A brilliant example of Socratic teaching. Note how the teacher disposes of group think out of the box.
Why cant all liberal arts education be like this?
Why cant all liberal arts education be like this?
Critical thinking 101
- Thread starter CO. Hoosier
- Start date
That was well done. It's also interesting you chose an example with transexualism as its subject.
It was well done, but it wasn't Socratic. It was manipulative. The two key points in the discussion were both points where the "teacher" (I will use quotation marks because this is obviously staged) doesn't ask questions, but rather states his opinion, and then goads the "student" into agreeing with it. The student didn't learn how to think. He learned what is right thought, according to the teacher.
It's easy to miss because in this case, the teacher is correct, but it's still not at all what it's billed as.
Nice to be on the same page as Coach for a change.
Don’t get too excited. I finished middle of the pack. I could be wrong. Ask Cortez. He did better.
We’re on the same page more than you think for the record
Both wrong.
First of all, Socratic teaching is manipulative. That is how teacher moves the student’s thinking.
Second, the teacher stated his opinion twice, (1:17 and 3:42 or so) He immediately followed with open ended questions. And this is the important part: The teacher invited student to disagree with the teacher. That is what Socratic method and critical thinking does.
I’m open to the possibility that this was staged, So what? The video probably is intended to be instructive.
The important point is that this short clip opens the door to how we are supposed to think about what we see and hear and how we use thinking. The video is spot on.
I'm with CoH, here. It's not as if Socrates was above a little manipulation. Hell, the very questions you ask--like an editor picking which news to focus on--could be called manipulation. True, he could have just not given an opinion on the interpretation of the tweets, but that would have been interminable, and it looks like this particular exchange was already long enough (there are breaks you don't see on the clip where the questioner has to go look stuff up).
I also disagree that the "key" moments came when the teacher said anything. I thought the key moments were the questioner's responses, which led to the conclusion. A better example here, though, would have been if the student and teacher disagreed about the definition of transphobe and drilled down on that. Just like in the anti-racism context, that is where the deep disagreement lies between the rational and the insane (sorry, couldn't resist).
The same type of thinking found in that video is endemic in our society and on this board. I think McMurt and OHG need to re-enroll in CoH university's critical thinking 101 class--you two tried to skip ahead to HVAC 404 without completing the prereqs.
@BradStevens this is the part i agree with from goat. i get there can be some leading in the method but both the selection of the "open ended" questions and leading of same imo detracts from the notion that it's truly socratic. but again i finished middle of the road, and that was only after EXCELLING in self-selected courses after the misery of first year. cortez again would do better at this
i hold a ph.d. from coh u. stay in your lane....
I've heard they are double-checking your thesis for plagiarism, so hold your horses.
Please. Here was my dissertation: The Farcical Nature of Woke Politics
You think that old coot that runs the program will rescind that one!
I disagree he "goaded" the student into agreeing with him.
Go rewatch the clip. 2:13 mark. He says "I think . . ." in a non-confrontational manner, and the kid immediately agrees with him and says "That's exactly what she's saying" before he can even follow up. He then asks "So is that transphobic to you?" The other point is at 3:37 but that section is cut up a bit so we don't know what follow-up questions he asked after he gave his interpretation (which could have been better expressed as "what would you say to the person who interprets that tweet as . . . [fill in his expressed opinion]?").
You'll also notice his face is pretty blank most of the time, and his body language isn't confrontational at all. He does a great job. Not perfect, but great.
Well, when 1/2 the paper was cut and paste posts from the It Isn't In Schools thread, without proper attribution, yeah I think there's a chance.
I'll amend my critique to say that it's a poor example of the idealized Socratic method CO.H like to fetishize. This guy led the student to the right opinion. He in no way imparted any special critical thinking skills.
Seems as good a place as any. This was a very well done podcast/interview.
www.audible.com
The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is an audio documentary that examines some of the most contentious conflicts of our time through the life and career of the world’s most successful author. In conversation with host Megan Phelps-Roper, J.K. Rowling ...
www.audible.com
There is a tell. Socratic teaching is high-level instruction through developing thinking skills. It isn’t fantasy as the word “fetish” implies.
This is why I called my thread Critical Thinking 101. The first thing the teacher does is to destroy group think and begin to drill down on what the student was really thinking. That is a good first step, Going further is a higher level course.
It was that donation ( bribe) from your parents . . . .
I agree that it is unlikely the kid learned much from that one exchange.
I got the sense it was staged too, but for what it's worth, he addresses that in a video posted further down on his twitter feed and claims that it's not.
I do like the sentiment in the video in CoH's OP, but I do think it's worth noting that this guy is trying to build a social media presence/brand. Elon Musk shared something he put out and there were more than a couple instances where he was sort of kissing Elon's ass.
