The Invisible School

Publications Section : xxProfessional Journal

The Seminar Circle 0.1 xxxxNovember 1996

The Seminar Circle 0.2 xxxSeptember 1997

The Seminar Circle 0.3 xxxxxxxxxMay 1998

THE SEMINAR CIRCLE

A Journal of Reflection on Our Common Practice

Volume 0, Number 3 : May 1998

Highlights of this edition

Hoo - rah ! A Journal with Multiple Voices by PGW

Close Reading: A Lost Art by Peter Babb

Facilitator Training: Intermediate Level by PGW

Socratic Seminars for Parents by Jerry Chris

Changing Habits of Mind: One Teacher's Journey by Mary Blizzard

Educational Reform and Socratic Seminars: A View from Washington State by Oscar Graybill

A Seminar Rubric with Student Responses by Susan Crumpler

Public Workshop on Socratic Dialogue by PGW

Some Are More Equal Than Others by Greg John

This edition of "The Seminar Circle" represents a high-water mark in our development. This time out, we have articles contributed by six of our colleagues, each one a teacher who leads classroom seminars. Different facilitators, different schools, different circumstances, different perspectives.

We hope that this publication continue to become more and more like a seminar. But with the added dimension, in this case, that it is a conversation on the practice of dialogue. And, as in a seminar circle:

* We benefit by hearing diverse voices;

* We grow by meeting together over time;

* We develop ourselves as "generalists" by reading a variety of texts by a variety of writers;

* We learn by critiquing the process.

See for yourself. Read these articles and see if each one doesn't offer some unique insights into this practice we share. See if you don't learn something from each one.

We hope that others will take this new development as incentive to write and submit something. No matter how often you are doing Socratic Seminars (nor how well), if you are gaining new experience facilitating dialogue, and you reflect upon what you learn, others of us can only benefit from your perspective.

Let us all work towards a time when the educational system changes enough that Socratic Dialogue is no longer an interesting add-on lesson, but a vital and integral part of the life of every learning community.

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In his essay "What is Enlightenment?", Immanuel Kant provides what can be viewed as a philosophic rationale for Socratic Seminars. Kant begins by stating: "Enlightenment is man's leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another." It is just this thoughtlessness that we seek to redress through Socratic practice, yet we have all encountered resistance from students to intellectual empowerment. As Kant later states: "It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor ! "

A recent experience has caused me to reflect and to gain some insights into this issue. I assigned a brief portion of an essay by Emerson to my students, and asked them to "prepare it for seminar, and then see me for a brief oral quiz." Only two students found me before the last period of the day; their preparation was thoughtful and sincere. Then came the deluge in the last hour of the day. The majority who came in "prepared" had misread the text and could not explain what words such as "coach" meant in context, let alone "Stoic."

They literally moaned with despair as I sent them over to a dictionary to look words up. A significant portion never appeared at all.

Finally, the last student to show up demonstrated a basic understanding of the text. When I praised her, she told me that the text was "stupid" and that she couldn't follow it, so she had asked another teacher what it meant.

The text? An excerpt from "Self-Reliance"!

Insight #1: Kids are used to doing sloppy, hurried reading. How many hundreds of times have they been asked to answer study questions on a chapter in a dumbed-down textbook? Now I come along and ask them to read a brief passage closely. Any Behaviorist can tell us what the response will be. For the majority of students, close reading is a lost skill.

Insight #2: Sometimes we forget that basic, literal understanding of the text is a vital third of the Socratic Seminar triad (text, seminar, critique). When we adults meet, the majority of us have prepared our text appropriately. Yet if it's hard work for us, imagine how hard it is for teenagers.

Insight #3: Close reading is a skill that must be taught. My sense is that it must be taught in conjunction with seminars, so that there is a clear purpose to the activity. Even as we work with students on their listening and questioning skills during seminars, so must we teach them how to read closely and carefully for comprehension.

One student was puzzling on the sentence, "The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet." He kept demanding that I explain to him what "coach" meant in this context. After looking the word up, he came back to me, smiled and said, "If you had told me what 'coach' meant, my brain would have become the feet."

