, he knows when he’s boring them, he feels it in his bones. He won’t relax. You can see the same sort of thing you know with the actor; lecturing and teaching is a bit like acting – you’ve got to find an audience and you’ve got to keep the audience. Often you have actually to attract the audience. Now, you are in the happy situation that your audience is brought to you, but if you had to attract your audience like the man in the big market–I say the ‘big market’ because that’s a place in Newcastle – or as the man at the foot of the Mound has to attract his audience you would learn a few tricks. You would learn a few tricks. And while tricks sounds rather a low level it is necessary to have ways of keeping the audience’s attention; attention is the essential. I remember once I was going to my lawyer in Newcastle, about a somewhat important thing, and on the way down what we call in Newcastle ‘the big market’ where such tub-thumping people sell their wares, in spite of my important business with my lawyer I could hardly help stopping to watch a man. He had two packing cases and he put one on top of the other – I’ll keep within six feet of that – and he was putting one on top of the other , and looking at it, and stepping back, and then changing it round and I wondered what on earth this was and then he took a carving knife out

14 Sir Henry Cohen, later Lord Cohen of Birkenhead (1900-1977), was elected to the chair of medicine at the University of Liverpool in1934. In addition to his clinical brilliance, he was a talented lecturer, showing originality, breadth of vision, erudition and wit. He took both the work of medical administrator and clinician in his stride and to the undergraduate both his teaching and lectures were a delight.Wolstenholme G (editor). Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians of London continued to 1983. Oxford : IRL Press, 1984, 106-108.

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of his inner pocket and stuck it on top of the upper packing case and didn’t like that and put it on another way. I had to go to away to my lawyer at that time but people began to come round him – he was attracting their interest, their attention – and when I came out of the lawyer 20 minutes later he was standing on the two boxes and selling carving knives! (laughter)

Side 4Well as I say you are free of the necessity of attracting your audience in their bodily sense, but you’ve got to attract their minds. They have entered bodily the classroom or the lecture room; it doesn’t follow that their minds are there. So the early part of your lecture has to be something like this business with the carving knife – it has to be something which will attract them, and give them a feeling that there is something which is… their curiosity or some other instinct is aroused and they want to attend.

Now, about the speed of a lecture. First of all about the speed of speech, of talking. I have to watch myself, for instance, because I have a tendency to speak too quickly. I believe generally I can be fairly well heard but I gabble, which is a fault. Speaking too quickly is one of the things you have to watch. It’s like that advertisement you will have seen about the shaving soap – you know, “not too much, not too little, but just right”. Not too fast, not too slow, but just right. What is just right? Well, it mustn’t, above all it mustn’t be too slow, it must be fast enough to be rather natural and above all, one of the faults that oftenmakes me quiver when I am listening to a lecture, or a sermon, is the long pause – the over-long pause. A pause can be effective before something is emphasised, but an over-long pause makes you wonder if the man’s forgotten (laughter) or whether he’s going to go on and you feel embarrassed, as he, I suppose, might as well.

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And then there is the question of the speed of developing the matter of the lecture. There again, there is a best speed. And the essential thing, I think, is that the audience should have a sense of progress – that they’re going on, that they aren’t just labouring and labouring and labouring. That the speaker has a goal that he’s leading them towards and that they are progressing towards it. That is also true about courses of lectures. If a class of students feels that as the weeks goes on there is a progress – as indeed they mostly do feel – but still it’s desirable to mention it, it’s desirable to say something about what the next landmark that you are coming to is about. And, by the way, each lecture – when you have separate lectures – should, preferably, be somehow or other linked up to those before and those after it. I think it’s Ernest Barker15 somewhere, I’m sure it’s Earnest Barker somewhere who says that lectures ought to have what he calls ‘hooks of apprehension’ thrown out ahead so that at the next lecture you can hook onto them and the whole will be linked together. The speed, then, of developing the subject matter.

