Abstract
Many contemporary teachers claim to employ the “Socratic method” in their classrooms. But what exactly is deemed “Socratic” in teaching today? And how does today’s Socratic teacher compare to the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues?
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- 1.
The necessity of human interaction in “Socratic” teaching was not overlooked by some (Broudy and Palmer 1965, p. 45; Jordan 1963).
- 2.
See Mertz (2007 pp. 26–28) for an overview of criticism of Socratic teaching practices in legal education.
- 3.
The authors answer the question “What is the Socratic method?” as follows: “It is an exercise in ‘reflective thinking’ that, according to John Dewey has two elements: doubt—a problem about meaning which initiates it—and an act of searching for a solution(s) to solve that problem” (Moeller and Moeller 2014b, p. 10; emphasis in original).
- 4.
Wilberding (2014) is an exception in that he devotes considerable attention to Plato and Xenophon, and furthermore, is unique in that he advocates teaching the students about Socrates and his method before one uses Socratic teaching in the classroom (pp. 69–87).
- 5.
Responding to particular individuals in particular ways is also a feature of Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues. See Morrison (1994) and Mintz (2010, pp. 288–289).
- 6.
In Theaetetus, Socrates suggests that one view of teaching is when someone “has under his control pieces of knowledge,” he “teaches” when he “hands them over to others” and “learning” is when a person “gests them handed over to him” (Tht. 198b). This definition of teaching is consistent with other Socratic pronouncements in the Platonic corpus but one should be cautious because (a) this model is deemed unsatisfactory in terms of its ability to explain knowledge in Theaetetus and (b) it occurs in the same dialogue in which Socrates provides the midwife metaphor for his educational interactions.
- 7.
Elsewhere (Mintz 2014) I have noted that such a solution is not so simple because Plato could have, like Xenophon, simply said that Socrates teaches without payment or reward. Xenophon’s Socrates says that he benefitted people “by teaching them, without reward [proika didaskōn], every good thing that lay in my power” (Xen. Soc. 26). In that essay, I also give an overview of some of the other scholarly positions on Socrates’ denial of teaching.
- 8.
It would be an oversimplification, however, to say that all sophists had such base motives and goals. In the Platonic corpus, this seems true of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, but not of Hippias, Prodicus, Gorgias and Protagoras who were serious intellectuals and must have been dedicated, even inspiring teachers; that must surely account for at least some of their popularity, regardless of the vast sums they accumulated from the young men eager to use their lessons for their own personal gain.
- 9.
See Chap. 3 on the inextricable link between philosophy and education in the Platonic corpus.
- 10.
Plato emphasizes that Socrates confronts the leaders of both the oligarchy and the democracy (Ap.32b–e; Ltr. 7.324e–325a, 325c).
- 11.
That being refuted is of value is mentioned in several places in the Platonic corpus. For example, Socrates tells Theaetetus after refuting his attempts to define knowledge, “if ever in the future you should attempt to conceive or should succeed in conceiving other theories, they will be better ones as the result of this enquiry. And if you remain barren, your companions will find you gentler and less tiresome; you will be modest and not think you know what you don’t know. This is all my art can achieve—nothing more” (Tht. 351b–c). Plato places one of his most eloquent articulations of this principle in Sophist when the Eleatic visitor describes refutation, with Socrates looking on, as an aspect of “noble sophistry” (Sph. 231b). The visitor says that “refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing” (230d) and refutation is beneficial because the “people who are being examined see this, get angry at themselves, and become calmer toward others. They lose their inflated and rigid beliefs about themselves that way, and no loss is pleasanter to hear or has a more lasting effect on them” (230b–c).
- 12.
Scholars of Socratic pedagogy have failed to reckon with the Socrates’ myth-telling because most of the work on Socratic method has been conducted under the framework of a developmentalist theory of Plato’s corpus. The developmentalist theory posits that, early in his career, Plato’s dialogues are typically aporetic and present something very close to the historical Socrates. As Plato matured, Socrates became, in his “middle” dialogues, a mere spokesman for Platonic dogmatism. In his “late” dialogues, Plato moves beyond Socrates and increasingly uses other spokesmen for his views. Many who were interested in Plato’s Socrates as educator have seen fit to focus exclusively on a limited set of “early” dialogues (e.g. Teloh 1986).
Developmentalism has increasingly lost its influence among Plato scholars. Even those who once confidently declared particular dialogues a moment in Plato’s own intellectual development now caution that they are working within a particular theoretical framework that remains compelling. For my part, I find developmentalism to be a hindrance to thinking about Plato’s educational philosophy. Developmentalism has until recently been an obstacle to recognizing Plato’s profound educational undertaking in his use of the dialogue form of writing, and the best scholars on the readers’ education via Plato’s dialogues focus instead on the reading order of the corpus rather than theories of publication dates (Altman 2010, 2012, 2016a, 2016b; Cotton 2014). In the developmentalist paradigm, Plato simply changed his views over time, and those views are reflected straightforwardly in what Socrates says. But Plato’s Socrates as educator is a complex character, provoking his interlocutors into reflection (and, at times, self-recrimination). As an educator, Socrates does not simply state what he thinks via questions but, instead, carefully engages interlocutors, just as Plato in turn engages his readers.
- 13.
Notably, Socrates says that the myth in Gorgias is a logos, an account, rather than a myth, an “old wives’ tale” (527a), whereas in Republic it is simply called a myth (R. 614b).
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Mintz, A.I. (2018). The Socratic Method: Plato’s Legacy in Pedagogy. In: Plato. SpringerBriefs in Education(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75898-5_5
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