Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Chapter 2

This article really struck me when it talked about how teachers talk too much. For several years now I have begun to pay attention to the different ways in which teachers teach. In my own experience as a student, I have found that teachers who really heavily upon lecture and directing all of the instruction themselves end up falling short in helping me to retain the information which they are trying to convey. I find myself getting drowsy at their lengthy speeches, and my mind has a tendency to wander. However, when teachers ask of the students to participate more in the lecture and transform the lesson more into a discussion, then I find that I really flourish. Discussion in the classroom where students lead a lot of the lesson themselves seems to be, at least for myself, a much superior method of teaching. It provides the class with many differing interpretations and reactions to the same information and allows students to individually expand upon their own ideas, rather than everyone just sitting and falling asleep to someone standing and talking at the front of the room. The idea presented here that teachers talk too much really resonated with me because I have already felt for some time now that is the case, and that needs to change. I would be happy to read more on the effectiveness of discussion based classrooms and ways for the teacher to avoid lecturing.