And then, about the novelty of the subject matter. It mustn’t be too boringly familiar, of course. On the other hand, it mustn’t be too startlingly new and novel. It is a question again of a compromise between what is novel and therefore interesting – because the novel, when it isn’t over-novel, is interesting – and the too new. And there again it is, well what can one say? One can only say ‘watch it’. You know, the only bad teachers, the only really bad teachers and the only really bad lecturers are those who don’t know they are bad.

15 Ernest Barker translated Gierke, On natural law and the theory of society 1500-1800 Lawbook Exchange 2001 ed‘To see the Western Europe on three centuries, as Gierke saw it, is to gain new angles of vision and new hooks of apprehension’ pxii

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Side 5When I was a pupil teacher I was put to assist a teacher who was terrible. He really was dreadful, and he thought he was good. I knew other teachers in the same school who weren’t very good but then they knew they weren’t and they were rather sorry for it. There is always hope for you, supposing for a moment that you aren’t perfect lecturers – I dare say you all are – but there is always hope if you feel that you would like to be better, that you aren’t very good, that you aren’t just satisfied with yourself.

Next point I have down is the question during a lecture of the use of humour. Well, a dangerous thing! (laughter) Necessary perhaps, like the carving knife, to recover attention, because it’s quite a possible thing to say that you know that there is some humorous remark you can make, or some funny story, if you like, that you can tell. But it’s alright if they are, if the humorous remark or the humorous story is appropriate, if it doesn’t seem to be dragged in because you wanted to tell a funny story. That is really fatal. It has to come spontaneously. I don’t mind you having a stock of funny stories maybe, but don’t say ‘I intend to tell you that one about the bee and the ant’ or something of that sort. Let it happen spontaneously. And it is also of no great use excepting possibly the use of keeping your head above water if you think you’re going to lose them altogether. It is of no use unless its application will be remembered and not merely the funny story, or not merely the funny remark. So very often, you know, you will remember so-and-so, what a good story he told, but what he told it about you really don’t recall. A friend of mine, David Somervell16, who was a 16 David Somervell (1885-1965) was a teacher, an historian and prolific author. Like Thomson, he was one of the witnesses or persons who sent memoranda for the use of the Spens Committee. [The Spens Report (1938) Secondary education with special reference to grammar schools and technical high schools London: HMSO]. They may have met around then.

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teacher of history inTunbridge School, he told me once, he said, ”you know, I had an old student of mine came back to see me and have tea with me, and after we’d talked for a while I said to him ‘you know, so-and-so, I wonder if you remember any of the History that I taught you?’. And there was a somewhat long pause and he racked his brains and said ‘well yes’, he said, ‘I remember that you told us that Catherine of Aragon was Charlie’s aunt’”. (laughter) Catherine of Aragon was Charlie’s aunt although I had to go through my history books to find which Charlie. I won’t tell you – if it sends you to your history books to see which Charlie it was who was Catherine of Aragon’s nephew it’s pretty good. But you see, what he remembered was the joke, and I don’t suppose for a moment he remembered any more about the history. You find the same difficulty and danger in advertisements. Now an advertisement is of no use, however striking it is, if you don’t remember what it advertises. It’s no use to the advertiser. Some are good because they embody in themselves the name of the product. That would be true of any humorous story – if it embodies somehow or other in itself the facts or the attitude you want to teach. “High o’er fence leapt Sunny Jim, Force was the food that raised him”. I don’t know if that’s now used, but that tells you Force any how. You know it’s the stuff you have to buy, Force. I knew a bad lecturer, by the way, at Armstrong College once, whose audience was so disorderly that he said he’d have to use force the next time, and he found about 10 packets of Force.

Side 6(laughter). Well I hope you won’t forget – I must remember my own caution – I hope you won’t forget that that spontaneous and accidental funny remark means that you have to see that in the advertisement, or in the lecture, any humorous remarks or any emphatic remarks you make, it’s no use if just they are remembered, it’s only useful if what

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they have to teach is remembered and you want to see that it’s so. The same is true, for instance, for that matter, of the quotation I made a little while ago about the shaving soap – “not too much, not too little, but just right” – but I don’t remember which shaving soap! So it isn’t a good, it’s not a good advertisement, not a good thing in your lecture.

