
The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling - oxplot
http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html
======
brudgers
The Socratic method as practiced by Socrates and described by Plato was used
with a handful of interlocutors at most and often with only one. The responses
were individual not collective.

That's what bothers me about the article. It's about instructing a class, a
way of going through motions, not about teaching any individual. What about
the third grader who doesn't know Roman numerals? What about the one who can't
read "ten"? What about the one who has only eaten a bag of Cheetos in the past
24 hours? Or the kid on the autism spectrum and the one who saw his mother
beaten by her boyfriend last night and just about every other night for as
long as he can remember?

How does this work when the 11 year old third grader hits Jamison in the back
of the head with a book and the quiet girl wants to use the restroom because
she is sobbing just like yesterday?

The reality of third grade isn't theoretical. Yeah there are little pods of
protected well cared for children. There may even be a sweet spot where none
are smart asses and love the call and response and each is equally bright and
learns the same way. Just look for the full pony rack by the school front door
and the M&M truck backed to the cafeteria loading dock.

The fount of well meaning amateur pedagogy is not the solution to the woes of
public education. The lesson of the article is that kids can be incredibly
kind and polite to adults.

[Edit: None of which is to say that I think trying to teach the ideas of
boolean algebra to 3rd graders isn't a good idea. I'm all for pushing the
limits of children's intellect.]

~~~
joelberman
I think public education is completely broken and has gotten worse over the
years. Other countries seem to achieve better outcomes for a lot less money.
Perhaps they do not have such poor parenting that allows their children to hit
others or to sob all day.

The reason for amateur pedagogy is that the professionals have completely
screwed it up. Look at the controversy over "no child left behind" or "common
core" or "STEM." The experts do not agree on anything, which means the body of
knowledge is very weak. I think it is time for amateurs to step in.

~~~
maroonblazer
>Look at the controversy over "no child left behind" or "common core" or
"STEM." The experts do not agree on anything, which means the body of
knowledge is very weak. I think it is time for amateurs to step in.<

In the case of Common Core, the amateurs _have_ stepped in, in the form of
politicians, parents and media who fail to realize that the standards were
developed and agreed upon by a team of professional educators representing
nearly every state in the country. Those same amateurs are stoking fear and
paranoia with baseless claims about "the federal government deciding what my
kid should learn". They even fail to recognize that the CC is not a
curriculum.

~~~
maemilius
To be fair, every example of Common Core I've ever seen only succeeded in
confusing the hell out of me. I understand that everyone should have the same
foundation, but not everyone learns the same way and Common Core seems to
gloss that over.

Basically, I think it's gone a little to far by saying "how" something should
be taught.

~~~
brudgers
I didn't understand common core. But I have observed it working well for my
child. I had the same experience of questioning the content until I saw the
results when my child was at a Montessori preschool years earlier. That's how
I know I'm an amateur.

------
shanusmagnus
After reading Plato's dialogues I went through a phase of having Socratic
dialogues with people instead of arguing with them. I found, as had the Greek
citizens 2.5 millennia ago, that having someone question you Socratically is
super annoying and condescending. At least I didn't annoy them so badly that
they sentenced me to death.

Which isn't to say that the method can't be used profitably in some settings.
Just not general life. The moment where the people you're talking to have an
epiphany and thank you for it is a fiction.

~~~
visakanv
I think the challenge is to ask people questions in a way that isn't
condescending, where you're not necessarily trying to corner them into some
preconceived position.

My boss has a great way of asking questions– he precedes them with "just out
of curiosity...", and I always get the sense that he's really, genuinely
curious. He's gotten me to think about things that I hadn't even considered
before, and I'm very thankful for it. I've grown to adopt it myself, and I've
found it helpful even in my marriage and in my friendships.

There are many different ways to say something like, "Hey, I notice that this
happened– any idea why that is?"

With the right tone and body language, people just open up. It's wonderful.

~~~
texthompson
> With the right tone and body language, people just open up. It's wonderful.

Also, your boss might be genuinely curious. A lot of people who employ this
technique precompute trajectory for arriving at their conclusion. They're
often right, but the times when they're wrong are really interesting.

