The title of that older article was "New thinking in undergraduate education." Here's what it said ....
Students are in danger of "spending too much of their time memorizing facts, and [have] insufficient time at [their] disposal to master the principles underlying [their] subject and to develop [their] powers of thought." .... the most important purpose of a university education is to teach [students] to think for [themselves] ... it may on occasion demand a re-examination of the whole approach to a subject in undergraduate courses."I remember that the biology department where I was an undergraduate (Carleton University in Ottawa) organized a weekend conference to discuss revising undergraduate education in 1967. I spoke about the need to focus on ideas and concepts and get away from boring lectures about facts.
UPDATE: A reader asked for the references. The letter in the Sept. 17th issue is from Barry S. Winkler [doi: 10.1038/525321f]. The original article from 1965 is in the issue of Feb. 27, 1965 [doi: 10.1038/205835a0]. The 2015 article referred to in the recent letter to Nature is Bradforth et al. (2015).
Bradforth, S.F., Miller, E.R., Dichtel, W.R., Leibovich, A.K., Feig, A.L., Martin, J.D., Bjorkman, K.S., Schultz, Z.D., and Smith, T.L. (2015) University learning: Improve undergraduate science education. Nature 523:282-284 [PDF]