All that said, if this guy actually is a teacher, based on what limited amount I know of him, I'd guess he's doing a lot right in his classroom.
In addition to all of this, as you might guess, I'm not as enamored with the Socratic method as others. I think it's a perfectly fine educational paradigm, but I don't think people who experience it are being taught to think better than others who don't. I've known a lot of lawyers, both here, and in real life, and I can safely say that they are no better at thinking than others. The only thing the Socratic method did for their thinking skills was increase their own opinion of them.
To the extent I was taught how to think, I'd credit philosophy at IU more than anything. Although any good prof makes you think, or think differently, about certain things. I don't recall any of those profs other than my first philosophy one using the Socratic method (Fred Beiser, who was there in the late 80s-early 90s and then left for Syracuse. He was really good and a great academic who produced real insight and historical analysis in his academic work).
First year of law school was mostly Socratic method, and it did teach you how to ask the right questions about legal cases, but I wasn't as blown away by it as the typical business or science major who had never had to think that way before.
This makes no sense. Critical thinking is to thinking as hand eye coordination is to hitting a curveball. We all employ it, some are better than others. It’s indispensable.
Socratic teaching in the hands of a good teacher is vital to learning how to think critically, meaning learning how to peel away the layers of a conclusion or assumption and not to just accept it. And more importantly , how to even recognize more layers to a conclusion.
On the other hand, for those whose depth of thinking is thinking about different ways to express platitudes, I guess you might be on the right track. FWIW, I think thinking in platitudes is where most people are.
I’ll carry the few classes on Palsgraph to my grave. Those few classes taught me how to think about cause and effect, which is a vital part of critical thinking in my view.
We also had 1L class called Legal Method. That was full bore Socratic and the Prof was seen as an asshole by many He was intimidating for sure. We split more hairs in that class than any other.
To me, the most important skill when it comes to critical thinking is the ability to cast away assumptions. Whether you're in a law school classroom, or a biology laboratory, it's critical (ha!) to be able to synthesize data without being biased by your own preconceptions.
For my own part, whatever ability I have in that realm, I credit less to any particular teachers I've had, and more to my own dad, and specifically the reading program he put me on from the time I was very little. I was exposed to ideas far earlier than most, and, importantly, to a wide variety of them. So while my young brain was still developing, I was already learning that opinions were a dime a dozen, and therefore needed to be rigorously tested.
I got a B in Philosophy at IU - but who cares? None of them mattered except mine.
Business Insider about to run a story trying to expose you
CoH, in watching your clip I wondered why the teacher (whom I thought was effective) didn't ask the student for his definition of transphobic at the beginning.
Don’t know if I’m using the right words here, but I think the intent is to end with that, not start with it.
So basically I was one of those kids who was bored in kindergarten because I already knew how to read and write when I started. It helped that I was born in October so I was older than everyone else, but a big part of it was my dad thought literacy was by far the most important part of any education, so he put in the work to get me there.
Anyway, I was reading children's lit on my own in first grade, and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew in second. The summer before third grade, he gave me The Hobbit. The next summer, LOTR. I read my first Michener novel the summer before fifth.
Dad was a huge fiction buff. I inherited his collection of novels, and I haven't bothered to count them, but they number in the multiples of thousands. I have no idea if he read them all, but he was a truck driver who taught himself how to speed read, so he'd finish several novels every week he was on the road.
Anyway, as I was finishing elementary school, he implemented the next phase of his plan. Since I had learned how to read admirably, he started giving me the more difficult nonfiction he thought was important. I actually remember the first nonfiction essay I ever read, because it was so important to him: Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience. After that, Walden (this one's actually kind of boring, he warned me, but finish it, anyway). He started sprinkling in classic American poetry, especially Frost. This man's entire higher education was a GED and a two-year business management program that HoJo's paid for, but somehow he had made himself a man of letters by sheer force, and I think he would have considered it a failure as a parent not to pass all that on.
For the record, those times where my writing seems obtuse and high-minded, even snobbish, that's not because of him. His lack of formal training allowed him to give me the experience without the academic airs. When I slip into that kind of asshole, that's all grad school talking. I've been trying hard for years to unlearn those bad habits.
Long story short: my dad loved language the way he loved music - it touched him in his soul. And he put all the effort he could muster into passing that love down to me.
****ing phenomenal.
Speed reading truck driver putting Thoreou in his young son’s hands. This is just so cool.
You and Cosmic really upped the level of the board tonight. Great stuff.
Hell, I was reading Mad Magazine by third grade.
Letters to Penthouse by fifth.
