Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Education
& Teaching:
Socratic
Method
- Questioning the Answers:
- Teachers Turning to Age-Old Socratic Method
- to Help Modern Students Hone Their Critical Thinking Skills
-
- Nancy Trejos
- Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
Amy Kelly's students can't get away with silence in her class. They
can't get away with having no opinions. And they certainly can't get away from her
relentless questioning -- her whys and her hows.
"What is the purpose of government?" she recently asked her
eighth-graders at Rachel Carson Middle School in Fairfax County.
"To create or keep order for those living in a country or
state," answered K.C. O'Malley, 14. Call Kelly a modern-day Socrates. It has been
more than 2,000 years since the ancient Greek philosopher lived, but teachers to this day
are trying to incorporate aspects of the Socratic method with students as early as the
primary grades.
The result?
Teachers are talking less and listening more. Already a hallmark of law
school teaching, Socrates' method of asking people questions to get them to talk their way
to an understanding of some deep concept has in recent decades gained a following among
teachers of younger students. It has found a place even in subjects, such as math, that
traditionally don't lend themselves to much talking. Schools want to prepare students to
think for themselves, to answer complex questions about why things are: in short, to think
critically -- the tool they need to perform well on some standardized tests.
So sticking solely to the traditional didactic method, or the lecture
format, just isn't cutting it anymore, some teachers say. So it raises the question: What
is the Socratic method? The answer, philosophers and teachers say, is not all that clear.
Over the years, the Socratic method has evolved into a generic term to describe the
process by which teachers ask students open-ended questions to spark discussions, often
with the use of a text. But its modern-day incarnation is not what it was circa 400 B.C.
This was Socrates' way of doing things: He sought common people out for
interrogations that ultimately helped them understand concepts such as justice and virtue.
But the process, frankly, was often brutal. His unforgiving line of questioning usually
left the person puzzled, having to admit that his or her original belief was, well, wrong.
In some ways, Socrates set out to show their ignorance for their own
good. "Socrates was fairly confrontational in the questions he asked," said John
Rossi, associate professor in the teacher education division of Virginia Commonwealth
University.
"That can be intimidating to a 15-year-old." It's hardly the
kind of atmosphere fitting for a school. Few teachers use the true form of the Socratic
method to teach their courses, not even in law schools, where the the technique is most
prevalent.
The sheer size of classes makes it difficult to have the type of
one-on-one discussions Socrates had. And few teachers have the time it takes to prepare
for such an intense format.
"If you simply take Plato's dialogues and look at it that way,
where essentially all teaching is done by interrogating other people about whether they
think they know what justice is or something of that sort, I'm not aware of anyone who has
taught an entire course like that," said Peter Singer, a bioethics professor at
Princeton University. Susan Vogel-Hudgins uses a kinder, gentler variation on Socrates'
method.
"I'm teaching them more humanity than academics," she said one
day as her students waited in her room before class began at Northwestern High School in
Hyattsville. Her seminar, which draws on the example of the Socratic method, "forces
kids to think," she said.
- Thinking is what U.S. students are often accused of
not doing. She said she hears it all the time. America's students don't think deep
thoughts. They can't articulate their opinions. They have no opinions.
But there are plenty of opinions in her Advanced Placement psychology
class. On a recent day, the students arranged 27 chairs into a circle so they could see
each other's faces -- a must for the discussion. She sets a few simple ground rules. Read
the text carefully. Listen to each other, and don't interrupt. Raise your hand only if you
can't hear the speaker.
For five minutes, there was silence as the students read "On Being
Abused by Others," in which the Buddha argues that people should do good to those who
harm them. As he speaks, a man hits him, and the Buddha does not fight back. "Ladies
and gentlemen, I'd like to open with a question, and remember the rules of the
discussion," Vogel-Hudgins said. "When is it important to walk away? When would
it be important to not retaliate and walk away?"
Then came an avalanche of responses, with the discussion turning into an
examination of love and hate. "It's hard to walk away, just like it's hard to
forgive," said Mi-Mi Gebretsadik, 18. "Personally, it's easier to hate than to
love." "To love someone is to work at it," said Eduardo Coney, 18.
"People don't like to work at it because they're lazy. You know what I'm
saying?"
In recent decades, several educators have come up with their own
variations on Socratic teaching. Howard Zeiderman, a professor at St. John's College in
Annapolis, co-founded the nonprofit Touchstones, which he describes as a
"redistribution of power.Who is the legitimate speaker?
In most of these programs, the legitimacy is located pretty much with
the teacher." Then there's the Paideia program, created by philosopher Mortimer J.
Adler, which mixed lecturing and coaching with a Socratic-type seminar. Twenty years
later, the North Carolina-based National Paideia Center has trained teachers in at least a
dozen states.
Director Terry Roberts encourages teachers to speak no more than 30
percent of the classtime. "What a lot of teachers do is lecture and practice class
management by being the one to talk all the time," he said.
Kelly was more than willing to let her students do most of the talking
Friday. "If a government is ineffective, what should be done?" she asked.
Bethany Morris, 14, had this to offer: "If it's really, really ineffective, you
overthrow it." "There's a difference between ineffective and intolerable,"
said David Lewis, 13.
One student brought up Nazi Germany as an example. "I don't think
anyone thinks mass killing is right," David said. "If it involves people dying,
we should do something about it."
by Michael S. Russo
Molloy College, Department of Philosophy
In Plato's early dialogues, the method of argumentation that Socrates
uses is called the elenchos (eh-lenk-us) or
examination. In these dialogues we rarely find Socrates lecturing or directly answering
the questions; instead we find him asking questions of others in an attempt to lead them
indirectly to the truth.
Typically Socrates will ask someone who claims to be an expert to define
a moral term that he is using--the nature of piety, courage, friendship or justice, for
example. He then proceeds to demonstrate that the definition that has been given is
inadequate or contradictory. This leads the person with whom he is arguing to come up with
other definitions, which, though more adequate, are also shown to be problematic. Most of
Plato's early dialogues end inconclusively, with the person being interrogated by Socrates
at a complete loss to know what he believes about the topic.
So what is the point of the elenchos if it simply leads the person being
questioned to end up more confused than when he started? The answer is that Socrates'
method serves both a negative as well as a positive function. Negatively, Socrates is
attempting to show the individual with whom he is arguing that the view which he holds is
untenable.
On the positive side his goal is to move closer to the eidos or
universal definition of the thing being spoken about. In the Euthyphro, for example, the
subject matter is piety, so he is looking for the eidos
of piety---a standard for determining which actions are pious or impious in all
circumstances. Once we have this standard, he believes, we will possess certain
knowledge [episteme] about right and
wrong/good and bad/virtue and vice. And with this knowledge, he is convinced that
happiness is all but inevitable.
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