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Socratic Method

I was googling the web for schools that adopted the Socratic Method for teaching. I was appalled to find that there were hardly any. Even not many colleges use the Socratic Method (barring laws schools and a few liberal arts college like St Thomas Aquinas College…which by the way is a pretty 'cool' Catholic college in California that has no textbooks except the 'Great Books' of great men, where there are no majors or minors or specialisations for the four years of education). Honestly! I mean, sure, Socrates can be a pain lots of times. Reading the Republic beyond Book 4 gave me a splintering headache. But, just reading his dialogue teaches Logic and Rhetoric that are no longer taught in many schools as subjects.

 

I found this interesting experiment a volunteer conducted in a Grade 3 classroom. It's pretty awesome how he simplified Binary Arithmetic to the third graders using nothing but questions (aka SM). I wish someone had taught me permutations and combinations in the SM :-(

 

Comments

Anonymous said…
why would u google for socratic method of teaching?he he he....bored at work?
akka
27 Nov 2007, 23:22:00
ambrose mensch said…
Colleges and Universities That Have Some Form of Great Books Program:

http://www.mercer.edu/gbk/gbk/othergbk.html
28 Nov 2007, 10:41:00
Anonymous said…
woohoo! the socratic method is exactly what the CaseStudyMethodoloy we used at IIMA is !
16 Jan 2008, 14:50:00
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