In Praise of Lectures (2004), Thomas William Körner
The essay is off to a strong start that lifted my mood.
For these students attendance at lectures has a magical rather than a real significance. They attend lectures regularly (religiously, as one might say) taking care to sit as far from the lecturer as possible (it is not good to attract the attention of little understood but powerful forces) and take complete notes. Some lecturers give out the notes at such speed (often aided by the technological equivalent of the Tibetan prayer wheel — an overhead projector) that the congregation is fully occupied but most fail in this task...
The notes of the lecture are then kept untouched until the holidays or, more usually, the week before the exams when they are carefully highlighted with day-glow yellow pens (a process known as revision). When more than 50% of the notes have been highlighted, revision is said to be complete, the magical power of the notes is exhausted and they are carefully placed in a file never to be consulted again.
The invention of the Xerox machine [or Internet] means that only one student need attend each lecture, the remainder being freed ... Nor would this student need to take very extensive notes since everything done in the lecture is better done in the textbooks.
