From time to time I’m struck by the extraordinary insight of the great Clive Staples Lewis:
Where the old [education] initiated, the new merely 'conditions'. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds— making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation—men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda. [From The Abolition Of Man]
And so it is. The origin of education as the Western world once practiced it is in the Socratic method:
- Select a topic: a proposition in causation perhaps focused on an important event;
- Question the causative forces that underlie it;
- Confront the proposition with clarifying questions;
- For each further proposition introduced:
- Question the causative forces that underlie it;
- For each further proposition introduced:
- Confront the proposition with clarifying questions;
- For each further proposition introduced:
…
Yes, the Socratic method is recursive – and with no guaranteed exit criterion. But that is part of its effectiveness: to instill in the student the inclination to look deeper. This is how a good teacher leads his student to form the habit of thought: the determination to seek reasons and explanations.
In a classroom setting, the honest use of the Socratic method will often cause two (or more) students to differ on the reasons for something. A really good teacher will then strive to get the students to perpetuate the method, by questioning each other’s proposed explanations. If successful, this teaches the student three things of inestimable value:
- Differences of opinion are normal and tolerable;
- He will regularly confront such differences among his peers;
- Some propositions aren’t plumbable “all the way to the bottom.”
Clearly, the Socratic method is a lot of work. It demands patience of both the teacher and the student. It also requires “guardrails:” prohibitions on personalities and indoctrination. Yet it is the foundation for acquiring facility with the one and only tool Man possesses that the lower orders do not: reason.
Lewis saw the acquisition of both reason and a grasp of what he called “The Tao” – i.e., those properties of existence that cannot be established irrefutably through a reasoning process – as indispensable to the formation of character. Given what’s become of both education and human character over the century behind us, I’d say he was correct.
What our “public” schools call “education,” outside of mathematics and the sciences, bears little relation to education by the Socratic method. It comes closer to indoctrination: This is the reason! Don’t you forget it! And no questions! The late Robert M. Pirsig provides a striking demonstration of this distinction in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
But then, below the definition on the blackboard, [Phædrus] wrote, "But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is!"
and the storm started all over again. "Oh, no, we don’t!"
"Oh, yes, you do."
"Oh, no, we don’t!"
"Oh, yes, you do!" he said and he had some material ready to demonstrate it to them.
He had selected two examples of student composition. The first was a rambling, disconnected thing with interesting ideas that never built into anything. The second was a magnificent piece by a student who was mystified himself about why it had come out so well.
Phædrus read both, then asked for a show of hands on who thought the first was best. Two hands went up. He asked how many liked the second better. Twenty-eight hands went up.
"Whatever it is," he said, "that caused the overwhelming majority to raise their hands for the second one is what I mean by Quality. So you know what it is."
There was a long reflective silence after this, and he just let it last.
This was just intellectually outrageous, and he knew it. He wasn’t teaching anymore, he was indoctrinating. He had erected an imaginary entity, defined it as incapable of definition, told the students over their own protests that they knew what it was, and demonstrated this by a technique that was as confusing logically as the term itself. He was able to get away with this because logical refutation required more talent than any of the students had.
When an “educator” does such a thing, he’s rejecting the probing, questioning approach of the Socratic method and “laying down the law.” This obviously has nothing to do with developing a habit of thought or scrutiny.
Of course, Pirsig / Phædrus had reasons for doing what he did to that class. He was attempting to show that his conception of Quality, if it has a place in existence, must be part of Lewis’s Tao — and that his students were overwhelmingly able to perceive it as such.
Indoctrination is never appropriate under the guise of intellectual inquiry. Indeed, it’s the diametric opposite of inquiry as we understand it. Perhaps the tensions that drove Pirsig to his mental breakdown arose from his determination to assert undefinable Quality to an intellectual audience. But I digress.
It’s possible that schooling as practiced today is incompatible with inquiry, and therefore with the Socratic method. One instructor / many students / an established syllabus and a schedule to keep: What are we to expect from such a situation when – or perhaps if — one of the Great Questions arises in the course of events? It seems that either the Question must be tabled indefinitely, or the instructor must give “the official answer” and march on.
That’s no way to foster a habit of thought, Rather, it suggests that Authorities have already decided once and for all Why Things Are As They Are. Further inquiry would be at best pointless, at worst subversive.
I could go on, but I think my Gentle Readers can do so for themselves.
If you haven’t yet, get your kids out of the “public” schools.