Bottom line - I agree with you. Don't be condescending, because you might
learn something from the people around you. :)

------
jrapdx3
Of course the Socratic method is effective, but it is also _subversive_ \--it
encourages people to think for themselves, an endless source of trouble for
those preferring that we do not. It must have been the issue in ancient Greek
times, recalling the incident with Socrates and the hemlock...

A great example of the method's use in teaching programming was/is the "Little
Schemer" series (by Freidman and Felleisen). As a book for beginners it goes
amazingly deep, if only the reader will follow. Once in a while I enjoy going
down that path again, and it never fails to stir me to _think_ and learn.

Isn't that what an excellent teacher or book is supposed to do? Sure, present
it in a "sneaky", fun way, it's even better, and all the more dangerous.

~~~
alvatar
I was about to write a comment about The Little Schemer series myself. It is
one of the most captivating CS books I've read.

------
saedmansour
Socratic method is quite effective in introducing new subjects or "ways of
thinking" that are new to someone, by making them ask questions about what
they know. But there's no need to generalize everything in Education and say
one method of teaching suits all things, it works in some stuff and fails in
others or is less intriguing when the answers are more obvious. But the
material can revolve around questions sometimes.

------
rayiner
Socratic method is the typical way of teaching classes in law school, and I
personally found it a lot more engaging than lecturing. It's easy to think you
understand a concept by reading it, then realize when the professor prods you
to think about the corner cases that your original understanding was
superficial.

That said, you need small class sizes for it to work. It's impossible for the
professor to have a proper dialogue with 60 people in a room, much less the
100+ you might see in an introductory undergraduate course. Which is
unfortunate because it's those introductory courses, where students are
learning how to think in a new field, where Socratic dialogue is the most
helpful. In my opinion, class sizes trends in higher education are backwards--
massive lecture halls for freshman and small collegial classrooms for seniors.

~~~
rgarlikov
It will work in a large group IF most of the people in the group are as
attentive to the responses of (and to) others as they would be to their own
responses and to responses to them. That is often, but not always, the case.
And as others have pointed out here, the questioner has to be engaging and
personable in ways that help make it stimulating, over and above just the
content of the topic.

------
siscia
I believe that the socratic way could really big the next revolution in
education... Not the iPad...

The point is, how do we bring that into books ? (And this is the wrong/easy
way to look at the problem, the one that we cannot really solve, and will be
pretty meaningless to solve anyway.)

Or even better, how can we apply the socratic method without a Socrate ?
(where with Socrate I mean somebody who keep asking question)

~~~
alexashka
The part that the article leaves out is that when you go home after having
been led so magically to a place you could've not gotten to yourself - you
still have to sit down and comprehend it and work through it by solving
similar problems and re-tracing your steps.

Just because you were able to grasp it temporarily in class, does not mean
you'll get to keep it when the excellent teacher is not around.

It is a lot like when somebody guides you through cooking something step by
step with you doing all the work. It is definitely great because it inspires
confidence in you doing new things. But when you are by yourself and you try
to repeat the experience, you'll stumble and fumble quite a bit.

So in short - teaching anything using logical steps makes a lot of sense and
is a great way to do it. Caveat: you still have to put in the work to solidify
that knowledge.

Problem being: solidifying things is oftentimes tedious unless the task you're
learning is intrinsically interesting/pleasing (solving math puzzles is just
fun for some folks), so there is no revolution around the corner. People will
put up with a lot if they have the natural dexterity for it, good
teachers/methodology makes the whole experience more pleasant is all :)

~~~
siscia
Hummm...

I am not sure I agree completely, what you mean by "knowledge" ?

Let's suppose I don't know how to multiply numbers, however I do know how to
add numbers and I also know what multiplication is... Do I know how to
multiply numbers ?

The real caveat here is another one, the author prepared a sequence a
question, for what I can recall from my philosophy class Socrate did not...

It was more a random exploration...

