The Socratic Method
by John W. Neumayr, Ph.D
 One
of the distinguishing features of Thomas Aquinas College is
its discussion method of teaching. Though the technique is
as old as Socrates, it has never been in vogue. Nor is it
today.
The vast majority of colleges here and abroad use the lecture
method. Yet what Socrates saw in it over two thousand years
ago is still valid. There is a vital aspect of teaching that
can never be implemented so well by lectures as by dialogue.
Each one of us brings certain fundamental ideas to education
which must be made explicit before learning can advance. Discussion
is the optimum means to bring them forth. The student must,
as it were, give them birth; the teacher, as a good midwife,
only assists the labor. Tradition calls this the Socratic maieutic,
from the Greek word for obstetrics, because the basic ideas
we use in education come forth from our own minds, not from
the teacher's.
The Great Books as Great Lectures
 To
highlight the Socratic pedagogy, the College will often state
flatly that there are no lectures; all teaching takes place
through tutorial and seminar discussions. This claim, however,
is not entirely precise. There are lectures. I am not referring
to those occasions when a tutor may discourse at length uninterruptedly.
Rather, I have in mind the Great Books themselves, which make
up the material for classroom discussions. Each book is a
major lecture: each is an uninterrupted exposition of an intellectually
important issue. Reading for class is equivalent to hearing
an extended lecture to be discussed later. And, of course,
it is of these later classroom discussions that the College
says there are no lectures.
'The Blind Leading the Blind?'
 Sometimes
the criticism is made that if it is better to read Aristotle,
Newton, or Einstein on physics instead of merely puzzling
it out on one's own or with friends, why is it not better
also to listen to a scholar expound the thought of Aristotle,
Newton, or Einstein? These are not easy texts. Common sense
tells us that amateurs are no match for experts. Is not a
student discussion, even with tutorial supervision, a case
of "the blind leading the blind?"Wouldn't an accomplished
scholar be both more efficient and penetrating than any student
discussion could hope to be? Moreover, every tutor at this
College has probably decided to cut through the confusion
of a particularly chaotic discussion and to lead the class
to clarity on the strength of his own advanced understanding.
After all, many points should not be left hanging nor error
left to prevail - for there are no guarantees that students
will make the most of every discussion. Why not let the tutor's
light suffuse the whole? Why not, in short, let the teacher
lecture ?
Developing the Intellectual Virtues
 Several
answers can be given. Discussion, because it is an activity,
engages the student's mind more than do lectures. Instead
of passively hearing the professor’s thoughts, the student
engaged in dialogue is required to work his own mind, to form
and express his own thoughts. And the challenge of discussion
pushes him to ever higher efforts. He reads more carefully
knowing he will soon be explaining and debating his own understanding
of the text. If he does this on a daily basis, this heightened
intensity leads to intellectual habits that last a lifetime.
Lectures are less likely to produce the intellectual virtues.
At best one might remember certain ideas from a lecture, but
they have probably not become part of him. But the ideas he
has worked out himself are likely to stay. And not only to
stay but to become part of his mental makeup.
 Or
again, the flow of concepts presented in a lecture is often
too much to assimilate. Sensing this, a good lecturer will
repeat key points and connections and even invite interruptions
when the audience has lost the drift. Discussion, on the other
hand, is essentially a series of interruptions. If all in
the group are involved, none need be left behind. Discussion
almost intrinsically guarantees understanding; lectures do
not. It seems a happy combination, therefore, to select the
Great Books, the world’s best lectures, to be first read
carefully and then discussed point by point - where interruptions
are the rule, not the exception. This offers the prospect
of the best thought being the best understood.
 But
how far can one go? Discussion is intrinsically inefficient.
One can hardly expect mastery of a subject. At most, one can
expect only to make a beginning. Quite so. But as the adage
goes, a good beginning makes all the difference; and here
at the beginning of inquiry, discussion is at its best. St.
Thomas likens the teacher to a doctor treating the body. No
doctor puts health into a sick body; rather, by his ministrations
he allows the body to cure itself by the life it has in it.
