Socratic Seminar... Test 1 2 3... Test 1 2 3...

Today I tired a socratic seminar in my English class.

Context: We are currently reading Lord of the Flies as a class.

I printed a 1 page article that discusses Golding's allegorical response to Rousseau's philosophy about human nature. The article begins: "Rousseau views people as originally pure, but ultimately corrupted by society. On the other hand, Golding sees man as naturally evil. People, therefore, corrupt society." Yesterday I had the students prepare for today's socratic seminar by providing them with their own printed copy of the article and instructing them to:
1) writing 3 questions that they had about the reading or questions they began to think about when they read this article,
2) underline the things that Rousseau and Golding disagree about, and
3) circle the things that they (the individual reading the article) agree with.

We also laid down some ground rules for our conversation:

1. Speak one at a time - the student who holds the ball has permission to speak. All other students need to listen quietly and attentively.
2. No put downs EVER!
3. Be inclusive - throw the ball to students who have not yet had an opportunity to speak.
4. Refer to the text when you need it! This is not a test of your memory.
5. Do not participate if you are not prepared.
   
6. Do not stay confused! Ask for clarification!
7. Speak loudly for everyone to hear you.
8. Speak to your classmates, not just Mrs. U. This is a discussion between you and all of your classmates.
   

The opening question for today's seminar was: Are people pure and corrupted by society OR evil ad corrupt society?

Period 4's socratic seminar was slightly painful. I felt like students had a hard time keeping up a conversation. They had hard time expanding past "I think people are born evil." They continued to look to me to keep the conversation going and it was really hard for me to sit back and NOT keep it going. They wanted to talk to ME, rather than engage others. They also had a hard time saying, "I believe..." instead they would say, "so you said.... but what about..." in a fairly harsh tone. I wasn't exactly sure how to correct that or how many times to correct it. We had previously spoke about ground rule #2 and how to disagree politely, but the students may have let their emotions take them into the defensive mode. It made me think that when I do seminars in the future, I want to be better prepare to keep the conversation going with open ended questions that the students can continue to expand upon. 

Period 6 was better because my master teacher helped the conversation move. He chose students at random to share their opinion. Perhaps next time I will have each student (going around the circle) share and then leave some time for students to respond voluntarily.

After 4th period, one student spoke with me about another student's response. She said "____ said that making fun of people is not compassionate, but last year she made fun of me all the time." (we were discussing where compassion fits into these two views of human nature) During her comment, I could tell that some of the student were really thinking deeply about this whole topic and thinking about the context of their lives and how it relates. That was interesting to watch.