Finally we all know that some work is necessary to retain knowledge (again,
what we mean by knowledge ?), but a logic, inductive work is way more
enjoyable (read easier) than a mere mnemonic one.

~~~
alexashka
The point I was trying to make is very simple - the article presented a way to
teach kids by getting them to a place using questions.

He/she left out the part where you have to go home and solidify what you
learned in class. That's where kids will struggle.

That home part is not solved by socratic method or otherwise. Nothing solves
it, except doing the work.

All the socratic way of teaching in a classroom does, is make it more fun and
interactive than a traditional lecture. If it gets people excited about
learning, they may feel more inclined to put in the work at home.

Hence what you were proposing - putting the socratic method in a book, doesn't
make sense to me. In a book, you want concise explanations. In a lecture, you
do want more interactivity to get people excited to go home and look up the
concise information.

That's my take on it anyway. I don't know where you were going with defining
'knowledge' \- I don't find defining words useful, as long as we both know
what we're talking about, we should be fine :)

~~~
rgarlikov
This was about one lesson, and yes that lesson needs reinforcement. But part
of that was being done by those students who were inspired to try it with
other mathematical "bases", such as base 3 -- a system with 3 digits. Also, in
a full course, if you consistently and frequently use the Socratic method or
any method that questions students' logic, many of them begin to do that on
their own about their logic or, usually, the logic of other people, even the
teacher. I have had students come up with good flaws in my own logic, by the
middle or end of the term. But yes, it takes reinforcement.

------
Xcelerate
That guy's whole website is incredibly interesting. I may not agree with all
of his viewpoints, but it's hard to deny that he argues them in a more
unbiased and rational way than almost all writings I've encountered.

------
____miah
IMHO, I really do believe how Socratic Method can improve teaching. Coming
from a computer science degree and then studying Law, this method was really
an eye opener on how to learn in a school room setup. It has been long used in
Law schools and I believe if it can be implemented partly or fully in all
schools, we might see good results. It tests the knowledge of the person being
asked, whether he/she really understands the subject.

~~~
agumonkey
I do believe in it too, but so far it's only a belief. I accept the question
first method because it avoids the rote learning since it doesn't give a lot
of information to the student, and merely drives him through ideas. Which was
the case every time I learned something, being left mostly alone in a concept
and poking at it until something clicks. That said, I never experienced a real
Socratic class.

------
humanarity
This is an awesome example. What would be an example of teaching the socratic
method itself using the socratic method? Bootstrapping teaching methods works
as a test of their validity :)

------
hoboon
It's a good interactive method to constantly challenge yourself into
remembering and learning material.

Basically, what you're supposed to do when you're actively reading material. I
never really learned how to study until later in life but apparently this is
how you're supposed to do it.

I think we don't see it a lot in many classrooms because of economy of scale.
When I was in school, we had a professor who did this with his smaller class
on computer networks but seems like maybe didn't in his larger classes. He'd
ask questions but so many people trying to answer, less time for personal
answers (which was fine with me since I was always the slowest person in the
room).

~~~
madaxe_again
I was fortunate in my schooling. From 6-11 I was at a boarding school in the
country, and we had classes of 12 or so at the most.

The three science and geography teachers (overlap, in the most excellent
fashion) were autodidacts who believed everybody else could be too - and
proved it in shovels. I recall the phrase "now why do YOU think ...?" being
almost percussion in lessons - almost everything was "you figure it out and
then let's bash heads and figure out what's right".

Nothing beat first hand experience. If we were studying population density,
we'd be taken to a nearby town and would spend a Sunday measuring frontages
and documenting usage, to then graph the data and draw our own conclusions.
The fascinating takeaway on that was that houses nearer water were usually
poorer - rich folks could afford to live up hills and have water carried to
them. Properties get rebuilt, frontages have a habit of staying the same, or
in multiples of their original size. Stuff I would not know or even think
about were it not for this experience. Chemistry was always "here's the thing
you need to do. Here's a mystery bag of reagents and kit. Figure it out. I'll
keep an eye in case you stray into danger." Two examples, but it was the core
of how they taught sciences - make us do our own investigations, and ask us
the right questions to precipitate the correct lines of thought. They nudged
me into coding the same way - "there are some dusty old BBC micros and some
magazines about how to use them in the basement. You guys figure it out.". We
figured it out so well that we got the machine with the vocaliser to cuss at
the teacher when he entered input into a fake basic prompt, and went on to
make a "Hugo" clone set at the school. Also just recalled being taught normal
distributions by being told to go count car colours outside the school gates.

