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The Socratic Method
The Socratic Method is simply a way, through asking certain sorts of
pointed and stimulating, interesting or "live" questions, to get students,
or anyone, to focus on the elements one thinks important for understanding
of an idea or phenomena, in an order or perspective likely to help them
gain that understanding. The idea is that by asking leading questions --
often logically leading questions-- about the elements one is bringing
attention to, the other person will be able to see what you see about the
idea or phenomena and will then attain the same understanding of it that
you do.
The method only works with regard to logical/conceptual types of material;
one does not learn "facts" via the Socratic Method, not directly anyway.
(It may help the discovery of new facts by showing where one might need
to "look" for phenomena, in the same way that theoretical physics often
fosters discoveries in applied physics.) However, it can be used to make
learning facts easier, by organizing their introduction to the student
in a way likely to be more meaningful to him or her. More about this below,
with regard to teaching photography.
When Socrates says it is not teaching, there are a number of things
he might mean: (1) that it is not about telling anyone facts, or teaching
them a skill (2) that it is not about telling anyone any thing s/he does
not already know, in some sense of know, (3) that it only works with people
who have some appreciation for, and sense of, inference, (4) that it is
not about learning new things, but about putting into perspective things
one knows but does not fully attend to or see the significance of, and/or
(5) that it only applies to logical/conceptual aspects of material, not
to the transfer of factual information . In the Apology, Socrates
contrasts his kind of knowledge or wisdom with that of farmers, poets,
etc. He does not have the kind of knowledge they have, which can be taught.
He has a different sort of knowledge or insight. And he cannot "teach"
one to have that, but he can demonstrate the results of his insight to
others in certain ways, if they are willing and able to be receptive in
certain ways. I consider what Socrates does to be teaching, even if he
did not, because I consider methodically and intentionally fostering particular
new perspectives and greater understanding in another person to be one
(extremely important) form or aspect of teaching. But it is definitely
not the same thing as trying to tell or teach facts or fact-based skills.
But the Method differs from just asking questions, especially open-ended
or non-leading questions, or ones that one does not know the answer to
oneself. That is in part why it is a teaching method, not just a brain-storming
activity nor an activity whose point is merely to inspire thought or research
by simply asking general or open-ended questions or questions one does
not know the answer to oneself. Bill Hunter and I had a long e-mail debate,
which is available in an edited form at http://www.Garlikov.com/teaching/dialogue.html
about whether fostering research or discovery by students, via questions
the questioner may not know the answer to, is teaching.
I use the Socratic Method for teaching many things. For a transcript
of a fairly "pure" (i.e., questions only) use of the method, with commentary
about it, for teaching a logical/conceptual idea see my "The Socratic Method:
Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling", http://www.Garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html,
But I also use the method for organizing material when I teach, say, photography;
and for getting students to see mistakes in their reasoning in any subject matter area. An example
of the latter case was in a discussion of homosexuality in an "Ethics and Society" course where many students
said that homosexuality was wrong because (the idea of) it was so disgusting.
I asked them whether they thought that such disgust was a sufficient characteristic
to make an action be immoral. They said it was. I asked them then to close
their eyes and think about ... their parents having sex with each other.
They all let out an even bigger groan of disgust, and said they found that
idea really disgusting. So I asked whether they would have to conclude
then that it was immoral for their parents ever to have (or to have had)
sex with each other. They agreed it was not. Of course they then asked
whether that meant I thought homosexuality was moral. My response was that
whether it is or is not is simply unrelated to whether it is personally
disgusting or not to anyone. I was not trying to argue in this particular
case for or against the morality of homosexuality, but was merely trying
to get them to see that finding an action disgusting did not justify their
thinking it must be immoral just because of that. Having introduced the
point to them in that dramatic ("Torpedo's touch"?) way, we then go on
to talk about other activities that they might sometimes characterize as
disgusting but not immoral - such as dietary preferences that may be quite
different from one's own, surgical procedures, etc.-- so that that one
example is not seen to be either an anomaly or a complete explanation.
As to helping present facts in a manner conducive to seeing their significance,
when I teach photography, I give certain demonstrations and then ask leading
questions about them. Most people, even a great many who have taken a photography
course or two, do not understand very well the significance of shutter
speeds, aperture settings, or film ISO numbers. And they do not see that
all these are related to each other in a simple way, nor what that portends
for their picture-taking. So I open the back of an empty camera, remove
the lens cap, and point the camera toward a light surface and trip the
shutter, first at different shutter speeds, and then after some questions,
at different aperture settings, letting them see what happens. After the
shutter speed demonstration I ask them which shutter speeds let in more
light, the ones where the shutter is open longer or shorter. They pretty
clearly see that the longer the shutter is open, the more light comes in
from a given source. After I point out that the shutter speed numbers are
actually just reciprocals of time measured in seconds (e.g., 250 stands
for 1/250 second, 2 stands for ½ second, etc.) I then ask how much
more or less light is let in between each shutter speed on the dial. Except
for one place where an insignificantly slight adjustment is made in the
system, because the time increments between shutter speeds are doubled
(or halved in the other direction), they immediately see that changing
shutter speeds doubles or halves the amount of light let onto the film
by a given source, all other things being equal. Letting light from a source
go through an opening for one second, for example, allows twice as much
light to come in as does allowing it to go through for half a second.
