Socrates and the Madness of Method: From Socratic to Sarcastic, a Diversity of Teaching Methods Claim a Relationship to the Ancient Greek Scholar. but Is There Really a Connection?
2012; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 94; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Education and Critical Thinking Development
ResumoSo, what's your teaching Perhaps you're inclined to say something about Socrates. If so, you're not alone. From primary school to higher education, many educators claim to teach in the manner of the old philosopher. But what do we know about Socrates and the method he used to interrogate Athenians in the agora? And what are we talking about when we call it the method? As it turns out, we may be mistaking common phrasing for common practice. After all, classrooms in which the Socratic method is ostensibly employed are hardly all the same. Teachers are at the center of some and at the periphery of others. Talk is common in all, but it includes chaotic zigzagging in one class and linear directionality in another. Socratic classrooms can be relaxed or tense, loud or quiet, large or small. They can, in other words, seem as different from each other as they seem from classes in which other methods are the basis of instruction. Differing interpretations of the Socratic method, it turns out, are the product of a fractured history in which K-12 educators, pedagogues, law professors, and leaders of undergraduate seminars put Socrates to work for their own purposes. Each claimed classical antiquity as their own, justifying shifts in practice by leaning on the legitimacy of the ancient past. However, by the mid-20th century, those separate storylines had disappeared from collective memory. The motives and maneuverings of individuals faded, leaving only the residue of their high-minded discourse. Stripped of context, the separate worlds of 19th-century teacher education, say, or the 20th-century Great Books movement were mistaken for something singular with a universally understood meaning. Yet, how could that be, when even modern scholars of ancient Greece continue to struggle with the question of what Socrates may have employed as a teaching References to the so-called Socratic method first began cropping up in Europe during the Enlightenment--as Socrates became an academically fashionable reference point. By way of migrating intellectuals and the printed word, the Socratic method made its way to America's eastern shore where its primary function was as a counter to the traditional methods of lecture and rote memorization. Repetition, drilling, line upon line, and precept upon precept, with here and there a little of the birch--constituted the entire system, recalled Samuel Goodrich (1873). The Socratic method, by contrast, seemed to offer educators a way to engage children in learning and to do so as compulsory education laws were bringing more students to school and more novices into teaching. Moreover, the figure of Socrates gave teachers an ancient imprimatur for challenging traditional practice. Professionalizing teaching At work, too, was a professionalization motive, as teachers, pedagogues, and system builders like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard made the case that teaching was a calling and a career--not merely a way to earn a living before marriage. An 1859 article in the Massachusetts Teacher and Journal of Home and School Education made the case that like preaching, is more than a business, though, too often, it is made not even so much as that;--more than a profession, though too few elevate it even to the rank of a profession. But, in order to professionalize the occupation, educators needed to establish and control a core of expert knowledge. In that light, a method with an ostensibly ancient pedigree seemed like a good place to start. In 1877, Joseph Baldwin, principal of the State Normal School in Kirksville, Mo., observed that mere school keepers, rote teachers, quacks, shams, and fossils will never adopt this plan of teaching; but as teachers become familiar with the science of education and skillful in the art of teaching, they will necessarily use the Soeratic method of giving instruction. …
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