
The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf] - barry-cotter
https://harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2320-2347_Online.pdf
======
Buldak
Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of
"Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools. I gather that
the harm consists, not in the general method of posing questions, but the way
that professors put students on the spot and may humiliate them if their
answers are unsatisfactory. The point the author makes about the way that this
ritual enforces hierarchy is interesting, too (my impression is that many
aspects of elite law schools do this).

I guess you might defend the "Socratic" method as a way of encouraging student
engagement. But I suspect that it really appeals to people who like the idea
of discourse as combat (DEBATE ME!). As an aside, I'm struck that students in
most other contexts have nearly the opposite attitude. That is, they maintain
that they should be free to zone out or play with their phones or skip class
altogether as long as they don't disturb others.

~~~
liftbigweights
> Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of
> "Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools

The socratic method isn't really practiced anywhere in academia. Even in
philosophy classes, it's mostly passive learning through an authority figure.
It's why so many students take notes. You can't take notes while participating
in a socratic discussion. Also, socratic method requires a small group (
preferably 1 on 1 ) where you throw questions and answers back and forth. In a
class of 20 or 200, that's simply not practical.

A parent and a child sometimes engage in socratic discussions. The kid asks a
question, parent answers, then the kid ask question in relation to the answer
and then the parent might ask "why do you think that is" and back and forth.

The socratic method requires a lot of investment on both parties/sides.
Whereas passive learning doesn't require much investment. Professor lectures
and the students copies what he says.

~~~
watwut
Why would it be impossible to take notes during discussion of questions and
answers? If it is, then the whole discussion was likely about speed and reflex
instead of thought out answers (which takes a bit more time and is slower).

~~~
mistrial9
the mental environment is wits, response and inquiry in real time.. it is a
different cognative mode than writing notes. Notes are actively discouraged.

------
projektfu
I've always found the term "Socratic Method" to be interesting, as it usually
just means that they ask a lot of questions, using them to make the students
demonstrate knowledge of the material and defend or abandon their ideas of
what the meaning of the law is. From my philosophy classes, however, I
remember Plato's Socrates was using questions more like a prosecutor, as a way
of rope-a-doping the interlocutor to make him say something contradictory or
unreasonable, and then Socrates would knock him out.

~~~
cicero
If you take Socrates at his word, I think he is sincerely trying to find
answers. He asks a question that he really wants to know the answer to, but
then sees potential flaws in the answer, so he asks more questions to test the
strength of the answer. Even though he ends of "knocking out" his
interlocutor, I think he would prefer to get an answer that holds up to
scrutiny.

I think the value of good Socratic questioning is to get the student to
examine his assumptions and to learn to think more deeply. However, it can
easily become an intimidating bullying session if done incorrectly.

~~~
wahern
As applied in law school, the idea is that the professor never answers a
question or makes a direct statement of his own. It's difficult to bully
someone in that situation. Granted, IME some professors were better than
others at abstaining from interjecting their own claims directly. But from a
pedagogical perspective I'll take the professor who bullies over having to sit
through hours of lectures. At least he has to work for it, and students
quickly learn the score.

One of my professors with whom I would have disagreed most vehemently when it
came to contemporary social, political, and even legal issue was eminently
capable of sticking to the method. Never once, IIRC, did he answer a question
(posted by himself or a student) or directly interject a statement of law and
its application. His Constitutional Law course was most memorable (and
cherished) for the way he challenged me and everybody else. He also taught a
seminar, Jurisprudence Readings, that was popular enough that other professors
would enroll. In my class the readings were Plato's Republic and Laws. One
professor left after a few classes, quite obviously because he was frustrated
by the strict Socratic Method. This professor kept trying to interject his
interpretation of other Plato and Xenophon works to try to "correct" the
direction the class discussion was going, but the professor leading the
seminar wouldn't have it. This student-professor was visibly annoyed on
occasion, which felt a little uncomfortable. (I wonder if he felt "bullied".
Perhaps it didn't occur to him that he wasn't the only well read student.) I
took one of his classes the prior semester and wasn't surprised; he didn't
apply the Socratic Method very rigorously in his class, which was closer to a
traditional college course where both lecture and class discussion closely
tracked the narrative of the textbook.

I did see what one might call bullying in law school, but it wasn't tied to
the Socratic Method, per se. The Socratic Method requires that each and every
student come to class prepared, having at least read all assigned material. "I
don't know" isn't an answer; you at least have to be able to say something
like, "the material said [insert reference], but I didn't understand how it
applies". If you can't do that, you obviously didn't come prepared and some
professors will call you out on it. Likewise if you're called in class and
can't respond because you've lost the context. A law degree still _means_
something these days precisely because students, especially 1Ls, are _flunked_
out of school.[1] And you can't cry you weren't warned. Good professors give
you _ample_ , _unambiguous_ warning in _public_.

[1] Not because you didn't respond properly in class. For most classes your
grade is entirely determined by the final exam. But precisely because you're
not typically graded on other assignments, the professor is doing you a favor
by keeping the pressure on during class. Sometimes you could have easily aced
a course simply by cramming a couple of weeks before the class; sometimes not.
Neither you nor the professor can be sure, and in any event if class time is
to have any value everybody needs to be engaged.