Anyway, the upshot is that from that class, of those I've kept in touch, all
still have a childlike curiosity about the world, myself included.

I think we were taught to think for ourselves in the most earnest way -
something which is increasingly missing in education today. Fuck, we were
allowed access to guns, a deep lake with floating islands, abandoned
underground cool stores - all on trust alone - and if you violated that trust
you lost it, and you were _punished_. The bog-eye. Shudder.

------
walterbell
A philosophical comic on Questions vs. Answers,
[http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-
park](http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park)

------
clwk
That was interesting. It was also bizarrely coincidental. My son is also in
third grade, and I also explained binary to him today. During the
conversation, which arose adventitiously, I found myself contemplating the
socratic approach -- so the author's considerations resonated.

That said, I think the author's idea of 'only asking questions' is perhaps
overly rhetorical. If you read the dialogue, he clearly injects statements
without questions, and he also asks questions of the form, '<STATEMENT>,
right?'. I have no problem with that, and found myself doing the same for the
same reasons. My point is only that I think there is a 'truth' behind the
approach which is better encapsulated than 'by only asking questions'. I think
the more important consideration is that there be true _dialog_.

Just because it's such a completely weird coincidence, and because I think it
demonstrates my point, I'm going to try to write out our conversation from
memory. The whole thing probably took about ten minutes. As you'll see, it
transitioned smoothly from questions my son was asking me. I think that's
important, and it's why I think an asymmetrically 'socratic' emphasis on only
asking questions is also stifling.

S: Why does the computer go faster after you restart it?

Me: The likely possibility is that there are memory leaks.

S: What is a memory leak?

Me: Imagine someone who got a new plate every time he had another serving of
potatoes, instead of putting more potatoes on the same plate.

S: Okay.

Me: I guess he would make a lot more dishes than someone else.

S: I see that.

Me: Now imagine you had this guy over for dinner every day and you never did
his dishes.

S: [Laughs]

Me: Pretty soon, you would run out of plates. You're _supposed_ to reuse your
plate within a meal, and you're _supposed_ to wash the dishes between meals.
But if you don't, you can run out.

S: So what does this have to do with computers?

Me: Computer programs are supposed to clean up after themselves too, but if
they don't do it correctly, then they are like weird guests who make too many
dirty dishes.

S: What are the dishes?

Me: Computer programs use memory. Remember we've talked about RAM, and
different computers have different amounts of RAM? Well, when a computer
program needs to hold some information, it asks for memory from the operating
system. This is called 'memory allocation'. Asking for memory so you can store
some information is like asking for a plate for your potatoes.

S: Okay.

Me: Normally a computer program doesn't ask for too many plates, and it lets
you clean them up when it's done, but not always. That might be why restarting
speeds things up. Sometimes you have to kick all the guests out and do the
dishes.

S: Okay, so how much memory does a program ask for?

Me: That depends. How big are your files [that we were transferring]? A few K?
K stands for kilobytes, so that's a thousand bytes. Actually it's 1,024 bytes
-- but memory might be allocated in smaller units too.

S: What's a byte?

Me: A byte is eight bits.

S: What's a bit.

Me: It's a one or zero. Well, actually it's one piece of information, like a
yes or a no. But it works out very well to call it a one or a zero, so we can
do math with it.

S: How does that work?

Me: It's just like normal math, except instead of having ten numbers, you just
have two: one and zero.

S: So you only have two numbers? What good is that?

Me: No, I mean you only have two digits, instead of having ten digits. You
still have all the same numbers.

S: I don't understand how that works.

Me: Well, if you just have one bit, you have either a one or a zero. How many
numbers can that be?

S: Two.

Me: What if you have two bits, or two digits, each of which is either a one or
a zero. How many numbers now?

S: I don't know.

Me: Think about it. What if you have a one then a zero? [Note, we are in the
car, so we can't write anything down.] What number would that be?

S: Ten.

Me: Yes, in base ten -- which is what we call it when there are ten digits.
But we don't call it that in base two, which is what we call it when there are
two digits.

S: What do you call it?

Me: TWO!