In the months that followed, I became very aggressive about close reading of texts, and students became much more proficient. During the time period that I was aggressive about text preparation and comprehension, the Socratic Seminars were much less lively. I realized that my close questioning about the meaning of the text before the seminar made the seminar itself somewhat anti-climactic.

Ultimately, I stopped having formal seminars during this time period, and allowed students to engage in debate about the texts. At the same time, I slowly began to be much less demanding in my close reading "evaluation."

This past week we had our first Socratic Seminar in many weeks (an excerpt from Herbert Spencer entitled "Man vs. the State"). I asked the students to focus on expressing disagreement by questioning for clarification. These seminars were exceptional; students repeatedly made reference to the text, asked for clarification in terms of the text, and expressed disagreement by asking questions about portions of the text. Everyone seemed much better able to focus on the process of the seminar.

Insight #4: It is important to remember that this process is a spiral of growth, and that the degree of growth in the various elements (text, seminar, critique) will not always match evenly. So while at first I had a low level of comprehension of the text and a reasonably lively seminar, then a high level of textual comprehension and a bland seminar, and then a period of a high level of comprehension with no seminars, ultimately I have very effective seminars that stay focused on the text.

I want to credit Michael Strong's book, The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, and conversations I had with Rick Hoerr, Kevin Cline, and Peter Winchell for helping me to make these adjustments and gain these insights.

Peter Babb

North Bay Marin School

Mill Valley, CA

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"There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking."

- Alfred Korzybski

A group of twelve facilitators met in December to begin an Intermediate Level Training. For three days we held seminars and discussed the contents of a Seminar Facilitator Portfolio.

Since then, the participants have been leading classroom seminars and compiling materials for their portfolios. When we meet in late June for three more days of seminars and portfolio viewing, Dennis Gray, Michael Strong, and Oscar Graybill will join us, bringing a broader perspective to bear on the issues of our professional development as dialogue facilitators.

While there are still a few procedural questions to settle before we meet on June 29, here is the good news: It should be easier and more satisfying for any other groups which care to undertake this work, deepening their practice by examining it together.

Of general interest may be the specialized texts which we use for this level of training. In the Introductory Training, it is important to sample as diverse a range of texts as possible. This demonstrates to all the participants that the process can be used with any content , with any subject.

But once a group has some experience with the process , it is beneficial to use texts that pertain to a field of interest or specialization. So at the Bodywork School, they dialogue on texts which explore healing modalities, body psychology, trends in healthcare, etc. A corporate group might choose to read texts by Demming, Drucker, Senge, or any other writer with specialized knowledge of their field or industry.

We facilitators can benefit by reading texts which explore dialogue itself. Thus we read works by Plato, Adler, Bohm, Senge, and others in the field. Everyone in the seminar room in December found that the exploration of these texts deepened our understanding of the nature of dialogue, and increased our respect for the possibilities inherent in the practice.

And I, for one, can hardly wait until late June when we meet together to do it again !

Peter Winchell

Socratic Seminars West

Corte Madera, CA

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"Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think."

- Dale Carnegie

When Socrates stood trial 2,500 years ago for corrupting the youth of Athens by teaching them to think, he probably did not foresee that one day parents would also be "corrupted" in his name. But at Mission Viejo High School, where parents pack the library monthly for an adults-only Socratic Seminar, he has done just that: provided parents with a rare opportunity to think and question.

While many schools search desperately for ways to involve parents in their children's education, the "Parent Socratic Seminar" (nicknamed "The Lyceum"), draws parents on a voluntary basis to the school library to dialogue on subjects such as the poetry of Gibran, the art of Rembrandt, the editorials of the L.A. Times, and the viewpoints of Dennis Prager. Often, the work under study has been taken directly from the classroom, as parents enjoy exploring their sons' and daughters' daytime activities.

For many, the Socratic Seminar format does not come easily. In the work-a-day world, civil conversation has become a lost art. The practice of scrutinizing opinions, including one's own, has been forgotten in the combat zone of competing for profits and raising today's teenagers. The person who speaks loudest and longest usually wins. For most, genteel questioning in the pursuit of truth is no longer a habit of mind.

This apparent difficulty is also a major draw. Parents, for whom self-esteem remains as important as for any teenager, seem to find particular satisfaction in hearing other adults incorporate and build on their opinions, rather than argue. In an age when parent-teen agreement is nearly impossible, the seminar becomes a welcome relief.