~~~
ruytlm
> The Socratic Method requires that each and every student come to class
> prepared, having at least read all assigned material. "I don't know" isn't
> an answer; you at least have to be able to say something like, "the material
> said [insert reference], but I didn't understand how it applies". If you
> can't do that, you obviously didn't come prepared and some professors will
> call you out on it. Likewise if you're called in class and can't respond
> because you've lost the context.

This was the most valuable part for me; it required you to a) have actually
done the background material, b) be engaged enough in the classroom to follow
the context of the discussion, c) to be able to form an opinion even if you
did not have one, and d) to be able to consider the merits of an alternative
opinion.

These are fundamental life skills, especially so in the legal profession, and
in my opinion form the basis of engaging with other people as people:
understand their context, engage with them in discussion, consider what they
say, and be willing to share your thoughts.

------
alexpotato
I spent 15 years coaching college paintball and the Socratic method was
invaluable to me in getting important topics across.

Why?

The problem:

\- Paintball has game theory that is very different from traditional sports

\- Most people haven't had 15 years of playing time when they get to college
and want to play paintball (as opposed to say, soccer).

\- I needed to get people up to speed quickly.

So here is an example of how I used the Socratic method (and hopefully you
learn something too!):

\- Me: Given two teams A and B, what are the odds that A beats be? This is not
a trick question.

\- Player: 50%?

\- Me: Correct! Now if someone on team B gets eliminated what are the odds of
team A winning? In other words, what are the odds of winning a 5 vs 4? This is
kind of a trick question as I had to collect a lot of stats to determine this.

\- Player: I don't know, somewhere between 60 and 80%??

\- Me: Close! That's what most people guess and the correct answer is 75%.
Next question: if you are on team A and you are eliminated, what happens to
team B's odds of winning?

\- Player: I guess they would go from ~25% to 50%

\- Me: In other words...?

\- Player: They double!

\- Me: Right! So what do you think is the most important thing to do if you
are in a 5 v 4?

\- Player: Stay alive?

\- Me: Excellent!

Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?" and
they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not.

This is why, when talking to tech folks, I often explain the Socratic method
as a cross between programming and debugging.

The questions you ask a. allow you to "debug" the thought process of the
person you are speaking too and b. can act as a directed linked list to an end
state you are looking for.

I would also add, the Socratic method can be done completely with positive
reinforcement. B.F. Skinner is famous for saying "People would be amazed what
can be achieved with only positive reinforcement."

That being said, some organizations e.g. law schools, the military etc believe
that the anxiety in a more punishment based system causes the information to
"stick" better.

YMMV.

~~~
SilasX
>Had I just told people "Don't get eliminated in a 5v4! Do you understand?"
and they said "Yes!" I wouldn't really know if they understood or not.

That seems like less of an issue of using the Socratic method, and more about
quantifying the cost of getting killed. "Dying costs your team X" is more
helpful than "don't die". The former tells you under which conditions the
heuristic "don't die" is no longer applicable, while the latter doesn't.

Or, to use my attempt at a neologism, your method satisfies the Scylla-
Charybdis Heuristic, while "Don't get eliminated" doesn't:
[http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-
charybd...](http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2015/12/the-scylla-charybdis-
heuristic-if-more.html)

~~~
theorique
The lesson is "quantifying the cost of getting killed".

The method by which that lesson is conveyed to the student is the Socratic
method.

The point is that the Socratic method of asking leading questions and building
agreement at each stage was more effective in getting the point across than
"do you understand X? OK, good."