Now something similar can be said about illustrations, and I mean, first of all, illustrations of a verbal nature, analogies and the like. They again are useful, of course, but they’re no good if only the illustration is remembered and not the illustrand, not what you wish to, that which you wish to illustrate. The numerical comparisons, for example, can set an audience off on some side track. You say that it takes, it takes, the distance to the moon is as long as it would take a railway train so many years, or whatever it is, to get there. And somebody then proceeds to work out in his head just how long is, and is that so, and loses the next 22 paragraphs of your lecture. You have to be careful that you don’t set them off on side things, or the row of pennies along Princes Street which I once did. And remember also about illustrations of that kind that verbal illustrations are, generally speaking, not as emphatic as those which appeal to the eye. Illustrations such as what is drawn on the blackboard, or the model or the, for that matter, the lantern slide. But about them my experience is this: that those which are much the most effective are those which somehow grow before the eyes of the audience. That is most easily done, of course, if the lecturer – and I’m speaking rather more now of the science lecturers and the medical lecturers, arts lecturers don’t have occasion as a rule to draw things on the blackboard but it would be rather fun if they did – if it grows. A diagram which is brought in finished and shown to a class is nothing like as effective as one which is made and grows before their eyes. But you may show them the finished one afterwards in order to have a more accurate one, but to see it growing, and to see the heart

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drawn and hear a systolic murmur there is less fatal than one which is there and so on – I heard this done the other day, I was going round hearing some lectures – which it grows on the blackboard is far better. Generally speaking you know things keep the attention which grow, which are in movement. If you have little children in a classroom it is very difficult for you to compete with the butterfly which has flown into the room. It is moving about, it is far more alive than you are. The same with diagrams – they must be, they must try to be alive. You may say “well, then, the film”. Well I don’t know enough about the use of the film, excepting that it’s brings into the black…it means darkening the room and all sorts of things like that. Generally speaking, of course, that is rather the teacher’s attitude. Generally speaking, the teacher likes a piece of chalk and a blackboard and the power of extemporising. Illustrations, then, should be growing. Models should be simple, very simple. Maps should be also those which emphasise the chief points.

Side 7

I want, if I may, to stop talking – I don’t know how this will appeal to you – I would like to stop talking fairly soon and ask if you would discuss or ask questions, or the like, or speak. And I think the simplest way of doing that is to stop at a certain point, say in about three quarters of an hour from now, or ten minutes, and then let all who wish to go, go – and I won’t mind if all go, I’d be able to go home sooner – and then some who might wish to remain and ask questions or discuss.

There is the question next in the lecture of habits and tricks. One lecturer will pace back and forward. Another has the habit of always rubbing his hands, a lecturer that I knew about. Lloyd George once, when he gave his rectorial address here, it was many years ago, he

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had the habit of emphasising his points by doing this and very soon, you know, the whole of the McEwan Hall 17was doing this (laughter). And Lloyd George lost his temper! A very remarkable thing for a man accustomed to speaking to audiences but not apparently those which did that! Well tricks are dangerous and we all have tricks. I know that I have tricks. You have to have someone who tells you what they are. I married mine, who tells me what they are (laughter) – she tells me very candidly what they are and I say “I don’t believe you” but all the same at the same time I try to watch that I don’t do them so often afterwards. She says I’m always saying “you know”. If you hear me say “you know” in the rest of this lecture will you stamp loudly with your feet and thus try to cure me if that indeed be a fault of mine. Pacing back and forwards - of course you can have, as Patrick Meredith18 said in that British Medical Journal of the 26th August, you can have a lecturer committing all the faults and yet getting it over. Patrick Meredith’s paragraph ended with the word – I think he said the essential thing is vitality. If a man believes what he’s lecturing about and if he has a certain vitality he can paddle about the room in felt slippers, or he can look out of the window or all sorts of things and yet he will get it over. I don’t recommend, by the way, paddling about the room as being a way of getting it over, this was in spite of these faults. And it may be, and I have known lecturers who were very very good lecturers and who had faults – if you can call them faults in a very good lecturer – or habits that they had acquired. But on the whole they’re undesirable. It is not desirable to be tied, of course, like a stone idol to

17 A large, ornate Victorian round hall in the University of Edinburgh, used for university lectures and examinations.18 ‘The Art of Lecturing’ G. Patrick Meredith Br Med J. 1950 August 26; 2(4677): 475–477.Another essay in this issue was by J. A. Lauwerys [later professor of Comparative Education at the Institute of Education in London on Methods of Education Br Med J. 1950 August 26; 2(4677): 471–474.

