The Socratic method is a synonym for focused questioning. In the dialogues written by Plato (427-347 BC), Socrates plays the central role and seeks the truth by asking focused questions to friends and opponents; to friends, to help them figure out the answer themselves; and to opponents, to bring the logical gaps in their discourse to the foreground.
However, Socrates’ concept of education was very different from today’s. Plato’s dialogues such as “Meno” and “Phaedrus” demonstrate how Socrates went about pursuing truth, but don’t provide learning material as we do in today’s classroom.
It is not that Socrates taught geography, history, philosophy, mathematics and physics in his debates. The transmission of a specific scholastic curriculum was not Socrates’ goal. It took a couple of generations until Aristotle (384-322 BC), for the first time in history, undertook the goal of systematising knowledge and putting it into writing.
For this reason, since Socrates never meant to educate in the sense of today’s education, I find it somewhat artificial to speak of “the Socratic method on education.” Nevertheless, there is a general understanding that, if we practise focused questioning in the classroom, we are using “the Socratic method.”
The midwife metaphor
Before readers get carried away by Socrates’ amazing skills at asking questions, I should point out a fundamental mistake in Socrates’ logic. Sections 150 and 151 of Plato’s “Theaetetus” contain the midwifery metaphor, in which Socrates describes his back-and-forth questions as intellectual midwifery.
While a real midwife helps bring babies into the world, the back-and-forth questions are supposed to help bring truth into the open. Socrates proudly compared himself to a midwife: his questions are the intellectual equivalent to helping someone else to give birth.
The problem with the midwifery metaphor is that it assumes that, by answering the questions, the student is going to prove capable enough to figure out the truth. However, in practice, Socrates will rarely succeed at getting his students to figure out the truth.
In most of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates’ counterparts do not gain a great deal of knowledge. Socrates’ questions lead them to discard ideas that they had held as true, but the questions prove insufficient to replace the discarded assumptions and establish a new paradigm.
Remembering versus thinking
The fundamental mistake in Socrates’ educational logic is revealed in Plato’s “Meno,” in which Socrates maintained that humans learn by remembering. How did Socrates justify his statement? By asking a boy a series of questions that lead him to solve an arithmetical problem.
Socrates was totally wrong in categorising logical thinking as remembering. The fact that his questions had helped the boy arrive at the correct answer does not mean that the boy had known the answer already and that he had just remembered it.
Logical thinking, aided by questions, examples, calculations and comparisons, is the normal method for humans to solve problems. When we find a solution, it’s because we have made connections in our mind, and those have revealed the truth.
We have thought logically and arrived at a rational solution, but that does not mean that we have remembered anything. It’s hard to believe that Plato ended up endorsing the remembrance theory and magnifying it by his own “theory of the forms.”
Plato speculated that the remembrance process takes place when we access an intangible realm of ideas, which he called “forms.” His realm of ideas consist of absolute truths.
According to Plato, philosophers have more knowledge and wisdom than average individuals because they have access to the realm of forms. Such access, argued Plato, shall secure the philosophical elite a leading role in society.
However, there is no proof of the existence of Plato’s world of forms nor of Socrates’ theory of remembrance. Both theories are weak, arbitrary, and fail to explain how humans actually learn.
The acknowledgement of ignorance
Neither do I find particularly enlightening that Socrates asks every student to start by acknowledging their ignorance. In the “Apology” written by Plato, in section 21, Socrates categorised himself as wise because he had realised that his knowledge is limited.
Section 21 of “Apology” has been incorporated in Socrates’ method on education, but it makes as little sense as the theory of remembrance. Imagine if, before attending a mathematics lecture, the students should spend ten minutes going through a ritual of declaring their ignorance.
What would be the point of such a ritual? Nothing at all. If we engage in psychological rituals, we’ll waste the little time available for real education, critical thinking and creating fresh insights.
In section 29e of “Apology,” Socrates praised taking care of one’s soul as crucially important for happiness, more than the acquisition of wealth and popularity. Modern educators point to this section of “Apology” and argue that education is similar to “taking care of one’s soul,” but is it really true?
Socrates was addressing the jury in the criminal trial against him, trying to push them in the right direction, that is, in the direction of truth. However, I find it disproportionate to elevate Socrates’ words, which express an ethical commandment, to a principle of education.
The examined life
Similarly, today’s educators argue that the purpose of school and learning is to live “an examined life,” that is, a reflective lifestyle. An examined, thoughtful life is the opposite of living automatically, the opposite of following one’s impulses from minute to minute without any long-term strategy.
In Section 38 of “Apology,” Socrates had affirmed that the unexamined life is not worth living, but he meant an immoral life, a self-destructive one. He did not mean that uneducated or otherwise ignorant people should relinquish their desire to live a happy existence.
Once again, Socrates did not employ the word “education.” It would not be fair to take his quote out of context and pretend that it symbolises “the Socratic method on education.” I am afraid that the latter is a post-factum intellectual construction that Socrates himself would not have recognised.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “Rational Living, Rational Working.”