The biggest draw, however, comes from the richness of the chosen texts. Businessmen and women relish the opportunity to dialogue on a piece of art or poetry. Universal questions of ethics, truth, and justice have not, for most, been the subject of conversation for perhaps fifteen years -- since the newborn destroyed the harmony of a young couple with free time to converse. Ever relevant for the teacher acting as facilitator, readings on cheating, cultural diversity, and theories of knowledge entertain and enthrall the parents.

Surprisingly, justification for the teaching facilitator to spend another night out comes from the growth of the parents -- the same mind expansion a teacher witnesses with teenage students. Lights go on; minds open; opinions change. Recently, a normally vociferous stock broker in his mid-forties, broke his silence after fifteen minutes: "What I am about to say goes against everything I have believed for many years. But, damn it, I see your viewpoint and must admit you are at least half-right...." If having a teen admit something similar can make the day for a teacher, imagine the thrill of watching a moment of epiphany in an adult !

Certainly Socrates would have appreciated this change. Although this parent probably felt he needed hemlock after making his confession, he typifies what the Socratic Seminar is all about: questioning, expanding, growing.

One is never too old for these.

Jerry Chris

Mission Viejo High School

Mission Viejo, CA

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 "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."

- John Kenneth Galbraith

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I received Socratic Seminar training early in 1996. Although much of the talk was about changing one's "habits of mind," I had no clear sense of what such change would look like. I returned to my classroom, attempted to practice The Dialogue Game with my students, experienced more frustration than success, and allowed those frustrations to justify avoiding dialogue, rather than demonstrating the need for more practice. My own belief system (habits of mind) reminded me rather loudly that I had very limited time with my students; I feared wasting that time in less-than-successful endeavors. A year after my training, I no longer attempted playing The Dialogue Game in my classroom. What I failed to realize at the time was that I was stuck in a "teaching" habit of mind.

Then in the summer of 1997, I returned to graduate school. Without recognizing initially what was happening, in the first few months of classes I witnessed the difference between a teaching environment and a learning environment. My first class fell into the expected mode: a syllabus was handed out, which included a delineation of course content; the professor illuminated this content and clearly identified the expected student outcomes. This teaching methodology is recognizable to anyone who has taken an instructional methods class. So I considered the class to be one more in a series of hoops through which I had to jump before being granted another degree.

The second class I took differed greatly. Again the professor handed out a syllabus that identified specifics of the course content; but instead of identifying specific learning goals and student outcomes, this professor asked us to determine these goals for ourselves based on their applicability to our own learning and work. In addition, Dr. Tucker held each of us in the class accountable for being committed to our growth as learners. She continually asked us to examine our commitment to that growth in light of our participation and involvement in the class.

The textbook for this unique learning environment was Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline (1990). Reading Senge had all the impact of a spiritual awakening for me. Suddenly many things that had been only vague abstractions began to solidify into more concrete possibilities.

Senge's book is about how to build a "learning organization" -- a term schools might well embrace to define their mission. He doesn't use the term "habits of mind", but he does speak of a "shift of mind" that occurs within systems thinking (the cornerstone of his five disciplines). He says that all five disciplines

"are concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future. " (p.69)

One of Senge's five disciplines is what he calls "Team Learning." It is

"the process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members truly desire." (p.236)

He offers the practice of dialogue as a method of achieving those results, citing as critical dimensions the abilities to "think insightfully about complex issues" and to participate in "innovative, coordinated action" (p.236).

It occurred to me as I read this chapter that one could think of one's class as a team of learners; the goal of developing insight into complex issues is a worthy one for any classroom. Also, for the first time, I began to consider how I might function with my colleagues as a team whose coordinated action was the creation of a more effective learning environment throughout our school. From my experience of being in a class in which learning was both the expectation and the reward, I knew that learning environments are vital and energizing. Dialogue appears to be a tool to accomplish both goals.

Senge states that "doing the obvious thing does not produce the obvious, desired outcome" (p.71). Despite this observable phenomenon, doing the obvious thing, doing the ordered curriculum, doing planned and rehearsed strategies are all built into methods courses on effective classroom teaching. All are built on a basic assumption that the teacher is in control of the classroom environment, that the teacher controls what learning is going on, and that teaching is (or at least should be equivalent to) learning.