Likewise, the teacher only guides the student to see for himself
by a light already in him. I do not mean merely that the disciple
sees by his intellect, but rather that he sees in the light
of those basic notions mentioned earlier - certain first principles,
already formed, without which neither communication nor education
could take place. Unless these primary notions of reality
that all men share are made explicit and brought to bear,
no lecture, however brilliant, will lead to learning. The
very inefficiency of dialogue makes room to consider the ideas
of ordinary experience as we take up the great questions that
make up the corpus of learning.
Put the Common Ideas to Work
 Book
learning, great or otherwise, never starts in the book or
in the school. Its origin is in the mind that comes to school.
Nature sees to it that we all grasp certain fundamental concepts
and distinctions about reality - ideas we are hardly aware
we have - that allow us to judge all other ideas put forth
about reality. Genuine education leads the mind forth to see
these seminal ideas openly before it applies them to further
notions. Every science and every discipline is rooted in these
basic ideas. No matter how far we may advance in a subject,
whatever we find to be true and sound resolves back into the
first notions. Those Great Books are truly great which harmonize
with these ideas - that is, which harmonize with human nature.
The chief work of liberal education is to put the common ideas
of the "man on the street" to work.
 No
one can talk us into these common, primary ideas. No lecture
can plant these into our minds. They are already there. The
task is to bring them out. Here discussion is vital. Speech
is a sign of man's social nature, for we have tongues to communicate.
But we also use words to make our own thoughts clear to ourselves.
Without words we would be hard pressed to understand anything.
Thinking is often characterized as an internal dialogue because
we make use of words even in our private reflections. Dialogue
with another often helps us to clarify further to ourselves
just what we really do mean especially when the other has
asked the right questions. A good teacher is able through
the right questions to make us aware of our most basic ideas
in the light of which we are able to make judgments about
other things.
Knowledge: It’s All in Your Mind
There are two ways to come to knowledge; through discovery
and by being taught. To be taught presupposes that someone
has discovered the science already which he later may communicate
to another. When a student learns a science from another,
he is in effect led to relive the discoverer's experience
- he may indeed avoid the many "blind alleys" the
discoverer undoubtedly followed, but he must necessarily see
just as originally as did the founder of the first truths.
And these he can see only by himself. In this sense, the point
of all education is to get learning out of the books and schools
and back into the mind where knowledge properly belongs, so
one can say, "I see."
 It
may be a truism that the student is the primary actor in his
own education, but nowhere is it truer than at the beginning.
Lectures hardly help. Something more is required; something
that turns awareness back on itself. This is why Socrates
searched the souls of his disciples with questions. If any
responded saying "I have heard such and such..."
he would invariably reply: "But what do you think?"
He was not asking for their opinion; he was asking just what
they really thought and knew about things. It is not easy
to say accurately just what we really think. Often upon hearing
a response, Socrates would ask, "But don't you also think
such and such about it? How do these two ideas fit together?"
And so the discussion would go until the disciple began to
harmonize his own thoughts. Socrates was not ready to quit
until the disciple delivered his own brain child by his own
labor, for until the disciple could bring his own concept
out and into the "light of day," he would never
know what he really knew.
No Short Cuts
 Neither
computers, calculators, audio visual techniques, nor even
lectures can make us see these all-important truths that are
in our souls. A student may be able to take up technology
in its latest form without having to go back to the first
inventions and repeat all the labors of his ancestors. But
this is not so in liberal education. In this way it is more
like moral formation. Our parents may be courageous and just,
but we cannot take up where they left off; rather we must
go through the whole experience of acquiring virtue as they
did. No short-cuts. So too in genuine education. We ourselves
must do it from the bottom up. It is as basic and unchanging
as human nature. There may be short cuts to "know how"
and technical skills, but not to wisdom.
Over two thousand years ago Socrates saw what was crucial
to human learning. Nothing here has changed. If Thomas Aquinas
College has adopted Socrates’ manner, it is only because
men are still men and learning is still learning.
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