S: What!?

Me: Think about it.

S: I don't get it.

Me: How many two-digit numbers are there in base two?

S: Two zeros. Two ones. One zero. I'm not sure.

Me: What about one-digit numbers?

S: One and zero. Two numbers.

Me: Right, so can you combine those two?

S: I don't understand what you are asking me.

Me: Can't you create two-digit numbers by adding a digit onto all the one-
digit numbers?

S: Sure.

Me: So can't you create two two-digit numbers for each one digit number? [I
feel guilty for leading him so much, but hey, I'm arguing here against overly
rhetorical socraticism.]

S: [Pause followed by evident lightbulb.] Yes, so it's four!

Me: Yep, you can represent two numbers with one binary digit, and four numbers
with two binary digits. How many numbers can you represent with three binary
digits? (Binary is another word for base two.)

S: Eight.

Me: Because eight is two to the third power.

S: No, four.

Me: What?

S: Two times two is four.

Me: Wait, let's go back. Two times two _is_ four. That's two squared or two to
the second power. Two times two times two is eight. That's three twos
multiplied together. That's what 'to the third power means'.

S: Right, sorry, I got confused.

Me: So how many numbers can we represent in four binary digits?

S: 16.

Me: Because 16 is two to the

S: Fourth

Me: Right. What about two to the fith, five binary digits?

S: Thirty-two.

Me: And six binary digits, two to the sixth?

S: [Quickly] Sixty-four.

Me: And seven binary digits, two to the seventh?

S: [Quickly] One hundred twenty-eight.

Me: And _eight_ binary digits, two to the eighth, _which is one byte?_

S: Oh! Let me figure this out. [Pause then triumphantly,] two hundred fifty-
six.

Me: Correct. So a byte can be one of 256 numbers, expressed in base two.

S: I get it.

Me: Do you? Okay, so how would you write one?

S: One.

Me: What about two?

S: I can't.

Me: Why not?

S: Not enough numbers.

Me: But we just went through this. There are plenty of numbers.

S: But this part is too confusing.

Me: Normally you only have ten digits, but you can write numbers much larger
than ten, right?

S: Yes.

Me: So when you write numbers down, there's a trick, right? [See, I'm doing
this [<STATEMENT>, right?' thing too.]

S: Yes.

Me: Why is eleven eleven? It's a one in the ten's place plus a one in the
one's place, right? You know about the ten's place, right?

S: Yes. So…

Me: So in binary, there is no ten's place because there are not ten digits.
There are only two digits. So instead of the ten's place, we have a two's
place.

S: Right! So it's one one.

Me: Yes! Instead of having a ten's, hundred's, thousand's place multiplying by
ten every time, there's a two's place, a four's place, then what?

S: Eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four.

Me: Correct! So do you think you understand this now?

S: I think maybe I do.

Me: What is one one zero?

S: One in the four's place, plus one in the two's place equals six.

Me: Okay, how would you write seventeen?

S: [Long pause.] One in the sixteen's place plus one in the one's place.

Me: One, zero?

S: zero, zero, one.

Me: I think you _do_ understand.

S: So how does the math work?

Me: You can add and multiply them just like normal numbers, but we probably
need to write that down.

S: Okay.

Me: There's also a trick for negative numbers that computers use. It makes
subtraction work like addition.

S: How does that work?

Me: It's called two's complement, but I can't remember the details well enough
to explain it correctly in the car. Let's look it up later.

\---

Although I quibble slightly on the value of what I'm calling rhetorical
socraticism, my main point is agreement. It's just a remarkably weird
coincidence that a fairly similar discourse (teaching binary to a third-grader
through investigative dialog) would have come up in my daily life today.
That's the real main reason I wrote it out while it's fresh enough that I
remember most of the details.

I am not a school teacher, but I am a parent -- so I'm more concerned with the
issues involved in communicating with a single individual (at a time). The
reason I think a more symmetrical approach is probably most reasonable is that
information needs to come from somewhere. Why not provide it in as appropriate
a form as necessary, and _exactly at the point of need_? Otherwise the
'socratic' teacher has to be an outsider to the process who swoops in to work
magic on the vessels which have been primed by the faceless dead fact-giving
of the their non-socratic counterparts.