But teaching is not equal to learning. Peter Senge confirmed this view at a teleconference in January, when he stated that most schools are "teaching organizations" rather than "learning organizations". The question that arises is: How do we create an effective learning environment ? In his book, Senge states,

"It is tempting to think that just because one understands certain principles one has 'learned' about the discipline. This is the familiar trap of confusing intellectual understanding with learning. Learning always involves new understandings and new behaviors, 'thinking' and 'doing'. " (p.374)

Dialogue offers us the unique opportunity to stop teaching and become a learner among other learners. It is here, perhaps more than any other place, that thinking and doing are joined together in developing new habits of mind.

I recognize now as I gather students together in a circle on the floor to play The Dialogue Game that we are practicing a new way of learning. We are being provided with an opportunity to "become observers of (our) own thinking" (Senge, p.242). We don't have to get it perfect; we can use frustrations as learning tools, identifying each obstacle we confront as yet another opportunity to learn and grow. This is a distinct shift of mind from the normal practice in the classroom where externalized goals and rewards clearly identify success and failure. Instead, we can begin to access the larger pool of meaning available to our collective intelligence, and we can catch a glimpse of the truth within the claim made by The Dialogue Game: It is indeed a place where we all become more intelligent.

Mary C. Blizzard

San Dieguito Academy

Encinitas, CA

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A View from Washington State

Whether it be at the local, state, or national level, standards evolve out of a desire for our children to be able to use their minds well. In 1993, Washington state created four Learning Goals which are reflected in most national and state standard-setting efforts. They are:

GOAL 1: Read with comprehension, write with skill, and communicate effectively and responsibly in a variety of ways and settings;

GOAL 2: Know and apply core concepts and principles of mathematics; social, physical and life science; civics and history; geography; arts; and health and fitness;

GOAL 3 : Think analytically, logically, and creatively, and integrate experience and knowledge to form reasoned judgments and solve problems;

GOAL 4 : Understand the importance of work and how performance, effort, and decisions directly affect career and educational opportunities.

Veteran educators look at goals like those of Washington state and say, "Educational Reform? This is nothing new. We have always had these goals." Any reasonable person looks at goals like those of Washington state and says, "What's new? I always thought these were our goals."

So if the goals are not really new, what significant results are supposed to come from educational reform? Most persons agree that the real goal is for students to graduate actually having learned what is taught.

If what is supposed to be taught has not changed dramatically from state to state and throughout the nation, yet students are not learning, what needs to change? The answer is obvious to Mortimer Adler, Howard Gardner, David Perkins, and Theodore Sizer.

We must change the way we teach.

One of the most powerful teaching strategies one can use to teach all of the Learning Goals of Washington state is Socratic Seminars. It is amazing that such a tool has not been fully embraced by more educational leaders. The regular use of Socratic Seminars teaches students to "think analytically, logically, and creatively, and integrate experience and knowledge to form reasoned judgments and solve problems." ( Goal 3 )

Practitioners of Socratic Seminars wholeheartedly, enthusiastically, and unreservedly believe that Goal 3 of Washington state's Learning Goals is exactly what Socratic Seminars do in all subject areas at all grade levels. The puzzling question of why Socratic Seminars are not widely present in today's classrooms generates more questions.

Is it because so few site and central office administrators know much about Socratic Seminars? Is it because for teachers, schools, districts, or states to embrace Socratic Seminars it involves a philosophical shift away from teacher-driven and content-centered curriculum to a student-centered and inquiry-driven curriculum ? Is it because educators who have made this philosophical shift don't have the resources to introduce, train, and support practitioners of Socratic Seminars?

I believe it is a combination of all of these issues. Site administrators and central office leaders are so overcome with the demands of their present agendas that they have little time and energy to gain the new experience and understanding of the power of Socratic Seminars to hit all the targets of their Learning Goals.

Every assistant principal, principal, assistant superintendent, or superintendent that I have trained in Socratic Seminar Leadership Training has left a workshop convinced of the power and potential of Socratic Seminars to positively change the way teachers teach and students learn. The challenge is to get site administrators and central office leaders into the seminar circle in the first place ! Unless one's beliefs about education come out of philosophies like constructivism and cooperative learning, the idea of real learning resulting from dialogue is quite foreign -- until one experiences it for oneself.

