Socratic Dialogue
Example
A Socratic Dialogue with seven students.
Example
A Socratic Dialogue is about gaining a view of our assumptions, reasons and points-of-view, and testing their validity together with others. It is not a debate or discussion; participants together make clear to themselves and to others what they actually mean by words and the concepts which lie behind them.
Seven students took part in this Socratic Dialogue which lasted an hour and a quarter. The students had two main questions:
What is the purpose of life?
What is learning?
To arrive at a definition of the concept 'learning', they explored sub-questions such as 'What is the best way to learn?' and 'What do you learn?'. A first starting statement was 'learning is developing yourself' and a distinction was made between learning from experience and learning from other people's stories, as in books. Then came the motivation for learning and the importance of learning, and participants asked themselves to what extent learning is instinctive behaviour.
The conversation ended with a round of questions. The participants were very enthusiastic: they found that they had learnt a lot from the conversation, and that for each one of them it was now clearer what they meant by learning and why it was important to them. They expressed the wish to take time to think about learning through exercises like this more often, because this is, after all, the main point of studying. They were also impressed by the constructive manner of talking to each other, in an environment in which they felt safe, and going deeper into and sharing their ideas.