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one place. I am tied here by that thing but otherwise I might be moving a little. But try to see what your, or ask your wife, what your faults are in the way of habits.

Then there is the very important question of your students taking notes. Now I find a great difference opinion among my colleagues when I ask them questions about this. But I think the majority don’t like the audience of students of whom they only see the tops of their heads while they’re scribbling away. I don’t, certainly. But how to avoid it? Some students have told me that they very much liked the handout of typed notes which were going to be given beforehand. One such student, who is now a headmaster in this city, spoke of the Philosophy lectures which he’d gone to where the Philosophy professor of those days had been in the habit of thus giving out a typed sheet of his… and he said “you know, I could look at that before” – “you know”, but that was he said that to me, he said to me (laughter).

Side 8

He said to me “I, having looked at this beforehand I knew the kind of thing I was going to hear, I realised just the main points of it, and I was able to just sit back and savour it and think while the lecturer was speaking. If I’d been scribbling I couldn’t have thought”. So he was very much in favour of the handout of the type-written thing. And others are very much against it. They say “it cramps my style so much. If I give it out beforehand, well, they will swot that up and they won’t listen to me and anyhow I feel I must follow that and there I am chained, fettered” and there is some truth I think in that too. Personally I don’t like the feel that my audience knows all about what I’m going to say beforehand, or much about it. But there are some occasions where such handouts are perhaps essential. But not I think,

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not often I think in the faculty of arts – but very often perhaps in medicine or in science. In the faculty of arts – I won’t say that all lectures are of this type – but generally speaking the lecture in the faculty of arts is one which intends to illuminate and to inspire. Whereas in the faculties of science and medicine, although illumination and inspiration are found there and enough, still there is a hard body of facts which has to be got over somehow or other. They can be got out of a book but not all of them. At the firing line with advanced classes there may be things which are not yet in the textbooks and which it’s very important in the class should have in exact detail. Take a new kind of surgical operation - by jove, they’ve got to know just exactly about that, they can’t just… So that there will be cases where giving out such a handout may be even essential and certainly desirable. In general I don’t like it and I find many of my colleagues don’t, it’s a matter for each one’s personal opinion. But the note taking, I don’t much like it. I’m reminded of the story of the blacksmith you know who’s going to the university extension lectures (stamping of feet) in the (laughter) – thank you, thank you, thank you – I’m reminded of the story of the blacksmith you don’t know (laughter) who was going to the university extension lectures in the village and as each member of the village went in they were presented with a notebook and pencil, and the blacksmith said “what’s this ‘ere for?”. They said “that’s to make notes on so that you can remember the lecture”. “Remember the lecture?” he said, “what’s me ‘ead for?”. Well I’ve often been inclined to say to students “what’s your head for?”. You can see these things and occasionally note, yes, a new term, but not this ‘scribble, scribble, scribble’ thing. And I strongly urge those of you who don’t do so already to just try to discourage your audience. That’s…one way of doing that, of course, is to go at Sir Alexander Gray’s speed. If you go at his speed you can’t, it can’t be done, and that has its advantages. I remember coming across an article in an American journal, which was

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joking of this. It said “you know, the other day” or it said “you know, the other day I was looking through my desk drawers – I forget what I was looking for – when I came across my education

Side 9It was wrapped up nicely, it was tied up nicely in red, in pink tape and I said ‘this must be Matilda’s doing – she wasn’t educated, and she’s so glad that I was educated’. I took my education out”, the article said, “and had a look at it. I turned to Advanced English and I read the classical and the romantic. Classical makes for one sort of thing, and romantic for other”. He said “I didn’t remember now just what it was that the classical made for, or the romantic made for, I did remember” he said, “that the classical was very bad and the romantic was very good. The lecturer was at such pains to make that clear that that has stuck. But what it was I don’t know. And besides,” he said, “he only went up to eighteen hundred and thirty-seven; since then I’ve had to just rely on what I like in the English Literature. Further, I thought ‘it is a very important thing to have had an education’ and I wrapped it up carefully and I put it back in the drawer again.” Well, you know, the joke was there right enough. So many educations are like that – they’re a set of notes, which you put away. You want – if you can of course – to get at the student and not at his notebook and if you discourage him from making too many notes you may have a better chance of doing so.