Up until the last six months, I firmly believed that educational reform comes as a direct result of the quality and quantity of conversations present in school buildings. In the absence of real dialogue among colleagues, no major change occurs. I still believe this to be true. The almost insurmountable challenge is to create chunks of time large enough not just to talk, but to learn and practice true dialogue -- in the most pure and honorific sense. ( I am coming to believe, however, that dialogue by itself might not be enough; it might not be the most important element necessary to change people's beliefs about how students learn and about how we should teach. )

As I mentioned earlier, seldom has an educator left a Socratic Seminar Leadership Training of mine ( I am certain the same is true of other trainers ) unconvinced of the potential of Socratic Seminars to change teaching in powerfully effective ways. Why are they convinced? Is it because we spend three days just talking about Socratic Seminars? Of course not. We spend three days actively engaged in Socratic Seminars. We spend three days reflecting on the seminar experience and its relationship to what is and is not happening in classrooms. I am coming to believe that people change their beliefs from a combination of experience and reflection.

The spread of Socratic Seminars through schools depends on many factors. The foremost of these is providing opportunities for educators to experience Socratic Seminars first-hand, and for educators to spend quality time reflecting on the experience. For this to happen, the advocates of Socratic Seminars must focus attention on attracting site and central office administrators into the seminar circle. For without their commitment, change and growth in schools occurs very slowly.

When it comes to understanding the power of Socratic Seminar to improve the intellectual abilities and academic achievement of all students, "seeing is believing". The task is providing opportunities for administrators to discover for themselves that Socratic Seminars is the missing ingredient needed to help students reach the goals of reading, thinking, communicating, and understanding at superior levels. Surely, these are the goals we want for every student in every school.

Oscar Graybill

Socratic Seminars Northwest

Walla Walla, WA

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[Ed: We maintain that there is no single way to prepare a text, facilitate a seminar, or engage in critique. Indeed, there is strength in diversity. There is certainly no single rubric for scoring a seminar.

We find the value of the following piece to be its description of a process whereby students were included in the design and evaluation of a rubric. We are pleased to publish it in the hopes that it will inspire others to do likewise.

But please, do it your own way !]

One of the "rules" of Socratic Seminars is that a participant may "pass" when asked a question by another participant. But in an educational environment, speaking in a group setting is a skill that should be encouraged and perfected. The question, then, is: How does a coach/facilitator maintain the integrity of a seminar and provide the student with an accurate assessment of his oral participation?

I encourage my students to participate in seminars for several reasons: each person has valuable ideas and questions to contribute to our group-learning experience; to withhold that contribution would be selfish, since twenty heads learn better than one; only practice in speaking will instill confidence in speaking; putting thoughts into words often enhances understanding of difficult material.

My desire was to include the key stakeholders -- the students themselves -- in the design of an assessment rubric. They would be assessing themselves and needed to feel the rubric was valid and meaningful to them. I suggested categories to the students based on Michael Strong's Class Participation Assessment Rubric. Over a period of one semester we worked out a scoring scale and format.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SOCRATIC SEMINAR ASSESSMENT RUBRIC

Text Title:

Name:

Rate on a scale of 0=low and 3=high

Academic Growth

Comments

1. Preparation of text

0 1 2 3

2. Speaking

0 1 2 3

3. Listening

0 1 2 3

Social Skills

1. Teamwork

0 1 2 3

2. Sensitivity/Good manners

0 1 2 3

3. Eye contact when speaking

0 1 2 3

4. Eye contact with speaker

0 1 2 3

Personal Skills

1. Willingness to accept other viewpoints

0 1 2 3

2. Responsibility and iniative

0 1 2 3

Comments about the group process:

 

Comments about the text:

 

Comments about the facilitator:

 

Comments about the Socratic Question:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Academic Growth

Preparation of text: Depending on its difficulty, I may read the text with the students in class so they can hear its "voice." For homework, I ask the students to look up unfamiliar vocabulary words, to read the text several times, and to write down questions or thoughts that they will bring to the seminar.

