
The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling - GeneralMaximus
http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html
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Swizec
There is _one_ professor at my course that used the socratic method. Those are
some of the best lectures I've been to.

A lot of professors _think_ they're using the Socratic method, but their
problem is they don't have the patience to wait for an answer. Posing
questions rhetorically doesn't work, especially once the people you are
teaching catch on and stop trying to come up with an answer.

I've tried doing the socratic method when tutoring people - it's extremely
frustrating and most of the time I can't pull it off.

How does one gain the necessary patience for this?

~~~
jonsen
_Posing questions rhetorically doesn't work, ..._

Well it works for me, even if there's only time to think: Now _that's_ an
interesting question, what would be the answer to that?

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dsr_
The socratic method has an awful failure mode: you can't teach facts, and you
can't teach anything derived from empiric data.

The periodic table of the elements has a lovely underlying theory based on the
physical properties of electron orbitals. This cannot be elicited from
students who don't know it.

Asking socratic questions about the effects of drugs on human bodies is
useless.

Don't trust a socratic-trained engineer to build your skyscraper, or your
pizza oven.

~~~
hythloday
> The periodic table of the elements has a lovely underlying theory based on
> the physical properties of electron orbitals. This cannot be elicited from
> students who don't know it.

Of course you can't give students a periodic table and Socratically enquire
how this came to be. What you can do is, through the Socratic method, elicit
an understanding of the lovely underlying theory. That's far more valuable
than being able to parrot the table from memory without understanding it.

I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to teach from empiric data--
experiments seem to me to be a practical implementation of the Socratic
method.

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bpd1069
It is also a wonderful way to teach your own children, and more importantly
discuss issues that frustrate them.

Spitting out answers without having an question makes the answer a useless
fact. Understanding is acquired. Understanding can never be forgotten.

I would never have gotten through my teenage daughter's high school years
without it. I am a single father so relying on other traditional methods don't
work as well as reasoning directly.

She earned a full scholarship to Dartmouth, was a Intel Semifinalist (genetic
research), and is now studying Biology with a course concentration in
Neuroscience.

I only taught her how to think about things, never facts.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
No facts at all?

I'm pretty Socratic in my approach but find it breaks down without elemental
factual data to build the enquiry upon. Indeed I find it best for approaching
assumed knowledge in order to build an ethos of enquiry.

Why does the moon 'shine' can be deduced by the student in part by the teacher
first recalling associated facts; even if these are to be assumed true as part
of the enquiry.

I was reading Laches recently - [Plato as] Socrates enquiring as to what
children should be taught (fighting,duh!) - and Socrates destroys the others
attempts to logically promote their views. Ultimately though they're left with
nothing and have to come cap-in-hand and say 'alright bighead, how do you
propose we educate our kids'. Sorry, I'm wittering ... I think the point is
that I find it lacks as a constructive method, one needs experiment and
axiomatically held data to support it.

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Uchikoma
One should not forget, in the end everyone was so annoyed that they made him
kill himself.

[Edit] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates#Trial_and_death>

"But perhaps the most historically accurate of Socrates' offenses to the city
was his position as a social and moral critic. [...] insofar as he irritated
some people with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His
attempts to improve the Athenians' sense of justice may have been the source
of his execution."

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scorchin
Here's the previous submission: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2446316>

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jmilloy
This isn't really what I think of as the Socratic method, which pertains to a
style of discourse (whether it be teacher-student or peer-peer) involving
questions by one side and answers by the other to investigate nonfactual
issues, and which attempts to keep the discourse grounded in solid reasoning.

Of course, eliciting information from students, regardless of what you call
it, is a well known and essential aspect of _any_ good lesson plan. It is a
real challenge to ask the right questions and stick with it when students
aren't making the discoveries you want, and it's tremendously rewarding when
it works. But it's not the whole story, and I think it's tempting to get
excited when it works and lose sight of the longterm goals for you students.
For many topics, it must be followed at some point with practice, and a LOT of
it. It can leave some students totally behind. In fact, it's actually still
quite teacher-centric, and should be used in short segments and (when
possible) replaced by student-centric activities.

~~~
jfarmer
It is. It's just like Meno's slave.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menos_slave>

~~~
jmilloy
There are lots of question and answer situations -- not all of them are the
Socratic Method. I prefer a narrow definition: the Method was largely "to
elicit admissions, as from an opponent, tending to establish a proposition"
[1] and, esp. regarding education, pertains more to the discovery of
philosophic Truths. In Meno's slave, the point isn't to teach someone geometry
but to prove that teaching is possible, i.e. that any uneducated person could
follow logical arguments and learn; the philosophic truth at hand is learning.
What is the philosophic truth at hand in this case?

[1] <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/socratic+method>

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tmrggns
I've been in a math class at the college level which operated exclusively by
the Socratic method of questioning. Within an hour or two it became obvious
that the appeal to the crowd didn't work so well, as some people will
understand the concept faster than others. As a result, we went around to each
student. However, this did result in sometimes trying to get an individual
student to say the "correct" thing in order to follow to the next sequence of
questions. People were put on the spot, which isn't necessarily bad. Also the
class moved as slow as the slowest person and it took a whole lot of
preparation by the professor. We had about 20 people, and at that scale it
wasn't necessary to concentrate on each question, but only to the general
topic. Even at that scale the method was breaking down, both from previous
reasons as well as introducing a small amount of "stage fright". However,
everyone left the class knowing what was taught, with a minimum of confusion
along the way.

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gaelenh
There was a relatively recent article in Time about the socratic method not
being so great: [http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/14/why-asking-questions-
might-...](http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/14/why-asking-questions-might-not-be-
the-best-way-to-teach)

Basically, they recreated one of Socrates' lessons. The students gave similar
answers to the 50 questions, but only half figured out the task at the end of
the lesson. The students didn't understand the importance or goals of the
questions and answers.

That's not to say the socratic method doesn't work. If you read enough
research and anecdotal stories about education, you'll come to realize that
everything works and nothing works. For every idea in education, research will
eventually show that it is ineffective and a waste of time and resources.

~~~
jkn
So the students were fed the original 50 questions from Socrates dialog...
This is very different from the Socratic method as I understand it, which
relies not on a static set of questions, but on the interactions between the
teacher and the audience. That the students answers to the 50 questions were
similar the answers in Socrates' dialog is not enough.

A static list of questions is just an ordinary lecture, reworded. The OP's
article shows how precious the Socratic method is in giving you an immediate
feedback from the students. In this sense it is crucial that questions are
formulated based on the previous answers.

The author does that in the article: prepared questions are important to guide
the general line of reasoning, but improvised questions are just as important
to navigate along this line.

~~~
gwern
> So the students were fed the original 50 questions from Socrates dialog...
> This is very different from the Socratic method as I understand it, which
> relies not on a static set of questions, but on the interactions between the
> teacher and the audience. That the students answers to the 50 questions were
> similar the answers in Socrates' dialog is not enough.

As Plato/Socrates wrote, the problem with books is that they can't talk back
and react to you.

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giusemir1978
The method might not be useful in every situation, but is an useful tool.

It brings your audience in the middle of the learning process and, by making
the right questions, allows tutor to gather information about tutored's line
of thinking.

