A seminar leader must provide students with a clear explanation of what seminar is, and what his/her expectations are:
- It is planned, and it is conducted by the educational expert, the instructor (or students per careful training)
- It is student preparation on the text
- It is rigorous questioning along lines of inquiry worthy of the intelligent group at hand
- Allowing thought time, it is one question leading to another; attendant comments pertain
- It is affirmation and application of Socrates’ comment, “I know . . . that I know nothing” (Durant 9)
- It is a forum where each student is expected to participate
- There are no “right answers,” only a sustained examination of thinking
- It is a testament that true thinking is complex and rewarding
The five+ questions that the seminar leader composes must require upper-level thinking of students. For example, a minimal question might be, “Who wins the power struggle between Snowball and his chief antagonist Napoleon in Animal Farm?” A much more profitable question would be, “Why does the inspiration of Major and Snowball not endure under the antagonism of Napoleon?” This provides a superior prompt to thinking for its invitation to compare and contrast, and its requirement that students carefully analyze.
The seminar leader and students arrange themselves in a circle. Oral contributions are vital to the individual contributor and the group. The seminar leader monitors the group to steer away from domination by one or two individuals. Since the expectation is that all members participate, a seminar leader may choose from time to time to call on reluctant students whose reticence marginalizes their benefit in the seminar. But the seminar is ideally a voluntary experience. Participants must prepare for seminar by careful readings of the text, writing margin notes, and underlining significant elements. Thereby each student will benefit from the informed dialectic that transpires.
Inform students that this is not a casual discussion, but a scholarly conversation, a method of inquiry to get at deeper and deeper truths, inseparable from references to the subject of study. Abstractions are valuable in thinking; but book data – details and quotes – are also indispensable to intellectual depth. The devil is NOT in the details; deciphering is.
If a certain topic does not emerge in seminar, an instructor can do a follow-up activity or presentation to address it. Instructor observations count. The Adler post-seminar question, “Why is this important?” (Adler Inservice) can be brought to bear on any point to bring students to a level of evaluation after the fact. Students can write as a response to seminar. They can answer questions such as “What do I know now that I didn’t know before?” (Adler Inservice) They can and should pose questions to answer as well.
Some teachers prefer that students lead the seminar. The instructor owns the greater expertise. However, this writer sees the value of student-led seminars, only to follow commitment and careful planning. The art of questioning is, after all, a key to intellectual definition and advancement, and it takes serious effort.
Across the grade levels, we do our students a favor when we ask difficult questions. We honor them and we challenge them to do superior thinking. Invariably they leave a seminar with much greater insight and appreciation. They will have interacted through exchanges in seminar to do so.
Here are several works of literature on which this writer has conducted Socratic seminars. He has provided 5+ questions on each work on which the seminar leader and students might deliberate. Note that all questions are upper-level per Benjamin Bloom (Guskey 38-43) in the hierarchy of thinking. Perhaps “critical thinking” could be defined as the best thinking we can do.
Animal Farm, by George Orwell
- How accurate is Orwell’s subtitle, “A Fairy Tale”?
- Evaluate how exact Orwell is in rendering human beings as various animals in the novel.
- Most things seem spelled out in the novel. How and why is the windmill destruction left a mystery by Orwell?
- Where do you see symbols in the novel, and what are their relative importance?
- One aspect of classical tragedy is “Your greatest good is your greatest evil” (Crouch, “Evolution of Tragedy”). How applicable is this concept in the book?
- David Brooks, political columnist, writes, “Autocracies are more fragile than any form of government, by far” (Boulder Daily Camera 6A). Would Orwell agree? What is Orwell’s most important point in his book?
- Considering a host of literary elements – e.g., character, setting, plot, tone, theme – how good a work of literature is Animal Farm?
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
- Some may assert that setting is the most significant element in the novel. Defend or refute this.
- Analyze the use of colors in the novel.
- This book could be viewed as a religious statement or as a secular statement. Which is a more accurate interpretation?
- Conclude whether the story ends ultimately on a positive note, or ironically on a negative or dark thematic message. Consider what is happening in the outside world in your answer.