Speaking: I use a seating chart of the seminar circle to keep track of how often each student speaks. At the beginning of the seminar, we share vocabulary definitions which count towards verbal participation. Then I will ask one or more shy students to read the text aloud for speaking credit. Participation in the dialogue itself is the main way to earn credit.

Listening: Students are expected to be attentive listeners. I will point out a student's distraction of self or others, if necessary. Students are encouraged to monitor each other's attention.

Social Skills

Teamwork: Students are encouraged to "bridge" comments and questions and ask others for clarification. I stress that each person in the dialogue is responsible for making it work. A student who does not speak during the seminar cannot receive a 3 for teamwork.

Sensitivity/Good manners: Students must show deference to others, and discourage debating, debasing, or dominating.

Eye contact when speaking: Students naturally want to speak to me, so I signal them to look at others by pointing to my eyes.

Eye contact with speaker: If I notice that students are not focused on the speaker, I will interrupt the dialogue to ask the group where they are looking.

Personal Skills

Willingness to accept other viewpoints: I ask students to consider each other's viewpoints even though they might not agree initially.

Responsibility and initiative: This category includes text preparation, oral and aural participation, and behavior.

The comment sections on the bottom are for me as a facilitator. I want to continually improve in my role and to value the students' input. I encourage them to make specific comments and avoid the vagueness of "good job" or "good text".

I grade the rubrics on a total of 20 points. Each section (Academic Growth, Social Skills, Personal Skills, and Comments) is worth 5 points. In Academic Growth, if a student rates all 3's, he will receive 5 points; two 3's and one 2 will be 4 points; two 2's and one 3 will be 4 points; three 2's will be 3 points; etc.

My students are comfortable using the assessment rubric now. I seldom need to adjust a student's self-assessment. If I do, I write a comment back to him in the comment section explaining why I perceive his grade to be different than what he perceives it to be.

 

STUDENT RESPONSES

My students have come to look forward to our weekly seminars on block scheduling days. They were eager to give me testimonials about the personal growth they gained through Socratic practice:

D I read texts more carefully now, and analyze everything, and ask more questions.

D I have learned to accept people's opinions -- even if I think they are deranged.

D I learn things about people and life that positively affect my life and how I act and what I do.

D I have better social skills.

D Now I like discussing books with other people.

D I have learned to listen more carefully to what somebody says. I've learned to voice my opinion more often and not to keep it inside me. Listening to ideas and opinions on subjects has given me a better understanding of whatever we're reading, which has given me an edge to what things in life are all about.

D Many of the texts made me realize things about life that I have never come across.

D I am more confident with myself when I talk.

D I've learned to do research on words I don't understand instead of just skipping them.

D I can read better.

D I feel closer to the people in the class.

D I look up definitions that I don't know. Before, I probably would not have done so. Now, I enjoy asking questions and getting feedback on things I couldn't have figured out by myself.

D It has shown me there is more than one "right" opinion.

D Before, I would never speak out without raising my hand. Seminars have made me forget that and speak up.

D You have helped me with my eye contact when speaking.

D Seminars allow me to compare and contrast the text to the present day.

D Mentally : I tend to think more about what I am reading. I don't just look at the words anymore. Socially: Every time I speak in the group, I get better at talking in front of people. Personally: Whenever I can help someone in their confusion, like answer someone's question, I feel better

D I got over my fear of public speaking.

D My imagination has grown. I see things from different points of view.

D I've improved my critical thinking and analytical abilities.

D I've become more patient and listen better to others.

If you adopt or adapt this rubric for your students, be prepared to interrupt the dialogue in the beginning. You will need to direct discussion to areas on the rubric that need addressing. Students may need to be taught how to work as a team, how to make eye contact, or what it means to be sensitive toward others. After you collect and grade the rubrics, you will be communicating in writing back to the students on errors of judgment they have made in assessing themselves. But, they quickly learn to adjust their perceptions of their participation. The rubric then becomes a tool that encourages deeper participation -- rather than a grade on an assignment.

Susan Crumpler

Mills High School

Millbrae, CA

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Socratic Seminars West is hosting a two-day workshop open to the public, entitled "Socratic Dialogue: An Essential Component of School Reform ?" It will be led by Dennis Gray and Michael Strong, at a location in the San Francisco Area.