The student constructs the knowledge him/herself and internalizes it better
than otherwise.

~~~
SilasX
Yes, it's better than asking if they understand the assertion of the point,
but the parent was giving a misleading comparison to something that stripped
out _both_ the Socratic questions and the quantification of the cost.

------
ryanmarsh
I do SWE coaching and training. The topics vary: React, BDD, TDD, Serverless,
delivery performance (previously known as DevOps), agile, etc...

Very few things work when you're trying to help someone "see the light". They
are, in order of usefulness:

1\. Pain experienced from bad choices

2\. The socratic method

Everything else is varying degrees of useless.

------
roenxi
Well, it is nice to see someone going straight for the details. Do we have any
context on why this ... short novel :) ... was written?

I want to interpret this as a coinciding of two things; the first that the
"Socratic Method" as described here would be a powerful method of creating and
perpetuating a culture amongst law students trained at Harvard; where their
opinions and beliefs are subjected to a very public examination and then
reshaped to be what the professors think they should be. Not a terrible idea,
that seems like a valid interpretation of what teaching should be, with many
warts as noted.

And the second is the philosophy that gets mentioned a few times in the
article that there are topics that are “too hot to handle” that might "injure"
a student. Part of the fringe push to redefine "injury" to mean hearing
something unpleasant or disagreeable.

So my assumption is that the author sees a crisis approaching the law school
where it must take a stand on what its objective is - preserving a culture,
relaying uncontroversial material to students, or some other path. And then
this pdf is balanced factual synthesis of the issues at hand - I'm not sure
the author is even proffering a conclusion.

If that assumption holds then there are some points raised here that could
have profound influences in 10 or 20 years. Law students eventually become
lawyers then judges, and unfortunately the US political class seems to be
sourced heavily from the lawyers (~40% of Congress, I think). If confrontation
is de-emphasised in the classroom, that could have spillovers into the heart
of how political debate and distribution of justice is undertaken.

But I don't know enough about "Jeannie Suk Gersen" or why she wrote this to
form a strong opinion on the topic apart from wishing lawyers were trained to
write reports.

~~~
mirimir
IANAL, and so have no opinion on the merits of her article.

However, I have concerns about "topics that are 'too hot to handle'" in the
sciences. For example, a recent thread[0] about Hill (2017) An elementary
mathematical theory for the variability hypothesis.[1,2,3]

And by the way, there's lots of great discussion in the comments on the
Quillette article.[1] And it's interesting that the deleted NYJM paper is
online.[2] So what, are there now two different papers at New York J. Math. 23
(2017) that begin at p. 1641? Strange.

edit: Earlier versions of the preprint were apparently more controversial.[4]

0)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318)

1) [https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-
a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-
paper-down-the-memory-hole/)

2)
[http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf](http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf)

3)
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04184.pdf)

4) [https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.04184v2)

~~~
dang
Please don't take HN threads off topic into generic ideological tangents.
Those are predictable and tedious.

~~~
mirimir
Sorry. I let myself get triggered :(

~~~
dang
It happens to all of us.

------
habitue
tl;dr? Long article, title is vaguely interesting, but without a summary I
have no idea if I want to invest the time reading it

------
joshuaheard
Well, it looks like the college snowflakes are now in law school. We should
not be analyzing anything using the insidious concept of Intersectionality,
where the more victim groups you have, the more credibility you have. Notice
the author mentions she is a female Korean immigrant (+3!).

The whole intersectionality movement was developed from neo-Marxist feminist
critical theory, which creates a vast consipiracy of the white male
partriarchy. None of it is based in sound social science, but is instead based
on the subjective feelings of the person involved. The article really doesn't
address how well the Socratic dialog works, which is a valid issue. Instead it
focuses on whether it is part of the so-called white male patriarchy, which is
not a valid issue. Is the Socratic Method abused by tyrannical law professors
like Professor Kingsfield? It certainly makes good dramatic entertainment.
There are tyrannical players in every system. Let's throw Intersectionality
out the window and analyze teaching methods on whether they work or not,
instead of whether they are part of the vast white patriarchy conspiracy.

I'd love to see this Intersectionality analysis in court. "But your honor, I'm
a female Korean immigrant, so you must give my argument more weight!"

Setting aside the faux Intersectionality analysis. Does the Socratic Dialog
work? For first year law students, yes. The Socratic Dialog uses the most
valuable tool for a lawyer: the question. You find out the basic facts of a
case by asking your clients questions. You find out the opposing side's
defense by asking questions. You gather evidence by asking witnesses
questions.

What they teach in law school is not the law. The law changes daily. What they
teach is legal reasoning. You study cases, which are written expositions of
legal reasoning. In law school class, you must explain the legal reasoning of
the cases. The professor's questions help guide you through this process. If
this is traumatic for you, you should consider dental school.

~~~
dang
Would you please keep the ideological rant aspect out of your comments to HN?
It has a reliably degrading effect on discussion, and we're trying for better
than that here. Your comment would be both better and shorter with those bits
edited out.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
joshuaheard
I appreciate your feedback. The law review article in the original post
analyzed the Socratic Method using Intersectionality. Most people aren't
familiar with this political ideology, so I critiqued it. I would not describe
this as an "ideological rant". As a litigator, my writing style tends to be
direct and forceful. But, I have read the guidelines again and will keep your
comments in mind for future posts.