- On a scale of one to ten (the highest value), how do you rate this novel, and why?
Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
- Do you find satisfactory the mix of humor and pathos (strong sympathetic feeling) in the novel?
- Satire highlights human faults. How successful is Twain’s satire in the novel?
- Thematically, what is the most important scene in the book? Why?
- A modern-day professor of English at Auburn University wants to change all of the “N-words” to “slave” (Parker B11). What would be the effects of such a change to the novel? Does anyone have the right to change the novel?
- It is common knowledge that this is a great American novel. Should it be deemed “the greatest American novel”? Defend or refute this.
“Gettysburg Address,” by Abraham Lincoln
Text: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Fehrenbacher 536)
What are the balances in the speech, and how effective are they?
Word choice establishes tone (author’s attitude toward what he/she has written). What is the tone of this speech, and how does word choice establish this tone?
What grammatical choices does Lincoln make to gain this tone?
On a scale from “not” to “somewhat” to “greatly,” how poetic is this speech?
After students read Shakespeare’s Richard III, ask students to compare Lincoln’s speech to that of Richard III, Act V, sc. iii (his oration to his army), Bosworth Field: (Comparing these two speeches could be a seminar itself)
Text, Richard III, Act V, sc. iii, l. 314-351:
“What shall I say more than I have inferr’d?
Remember whom you are to cope withal;
A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways,
A scum of Bretons, and base lackey peasants,
Whom their o’er-cloyed country vomits forth
To desperate ventures and assured destruction.
You sleeping safe, they bring to you unrest;
You having lands, and blest with beauteous wives,
They would restrain the one, distain the other.
And who doth lead them but a paltry fellow,
Long kept in Bretagne at our mother’s cost?
A milk-sop, one that never in his life
Felt so much cold as over shoes in snow?
Let’s whip these stragglers o’er the seas again;
Lash hence these overweening rags of France,
These famish’d beggars, weary of their lives;
Who, but for dreaming on this fond exploit,
For want of means, poor rats, had hang’d themselves:
If we be conquer’d, let men conquer us,
And not these bastard Bretons; whom our fathers
Have in their own land beaten, bobb’d, and thump’d,
And in record, left them the heirs of shame.
Shall these enjoy our lands? Lie with our wives?
Ravish our daughters? Hark! I hear their drum.
Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen!
Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head!
Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood;
Amaze the welkin with your broken staves! . . .
A thousand hearts are great within my bosom:
Advance our standards, set upon our foes;
Our ancient word of courage, fair saint George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!
Upon them! Victory sits on our helms.” (Craig 338)
“Magnitudes,” by Howard Nemerov
- Analyze the relationship of the poem title to the poem content.
- What scientific bases does Nemerov have for his statements?
- What is the poet’s attitude toward what he has written, and how do you conclude this?
- How effective is the imagery in the poem? Which image is the most effective? Why?
- Writers often make use of contrast. How useful are Nemerov’s contrasts?
- The style is clearly not Shakespearian; however, pass some judgment on its eloquence, if any.
- To what degree does eloquence matter?
- What is the poem’s central point, and how well does he make it?
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Stanley Kubrick
- Some viewers think this movie is slow. What do you think?
- Realism and believability (verisimilitude) are big considerations in the fiction of both books and movies. Assess these elements in the movie.
- The music is an appreciable element. Pass some judgment on director Stanley Kubrick’s choices for his soundtrack.
- HAL’s “end” stirs pathos in the viewer. Compare his death to the deaths of Frank Poole and the hibernating crew members. When Bowman re-enters the spacecraft, does he kill HAL, a highly intelligent living being, or just shut the computer down?
- What IS the monolith, object or symbol?
- Interpret the movie’s end.
- What is the purpose of this film? How well does it meet its purpose?
- Is this one of the great movies of all time as one film critic asserts (Ebert 1-6)? Evaluate his claim.
Remember the Socratic seminar 3-D:
- Delve
- Decipher
- Deliver
These requirements will never fail the group that gathers for understanding in Socratic seminar.