Hopefully, you have already seen a flyer or an e-mail message about this event. For anyone committed to school reform, who sees Socratic Seminars or dialogue as an important component of that process, this is a wonderful opportunity to meet with like-minded professionals to enlarge our common understanding.

Dennis Gray

Former member (with Adler and Sizer) of The Paideia Group

Former Deputy Director of The Council for Basic Education

Current Director of The Educational Enhancement Partnership

Michael Strong

Author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice

Former member of The Alaska Paideia Project

Current Headmaster of The Winston Academy

Saturday, June 27, 1998

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Some Are More Equal Than Others

Among the key premises for Socratic Dialogue is the practice -- not merely the concept -- of establishing each member of the circle as a peer. In my work with facilitating dialogue among adults and young people, introducing this concept sparks little controversy. "Of course", the thinking seems to go, "we'll all be 'peers' here today, and won't that be nice." My observations differ among those I have trained or encountered in Socratic Seminars: Many who participate in dialogue have no real intention of considering others as their peers, especially if those others happen to be students. In giving intellectual lip service to the profound implications of dialogue among peers, many rob themselves of the transformative potential that Seminars can bring.

Webster's defines the word "peer" as "one that is of equal standing with another." The distance between current classroom practice and one that emerges from a true grappling with this definition is considerable. I want to focus on high schools for a moment, since the distance is greatest in these organizations.

Forget, for the moment, about the inherent hierarchy that characterizes many aspects of the high school experience.

Dismiss the fact that students and teachers do not share restroom facilities. ( Student restrooms are usually the filthy ones without soap, paper towels, and toilet paper. )

Ignore the fact that teachers have desks in which they can store their supplies and work materials, whereas students have lockers and must wander large campuses with their survival needs stuffed into backpacks or under their arms. ( If you are a teacher without a permanent classroom, your experience of having to borrow space, drawers, and cabinets from other teachers' territory more closely approximates the experience of your students. )

Ignore the fact that, as a student, you would rarely have a role in any decision of consequence. ( How many students have a voice on a teacher's union bargaining committee, on a school board, on a suspension and expulsion committee, or even on a committee that establishes curriculum ? )

Observations of the classrooms themselves tell an even harsher story about the status of students, their voice, and their social ranking in the overall power structure of schools. Consider the traditional classroom layout (below) and, in the spirit of Socrates, consider answers to some simple questions:

[graphic unavailable at this time]

How does this diagram compare to the layout of your own classroom? Which desk is the largest? Which desk is the best maintained? Are there any ramifications to sitting toward the back of this classroom? Who generally sits there in classrooms you have observed? Who sits in the back in your own classroom? Why is it obvious where the teacher might go in this classroom? Is it as obvious where the locus of control resides in this situation?

To see how difficult it is to break a paradigm simply by moving seats around, examine the superficially more innovative seat Arrangements II and III :

[graphic unavailable at this time]

 

Who has the most freedom to move in these seating situations? Where is the locus of control? What relationships, if any, are implicit among students in how these seats are arranged? Would it be obvious to a substitute teacher which desk he or she should use? What, other than some sign saying "Teacher Sits Here", might make the teacher's desk obvious? Do these arrangements create significant changes over the seating in Arrangement I ?

Chairs arranged in a circle are the stamp of a Socratic Seminar in many schools. Students respond differently to this layout:

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They behave differently when they are not concealed behind the back of a student in the desk in front of them. The arrangement does not allow for a back-of-the-class mentality, since there is no back in a circle. Unless the teacher pushes his or her entire desk into the center, he or she cannot use the symbolic size and weight of this desk to convey any messages about power or status.

I have had students tell me that the Socratic Circle is a signal of something special. It means that this class stands a chance of holding some interest. I am always heartened when students respond positively to Socratic Seminars, but it also causes me to question what the norm is when Dialogue is considered to be special.

When students leave the classroom, age-ghettoing returns. But teachers can make tremendous difference over the portion of the high school experience that they, themselves, control. What would a school look and feel like to students if the institutions responsible for their education could make even simple changes that would stand as proof to them that they had an equal footing -- at least in a couple of classrooms -- at least for part of the day?

Greg John

School-to-Work Program

Bay Area School Reform Collaborative