The Socratic Method in an Age of Trauma (2017) [pdf]

Very few things work when you're trying to help someone "see the light". They are, in order of usefulness:

1. Pain experienced from bad choices

2. The socratic method

Everything else is varying degrees of useless.

I don't think the author would disagree with anything you have said.

Your comment would imply that because she is a "female Korean immigrant", she is arguing for the proposition that law schools should make special allowances for the more easily traumatized students. To the contrary, and what makes this an interesting piece, she is arguing that fairness requires that men and women be treated equally: "I am a cold-calling Socratic professor of criminal law who devotes about the same number of hours in class to sex offenses as to homicide. The subjects are comparable in their interest, difficulty, complexity, and relevance in the world in which we live. I treat them with the same level of seriousness and rigor."

She follows up by explaining why she doesn't believe in trigger warnings: "the idea that professors should take upon themselves to give some kind of a quasi-medical warning about trauma that students might experience because of the class is borderline irre- sponsible. In fact, some psychologists have claimed that trigger warnings may be counterproductive, because they may prime students to experience what is coming as more emotionally difficult than it would otherwise be, ratcheting up anxiety and pain."

One of my professors with whom I would have disagreed most vehemently when it came to contemporary social, political, and even legal issue was eminently capable of sticking to the method. Never once, IIRC, did he answer a question (posted by himself or a student) or directly interject a statement of law and its application. His Constitutional Law course was most memorable (and cherished) for the way he challenged me and everybody else. He also taught a seminar, Jurisprudence Readings, that was popular enough that other professors would enroll. In my class the readings were Plato's Republic and Laws. One professor left after a few classes, quite obviously because he was frustrated by the strict Socratic Method. This professor kept trying to interject his interpretation of other Plato and Xenophon works to try to "correct" the direction the class discussion was going, but the professor leading the seminar wouldn't have it. This student-professor was visibly annoyed on occasion, which felt a little uncomfortable. (I wonder if he felt "bullied". Perhaps it didn't occur to him that he wasn't the only well read student.) I took one of his classes the prior semester and wasn't surprised; he didn't apply the Socratic Method very rigorously in his class, which was closer to a traditional college course where both lecture and class discussion closely tracked the narrative of the textbook.

I did see what one might call bullying in law school, but it wasn't tied to the Socratic Method, per se. The Socratic Method requires that each and every student come to class prepared, having at least read all assigned material. "I don't know" isn't an answer; you at least have to be able to say something like, "the material said [insert reference], but I didn't understand how it applies". If you can't do that, you obviously didn't come prepared and some professors will call you out on it. Likewise if you're called in class and can't respond because you've lost the context. A law degree still means something these days precisely because students, especially 1Ls, are flunked out of school.[1] And you can't cry you weren't warned. Good professors give you ample, unambiguous warning in public.

[1] Not because you didn't respond properly in class. For most classes your grade is entirely determined by the final exam. But precisely because you're not typically graded on other assignments, the professor is doing you a favor by keeping the pressure on during class. Sometimes you could have easily aced a course simply by cramming a couple of weeks before the class; sometimes not. Neither you nor the professor can be sure, and in any event if class time is to have any value everybody needs to be engaged.