I then go through the same thing with regard to aperture setting. "Which
lets in more light?" Obviously the larger opening will. Then I simply tell
them that the aperture system is designed in such a way that the difference
between adjacent apertures also lets in twice or half as much light, depending
on the direction one is going. Then I ask them how much different the amount
of light let in is if I were to increase the shutter speed by one click,
and also increase the size of the aperture by one click. They see that
is the same amount of light. I do it again, and again. All the changes
make no change in the amount of light let in to the film. It does not take
them long to ask their own question, which is some variation on "Then how
do you choose which combination to use, if they all do the same thing?"
I take that question to be one sign they are understanding what I have
been teaching them so far. And that question allows me to go into the properties
shutter speeds and apertures control in addition to amount of light.
Now one of the, I think unjustified, criticisms of the Socratic Method
is that the questions are not so much logically leading in a way to give
insight as they are psychologically merely prompting questions whose answers
are obvious from verbal or psychological cues rather than from attention
to the content. This may be what Rud means when he says that Socrates begins
by putting words in the mouth of the slave. I can discuss this criticism
better with an example of my own from a criticism of my Socratic Method
paper. There is a place in that paper where I report asking a group of
third grade students how many numerals there are in our (Arabic,
decimal) numbering system. At first the answer the class shouts out is
"nine"; then someone says "ten" and there is some agreement with that.
So I asked "Which is it, nine or ten," and they all yelled back "Ten!"
I took that, whether mistakenly or not, as a sign that they were now including
zero as a numeral that they had initially neglected to consider when they
said "nine." My next question was "If we list the numerals in order, starting
with zero, what will the list be?" I was taken to task by a critic of the
method for essentially telling the students zero was a numeral. I don't
think I did, because I was pretty certain their change from nine to ten
implied they realized zero was a numeral to consider, but I can see how
someone might think so. However, it is really an irrelevant criticism of
the method, though it may be a justified criticism of this particular application
of the method. Had I been more precise or more thorough, or had I thought
it necessary, I would have asked something like "Why did you change from
'nine' to 'ten'?" or "What are the ten numerals?" If zero were still missing,
I could have asked something that would have got them to realize it, by,
say, holding up a closed fist and asking how many fingers I was 'holding
up'. When they said "none," I could have asked how they might write "none"
numerically. Or if I asked them what the lowest numeral was and they had
said "One," I could have asked them whether there was not some number lower
than one. I assume that somehow or other we could have easily got to zero,
and to their recalling and recognizing it was the lowest numeral. At that
point the class would have continued as it then did in the original.
As to the answers to the individual questions in a Socratic dialogue
being prompted by cues other than logic, there are four responses I would
make to dispute that. 1) You cannot get satisfactory answers to the later
questions without first having gone through the earlier questions, so at
least these later questions by themselves obviously do not contain the
clues for answering them. 2) There are people who "get lost" and cannot
answer the middle to later questions in a chain of questions that develops
a line of reasoning. They cannot make connections as they go along. They
report that they cannot "follow" the line of thought being developed. 3)
When people do successfully follow a chain of questions, they usually report
that suddenly they "see" how all this [whatever is being explained or taught]
works. They display a "Eureka" experience that cannot be accounted for
by their having answered easy individual questions whose answers were obvious
by the way the questions were asked. And 4) one can often see students
make insightful comments or ask penetrating questions that show they are
starting to catch on to things greater or more encompassing than your individual
questions have covered - comments and questions they could not make or
ask at the beginning of the chain of questions.
Rick Garlikov
Notes
1. Rud at one point talks about Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon's
operating from a "close" reading of the dialogues, and some of the comments
he makes, especially about the geometric derivation Socrates goes through
with the slave boy, indicate he and other critics may not be operating
from that kind of reading. I would have thought any analysis would necessitate
operating from a "close" reading, but perhaps that is neither required
nor expected in "citation-based" or "reference-based" scholarship or analysis
based on deconstruction. When Rud says, for example, "...Socrates makes
Meno uncomfortable with his persistent questions" that strikes me as an
odd description of the origin of discomfort of the participants in the
dialogues. It is not that Socrates has persistent questions as a three-year-old
might or as a heckler at a political rally might; and it is not that his
questions are difficult or embarrassing. The crux of the discomfort in
many of the dialogues is that Socrates' specific questions lead logically
and, in a sense forcefully, to ideas the participants cannot, or do not
want to have to, entertain or accept. And when Rud says things like "Socrates
was devious and crafty" or that Socratically inspired teachers are good
at playing some sort of "dialogue game," it seems to miss the point in
the same way it would miss the point to analyze Einstein's work by saying
only that Einstein was intelligent but unusual in his thinking, and that
his theories are quite strange. Furthermore, since "devious" and "crafty"
imply gamesmanship or trickery of some sort, their use paints a picture
quite different from the picture I see of Socrates as I read the dialogues.
I see the Socrates of the Euthyphro, Meno, Republic, Apology, and
other dialogues I have read as insightful, brilliant, understanding, sincere,
honest, and passionately opposed to loose and fallacious thinking. But
I only came to see him that way after teaching modern versions of the same
topics, and seeing that the views contemporary students and adults hold
about those topics are not very different from the views portrayed by the
Platonic participants, and that the same objections or arguments Socrates
used, apply as well.
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