The Socratic Method

It should be one of the functions of a teacher to open vistas before his pupils, showing them the possibility of activities that will be as delightful as they are useful.
-Bertrand Russell

I love using the Socratic method when I teach. So much happens simultaneously, with no more investment than a certain respect and trust between teacher and student. It's the ultimate improvisation - you have a goal in mind, an idea or concept, say, and you start with a question. If you use the method correctly, you'll have no idea what will happen next. This makes the method exhilarating, but also nerve-wracking, for both the teacher and student. The interaction is risky, because it doesn't always work out the way you or the student hopes. Maybe that's why it can build such a nice collegiate atmosphere between you and your students - you're all going through the experience together.

When it does work, you learn a lot about how your students are thinking, and they get a better grasp on what you want them to understand. I often couple the interaction with some sort of worksheet that we all work on together. I move from small group to small group, having quick, concise Socratic moments centered on particular questions or exercises. If I see that everyone is struggling with a particular point, I'll pull the class together and we'll work on that as a class. And I'll make a mental note to review what I did or didn't do that resulted in the confusion.

I have been wondering lately how one would teach a teacher how to use the technique. I've never tried to analyze how I do it, though I imagine that I could. I do prepare by playing out in my mind how students might respond to certain questions. For now I will close this post by quoting from the article where I found my opening quotation. I found this article recently at the University of Chicago Law School website, based on an essay by Elizabeth Garrett, a former professor there.

We are teaching reasoning skills, and the process of discovering a right answer is often more important than the answer itself.  Mistakes - or perhaps, more accurately, tentative steps toward a solution that lead us down unavailing but illuminating paths - are part of learning.

. . . students can sometimes be frustrated by the uncertainty . . . when the Socratic Method is the dominant teaching style, because they are confronting a new vocabulary, unfamiliar logical analysis, and the unusual form of narrative found in [any new discipline] . . .  But to provide certainty where there is none or to give a neat framework where the [discipline] is messy is to teach dishonestly.

Read the whole article here.

Krishnamurti

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well.  That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life

My Math Teacher is Psycho!

I was helping a student with her math homework. I asked her how her teacher had shown her to do a particular kind of algebra problem. She expressed some dissatisfaction with her teacher, and I asked her about it. She dramatically replied, "My teacher is psycho!"

Well. "What do you mean?" I asked. "She's very calm and nice and helpful when we're trying to do math, and then all of a sudden she just starts yelling and screaming." "What does she yell about?" I ventured. "Who knows? Something gets her going, a student says something, whatever, she just yells and screams. Then she tries to go back to being all lovey-dovey. But you know she'll start screaming again. It drives me crazy."

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Here was a student who was inclined to like and trust her teacher, but felt violated by the teacher's sudden and harsh attempt to "discipline" the class. I'm sure the teacher had no idea how much her behavior unnerved this student. It was also striking that the student had no idea what the teacher was responding to - "something, whatever" - so the teacher's outburst seemed arbitrary and unpredictable. The student, understandably, was unable to place her trust in the teacher, and thus her ability to learn was compromised.

I am always struck by how unaware of themselves teachers seem to be. They don't understand what they look like, what they sound like, what messages they telegraph. They can leave behind a trail of confused, hurt, scared, angry students. Teaching in a classroom is a particularly difficult kind of performance, precisely because it is NOT entertainment; there is meant to be a specific outcome, an outcome that these days needs to be measurable and demonstrable.

Here is what most puzzles me. I think you'll agree that "yelling and screaming" is a common experience for both teachers and parents. And it doesn't work. No, really, it doesn't work. As a way to vent your frustration, it does make you feel better. Your students might respond by temporarily avoiding the behavior that brought on the outburst. But even this avoidance doesn't guarantee that your students have learned anything except that you yell and scream. And that's what your students tell me after you are through yelling at them: my teacher hates me, or my teacher is psycho.

You wouldn't teach math by yelling or screaming. You might be frustrated that your students don't know what you wish they knew, but you don't take it out on them. Even if you like punishment as a technique, you know not to punish ignorance - your job is to correct ignorance. Why wouldn't you use the same techniques that you use to teach math to teach your students how you want them to behave?