Then there are different types of lecture. I’ve spoken already a little about that. There is the inspiring lecture; the Lloyd-Georgian sort of thing which carries its audience with it. There is – that can’t be done every day, you can’t expect to have that every day – there is the informational which emphasises key points, breaks the matter up, tells them references where they can look things up and read them for

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themselves. There is the integrating lecture which joins together things which might otherwise fall apart. There is the revising lecture which is also an important thing and rather liable to be dull, only usually it is given not very long before an examination and therefore there is that derived interest of the audience in listening carefully which makes them attend better.

Well, as I said, I thought I would like to stop and ask those who have other engagements or who might want to go, to go, and perhaps ask some to stay behind, come near the front and have, for 20 minutes or so, have any questions or talks. Is that a procedure which commends itself to you? Well, I hear no hissing, which is the usual sign of not agreeing, so shall we pause for 2 or 3 minutes and then go on in that way?

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REFERENCESAnthony, J 50th Anniversary of Establishment of Phonetics Dept. University of Edinburgh, September 1998, Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project, Washington, D.C. 20560 http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/speechsynthesis/ss_anth.htm

Interviews - Vida McFarland 31st August 2007 and late June , 2008Interviews and Correspondence - John Nisbet 2007-8Interview - Catherine Hunter 13th Jan 2008 Interview – Marion Cooke 3rd July, 2006

Cohen, Henry Methods and Men in the Teaching of Clinical MedicineBr Med J. 1950 August 26; 2(4677): 478–481.

Duff, J in Thomson, GH [1969] The Education of an Englishman MH Publications: EdinburghDuff, J University of Durham Special Collections [DUF 3 / B / (c.1922 – 1927)]

Report of the Committee on University Teaching Methods [Hale Report ] [1964] London: HMSO

Hartog, P. J., and E. C. Rhodes (1935). An Examination of Examinations;being a summary of investigations on the comparison of marks allotted toexamination scripts by independent examiners and boards of examiners,together with a section on a viva voce examination. London: Macmillan andCo. Ltd [2nd Ed 4th Impression 1936]

Hartog, P and Rhodes, E [1936] The Marks of Examiners London: Macmillan and Co

Inglis, WB in Thomson, GH [1969] The Education of an Englishman MH Publications: Edinburgh

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Lawn, M [2008] Blowing up the Citadel of Examinations: The English Committee and the Carnegie Corporation in An Atlantic Crossing’ Symposium Books

Lee, Jennie [1963] This Great Journey London: McGibbon

Lehmann, Andrew G. The Hale Report International Review of Education / Internationale Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft / Revue Internationale de l'Education, Vol. 12, No. 1. (1966), pp. 38-46.Maxwell, J and Blacker, CP [1955] Obituary Sir Godfrey Thomson Eugenics Review Vol 47 p14

Meredith, G. Patrick The Art of Lecturing Br Med J. 1950 August 26; 2(4677): 475–477.

SCRE (Scottish Council for Research in Education). (1933). The intelligence of Scottish children: a national survey of an age-group. London, UK: University of London Press. (Publications of the Scottish Council for Research in Education V.)

Sutherland, G. (1984). Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental testing and English Education, 1880-1940. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Thomson, G H [1922/23] An American Class of teacher-Graduates Durham University Journal Vol 23/4 1922/3 p251-3]

Thomson, G. H. (1939). The Factorial Analysis of Human Ability. London: University of London Press.

Thomson, GH [1969] The Education of an Englishman MH Publications: Edinburgh

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