I am not aware of any serious studies that show lectures are superior to more active forms of learning and pedagogy. The idea that we evolved to learn from peop

I am not aware of any serious studies that show lectures are superior to more active forms of learning and pedagogy. The idea that we evolved to learn from people talking to us is pretty much nonsense, we learn through experience and failure and learning from that. His own comment about the violin demonstrates that point. Ideas are great, evidence for those ideas is better. This has no evidence besides anecdotes for a reason. >Why, if lectures have all the disadvantages that I have shown, do they persist in going to them? The surprising answer is that many mathematicians find it easier to learn from lectures than from books Uh no...people's perception of their learning is rarely connected to their actual learning. Lectures give high perceived learning specifically because the way a lecture works makes it less likely for a learner to encounter evidence of their failure/misunderstanding. lectures persist because they are normed. People keep going because they are the norm and because they are the only way for people to interact with new colleagues or information. Go to an educational research conference and I guarantee you that you can attend a lecture about why active learning is superior to lectures....that isn't evidence that lectures are better, its evidence that people stick to habits and norms over what works.