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Oh, I was not suggesting that observation of effective instruction necessarily leads to effective instructors. I hope you do not think I meant that, by sitting in a chair and watching a great scholar lecture, the one sitting in the chair can easily learn to be an effective instructor. It has to be a contact sport.</p>
<p>Nor was I referring to a process of having master teachers go into a classroom, observe a young instructor’s approach, and then offering a critique. I have no idea if that is effective or not.</p>
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<p>Well, I think something like the Socratic dialog is that mechanism. It should occur not only in the classroom, but also continually among the faculty. iDad cited something interesting about a brand of academic civility, one in which any student or any faculty member is allowed to ask the hardest question of anyone else and be entitled to expect gratitude rather than resentment for one’s effort.</p>
<p>As we are doing now. You are asking good hard questions, questions not easily answered, but I am grateful that someone is out there asking them. Not to me particularly but, I hope, to people with a more direct stake at Brown and other schools.</p>