From that perspective an emphasis on the 'question-asking' side of what might
be a more balanced whole is understandable, though. That orientation is a
useful counterbalance to the usual approach, even if it can't possibly (even
in theory) replace it completely.

------
kazinator
> How come we have ten numerals? Could it be because we have 10 fingers?

Objection! Counsel is leading the witness, Your Honor.

Rhetorical questions are really statements in disguise: "The fact is such and
such, don't you agree?"

The students should be given an opportunity to form their own hypotheses about
why there are ten numerals, otherwise that particular element of the dialog is
not genuine "teaching by asking".

~~~
rgarlikov
Yes, the questions are logically leading. That is pointed out as what the
method is about. That particular question was just to get the discussion
started so we could get into "aliens with two fingers" to make it fun for the
students to discuss two-digit math (no pun intended, of course). It was not
really part of the logic of teaching. It could have been done without
reference to fingers at all; e.g., "Could we have a math system if we only
used two numerals, 0, and 1?" but that would not likely have piqued the
interest of third graders very much. And actually some students might have
taken issue with the ten fingers/ten numerals idea, since "zero" as a numeral
screws that up. E.g., our number groupings in written, columnar form really go
from zero to 9, and then 10 to 19, 20 to 29, etc. You don't count zero things
on your fingers....

------
baldfat
This is how children need to speak with adults. This automatically helps them
to do this by nature and it helps children's behavior.

I raise my child with me all ways saying, "Are you asking or are you telling?"
If they tell I ask for a re-do and than 90% of the time it is all set.

------
aszantu
Donation was broken for me

"An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #102.a68e1402.1428827623.1ff08e60"

------
Supersaiyan_IV
Albeit I completely agree with the approach, and ideally would want kids to
respond with this kind of respect, I find the need for a complementing article
which describes how to mould kids' attentiveness, and respect of the elderly,
in order to enable such fruitful discussions.

I'd argue that this is a form of coaching. From my experience and research
(paper: "Self-organizing teams and the coach's adaptive role") the efficiency
of Socratic methods depend on the mapping of past progress. Meaning that: by
creating a system which is best at incrementally visualizing progress of the
topic at hand, the efficiency of the method will be positively affected.

------
dandelion_lover
The author should have made the donation link more clear, because I had to
search in order to find it. Why not make the word "contribute" as a link to
the corresponding page?

------
spiritplumber
Using the Socratic Method in teaching science to creationists is interesting.
They will follow each step but reject the conclusion, every time.

Even when you preface things with "I am not trying to get you to believe
what's in textbooks, I'm trying to get you to _know_ what's in textbooks,
instead of stuff like MY GRANDPA WAS A MONKEY".

Creationist educators and even publishers have developed a unique narrative
about what they think science textbooks teach.

------
hammerbrostime
I tried this out last year in my daughter's third grade class, and it was a
total hoot. I still hear back about the event from time to time.

------
UhUhUhUh
This is seriously cute! And by the way, asking questions is also an excellent
way, I would even say the best, to learn yourself while you are teaching, or
thinking you are. At bottom, knowledge is somewhere between the teacher and
the student. Or the good therapist and his patient. Or the world and the
researcher. It doesn't reside with anyone, it builds itself up in the middle.

------
sriram_sun
From the article: > Try to get used to it; the alien children do. What number
comes next? I'd love it if a teacher told me that!

------
sneak
Combined with sarcasm, you find yourself with trolling.

------
sdgsfsfgfg
Be careful of the Socratic method if you are attempting to teach those who
perceive themselves to be higher up in a social hierarchy.

When I try this it often ends up in confrontation as the person who feels they
are being asked for knowledge realises I am trying to teach them. These days I
just flat out state my position and if they don't grasp the argument I forget
the whole thing. This is a much better approach than attempting to subtly
nudge people along a path to knowledge. It's a common problem for me as I look
a 10 years younger than I am.

~~~
gclaramunt
I would be careful also with those who perceive themselves to be lower down in
a social hierarchy as they lack the force to confront you. (I mean: maybe you
cause the same effect always, but only get push back from ppl. higher up)

