From Uptaught:
A couple of years ago I attended a general education conference where a young leader of a new school at the University of Chicago told of his supposedly radical methods of teaching. He had found the Socratic method. At first he won me because he admitted Socratic questions are not questions at all, but subterfuges. The teacher asks a question and pretends not to know the answer. “It’s a pulling,” said the speaker, “like grabbing the ring in the bull’s nose, intendd to jerk and shock and be somewhat painful. You’ve got to shake these middle-class kids up. In fact, that’s your central duty, to confuse them and make them think for the first time.”
I became ill listening to that man. He was saying meet students at their weakness, confuse them, and make them weaker. Then spring your stuff on them. If he were to turn that round to himself—to ask students to question him about the things he knew least about, how would he feel? How would he learn? (105)
I want to keep this in mind should I continue to write about Socrates.
