Michel Foucault taught at the Collège de France, an institution in which researchers give lectures and seminars to the public. There was no tuition and no students—only “auditors.” Cutting-edge ideas were made available to all. In the last decade, his lectures at the Collège have been published– in English translation by Picador (from the original French by Gallimard). In the standard forward to each volume, the editors explain that Foucault’s lectures in the mid- to late-seventies corresponded with the increased availability of cassette tape recorders. According to a 1975 article in Le Nouvelle Observateur, Foucault was distressed by the compulsion simply to record—and not necessarily engage with—his lectures. “It should be possible to discuss what I have put forward,” he pleads with the auditors grabbing their tape decks at the front of the room before a hasty departure.

“Sometimes, when it has not been a good lecture, it would need very little, just one question, to put everything straight. However, this question never comes. The group effect in France makes any genuine discussion impossible. And as there is no feedback, the course is theatricalized. My relationship with the people is like that of an actor or an acrobat. And when I have finished speaking, a sensation of total solitude . . .” (from the forward to Security, Territory, Population, xiv)

Based on his attitude toward his silent, recording audience, maybe we can infer what Foucault would think of the drive last year to replace college, for-credit courses with MOOCs—often thought of as recorded lectures expecting not engagement over ideas but a virtuoso performance by a scholar functioning more like an actor than someone pushing the boundaries of knowledge and, thus, as one who can fail or at least benefit from someone to help clarify ideas, to catch the acrobat if he falls, requiring a community of learning. The theatrical quality can be enhanced by technology, passively receiving the lecture for future, on-demand use. Teaching and learning occurs in solitude, paradoxically because the information is being disseminated to larger and larger groups.

Such concerns are significant, particularly in light of today’s pressing higher ed conversations. On the other hand, the publication of Foucault’s lectures only decades later, thanks in part to those cassette recorders littering his rostrum, has allowed a new understanding of his projects, one that fleshes out and deepens what we know from the works he released at the time. While his human auditors failed to push him in the present, his mechanical auditors allow us, albeit belatedly, to examine his ideas as they emerged, in a form less stylized and uniquely framed as we find in Discipline and Punish or The Will to Knowledge.

Recently, more promising MOOC endeavors have gathered thousands of students—not in the sense of taking a course for “credit,” but in the sense that they are not the passive “auditors” bemoaned by Foucault. Last week, edX began a course on Alexander the Great led by classicist (and fellow “Synkrisis” author) Guy Rogers, who hopes that students (96% of whom self-report taking the course out of sheer “intellectual curiosity”) will “take ownership of the course” through their interaction in online forums and assignments. Rogers, like Foucault, certainly sounds like a scholar expecting his audience to take a role in molding what he presents to them. And, a few weeks ago, Harvard’s Laura Nasrallah completed a successful course on Paul’s letters, utilizing not only the normal edX platforms but the website Poetry Genius (an offshoot of Rap Genius) to allow students to comment on the epistles through the site’s hyperlinked interface. Beyond the “one question” Foucault hoped for, the imaginative use of technology allows thousands to collaborate in exploring themes of timeless value.

I would have wanted a live-stream of Foucault’s lectures. Granted, despite his brilliance, I still would have needed an in person, more formative experience in learning theory, whether or not the experience incorporated technology. (Here, the MOOC needs to be supplemented by other ed tech experiments, such as the DOCC.) But at least we, the past and future audience of his work, would not have to wait thirty years to receive some great ideas in the making—or, in other cases, the basics on Alexander and Paul from world-class scholars providing a outlet for the world’s intellectual curiosity.

Apparently, the Collège de France already offers online lectures, a fact that may support or undermine my point—perhaps both. But there is information—both introductory and novel—that needs to be pushed out to the public, as long as the public can push back.

(I think I can already see potential problems with this idea, so have at it in the comments. “It should be possible to discuss what I have put forward,” etc.)