The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
harvardlawreview.org
The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#2[flagged]
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#3[flagged]
Socratic method is too hard on poor diverse students, hurts their delicate feelings, doesn't actually encourage independent thought, and forces pupils to adopt straight white male culture.
We are approaching some kind of weird post-merit dystopia.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#4[deleted]
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#5Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of "Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools. I gather that the harm consists, not in the general method of posing questions, but the way that professors put students on the spot and may humiliate them if their answers are unsatisfactory. The point the author makes about the way that this ritual enforces hierarchy is interesting, too (my impression is that many aspects of elite law schools do this).
I guess you might defend the "Socratic" method as a way of encouraging student engagement. But I suspect that it really appeals to people who like the idea of discourse as combat (DEBATE ME!). As an aside, I'm struck that students in most other contexts have nearly the opposite attitude. That is, they maintain that they should be free to zone out or play with their phones or skip class altogether as long as they don't disturb others.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#6[flagged]
Socratic method is too hard on poor diverse students, hurts their delicate feelings, doesn't actually encourage independent thought, and forces pupils to adopt straight white male culture. We are approaching some kind of weird post-merit dystopia.
That's far from an accurate summary of the article. From the portions I read, it's full of rich information and by no means as one-sided as you claim. Would you please stop posting shallow dismissals and ideological rants to HN?
You've been breaking the HN guideline that asks you not to use this site primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended from now on.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Socratic method is too hard on poor diverse students, hurts their delicate feelings, doesn't actually encourage independent thought, and forces pupils to adopt straight white male culture. We are approaching some kind of weird post-merit dystopia.
That's far from an accurate summary of the article. From the portions I read, it's full of rich information and by no means as one-sided as you claim. Would you please stop posting shallow dismissals and ideological rants to HN? You've been breaking the HN guideline that asks you not to use this site primarily for ideological battle. We ban accounts that do this, regardless of which ideology they're for or against. P…
>Kennedy pointed
out that the legal professional style to which students learn to assimilate
is “overwhelmingly white, male, and middle class.”46 But the Socratic
method’s encounter with gender, race, and class diversity might related-
ly occasion worry about exclusion or oppression in a more tangible way.
That is, if the Socratic method causes the kind of terror and
disempowerment in students that some have observed, and is stylisti-
cally white, male, and middle class, would it not also impose dispropor-
tionate harm on students who are women, as well as on racial and class
minorities?
Of course the article is much more expressive than what I wrote-it is a summary.
I didn't inject ideology into this discussion. If you want to be consistent this article shouldn't be allowed either. This is blatant racism, sexism, and classism.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#8Well, it is nice to see someone going straight for the details. Do we have any context on why this ... short novel :) ... was written?
I want to interpret this as a coinciding of two things; the first that the "Socratic Method" as described here would be a powerful method of creating and perpetuating a culture amongst law students trained at Harvard; where their opinions and beliefs are subjected to a very public examination and then reshaped to be what the professors think they should be. Not a terrible idea, that seems like a valid interpretation of what teaching should be, with many warts as noted.
And the second is the philosophy that gets mentioned a few times in the article that there are topics that are “too hot to handle” that might "injure" a student. Part of the fringe push to redefine "injury" to mean hearing something unpleasant or disagreeable.
So my assumption is that the author sees a crisis approaching the law school where it must take a stand on what its objective is - preserving a culture, relaying uncontroversial material to students, or some other path. And then this pdf is balanced factual synthesis of the issues at hand - I'm not sure the author is even proffering a conclusion.
If that assumption holds then there are some points raised here that could have profound influences in 10 or 20 years. Law students eventually become lawyers then judges, and unfortunately the US political class seems to be sourced heavily from the lawyers (~40% of Congress, I think). If confrontation is de-emphasised in the classroom, that could have spillovers into the heart of how political debate and distribution of justice is undertaken.
But I don't know enough about "Jeannie Suk Gersen" or why she wrote this to form a strong opinion on the topic apart from wishing lawyers were trained to write reports.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#9Despite completing degrees in philosophy, I've never experienced the sort of "Socratic" method that is apparently practiced in law schools. I gather that the harm consists, not in the general method of posing questions, but the way that professors put students on the spot and may humiliate them if their answers are unsatisfactory. The point the author makes about the way that this ritual enforces hierarchy is interes…
> I guess you might defend the "Socratic" method as a way of encouraging student engagement. But I suspect that it really appeals to people who like the idea of discourse as combat (DEBATE ME!)
I think that is the trait that law schools want to select for.
Re: The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]
#10Well, it is nice to see someone going straight for the details. Do we have any context on why this ... short novel :) ... was written? I want to interpret this as a coinciding of two things; the first that the "Socratic Method" as described here would be a powerful method of creating and perpetuating a culture amongst law students trained at Harvard; where their opinions and beliefs are subjected to a very public exa…
IANAL, and so have no opinion on the merits of her article.
However, I have concerns about "topics that are 'too hot to handle'" in the sciences. For example, a recent thread[0] about Hill (2017) An elementary mathematical theory for the variability hypothesis.[1,2,3]
And by the way, there's lots of great discussion in the comments on the Quillette article.[1] And it's interesting that the deleted NYJM paper is online.[2] So what, are there now two different papers at New York J. Math. 23 (2017) that begin at p. 1641? Strange.
edit: Earlier versions of the preprint were apparently more controversial.[4]
0) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318
1) https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...
2) http://nyjm.albany.edu/j/2017/23-72v-orig.pdf