This writer’s conception of Socratic Seminar is 3-D:
- Delve
- Decipher
- Deliver
Going into a text via questioning – delving -- is mandatory. Student interpretation – deciphering -- drives initial understanding. Delivery puts a participant’s idea before the group for deliberation.
A seminar may take one and a half hours or so. Learning requires thinking; thinking takes time. But many schools provide in the neighborhood of an hour’s time per class. Pullout and other options avail themselves for gifted students. Even so, much good can emerge in a disciplined hour of seminar.
The Greek state made Socrates drink hemlock for “corrupting the young” (Saunders 568). We now recognize that he did not corrupt his students, but taught his students to think, the necessary counter to indoctrination. We moderns find Socratic inquiry to be a prompt to superior learning.
Respect for human reason through seminar has several important advocates whose works teach educators today: for example, Dr. Mortimer Adler (1902-2001), past Director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, and Charles Van Doren in the book, The Paideia Program: An Educational Syllabus (15-31), and Dr. Richard Paul, Director of Research and Development at the Center for Critical Thinking in Tomales, California.
Adler suggests that a leader may choose to examine one piece for seminar deliberation, or may choose two pieces that conflict (Adler Inservice). I suggest as other possibilities Martin Luther King’s “The Power of Nonviolence,” versus a piece by Eldridge Cleaver; or MLK’s piece versus the famous speech by Malcolm X in Oakland, California; or Rousseau versus Thomas Hobbes.
Another example of artifact opposition appears below. It is contained in one of the later questions for a seminar on Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address.” The question asks the seminar students to compare Lincoln’s speech with the speech of Shakespeare’s Richard III at Bosworth Field.
Whether one or two items are on the table, opposing views will emerge. Students move toward synthesis in the Socratic model, somewhat in the manner of Hegel (Kenny, ed.: Scruton 202-3; Quinton 338-9). Inquiry identifies and examines different views concerning ideas, problems, and conundrums. Explorations of values occur as well. New understandings arise in what Socrates might call the pursuit of truth. This is a constant good, an ineluctable outcome.
The teacher/leader is the central figure in the success of the seminar. Much like Socrates, the teacher with an earned expertise has in mind no preconceived answers to questions, but asks questions to pierce the text for greater understanding. The teacher will have prepared questions that defy easy answers. Through succeeding questions the seminar examines student responses. It is epistemology for the group at large (how does one know?), and it is metacognition (how good is the thinking?) for the Socratic leader who must conduct the questioning. A leader must attend to the depth and direction of the seminar. Leader experience will lend an important hand.
Works Cited
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Adler, Mortimer J. “Paideia Inservice.” Educator inservice conducted at Northglenn
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Brooks, David. “The quest for dignity.” In Boulder Daily Camera 3 Feb. 2011, 6A.
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Craig, Hardin, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Glenview, Ill.: Scott,
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Crouch, Jack. “The Evolution of Tragedy.” Seminar comments presented at Colorado
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Ebert, Roger. “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In The Great Movies. New York: Broadway
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Fehrenbacher, Don E., ed. Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 1859-1865:
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Guskey, Thomas R. “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook 1: The
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Parker, Kathleen. “Better read than dead?” In The Denver Post 8 January 2011,
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Paul, Richard. “Socratic Dialogue,” demonstration. The Foundation for Critical
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Saunders, J.L. “Socrates.” In The World Book Encyclopedia. 1992 ed. Print.