Yesterday, Professor David Lenson spoke to students about his views on the Socratic Method’s flaws in the University of Massachusetts Campus Center auditorium.
Lenson encouraged students to objectively approach the praise surrounding Socrates’ and Plato’s Socratic Method – a method in which educators randomly call upon their students and ask questions of the student while playing a “Devil’s Advocate” of a sort. During his lecture, Lenson, who is the director of UMass’ comparative literature department asked students to treat the method as well as Socrates’ apprentice Plato with little reverence and to continually question today’s educational system.
Lenson used an analogy to describe his views on the Socratic Method. Comparing a teacher’s questionings of his students to a lawyer’s attempts to coax an answer out of a witness through leading questions, Lenson said “it is the process of asking obvious questions to slowly persuade a subject.”
“Don’t let the case be closed,” said Lenson. “Don’t let arguments stop because it hits one of these stops. Whenever a solution to a problem comes … attack it, think it over a second time.”
Lenson said that several of colleagues try to use the Socratic Method to educate their students.
“I can’t tell you how many colleagues that say … ‘I [used] the Socratic Method, that way I can exchange ideas with students,’” said Lenson.
“Fundamentally, you are using what appears to be the art of persuasion to bring someone over to your side completely,” continued Lenson.
Lenson also called the Socratic Method a “passive aggressive motion.”
According to Lenson, this form of teaching is not ideal.
“The Socratic Method knows the conclusion that it wants to reach, surely like a lecturer does,” said Lenson.
Lenson’s lecture heavily criticized Plato’s methods of teaching.
“He was arrogant, obviously,” said Lenson. “He was self-confident; he was socially awkward; he probably never took a bath. He was probably an [expletive deleted]hole.”
Lenson believed Plato was a hypocrite. He describes Plato’s attempts eliminate creative fiction or middle characters, or characters caught between good and evil, as Lenson described them. Lenson then explains that Plato in turn created a middle character in Socrates, at times drawing comparisons between Socrates and Jesus Christ.
Another focal point of the lecture was Lenson’s argument that Plato often wrote facts with little opposition. In “The Republic,” Lenson explained, Socrates’ antagonists never fight back or argue with him about his opinion.
Lenson’s lecture also outlined Plato’s system of governance described in “The Republic.” According to Lenson, the system broke down into three classes – the common people, soldiers and guardians. Lenson said these three categories or castes could be seen as the military, the unenlightened masses and the enlightened individuals “who get to rule over everybody else.” Lenson illustrated how this line of thinking has proved disastrous in history using dictators Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as examples of individuals who tried to enforce this type of class hierarchy.
Lenson, according to a UMass press release, is best known for his book, “On Drugs” – a cultural study of drug usage. He is the first of the four-part Faculty Lecture Series to be followed by Lynn Margulis, Sut Jhally and Nicholas McBride later this semester.
Herb Scribner can be reached at [email protected].
