Socrates (469-399 BC) – Socratic method, man of dialogue...

Socrates was one of the few teachers who died for his craft, executed by the Athenian authorities for supposedly corrupting the youth. That in itself has earned him eternal fame. Most learning professionals will have heard of him through their acquaintance with the ‘Socratic method’ but few will know that he never wrote a single word describing this method, fewer still will know that the method is not what it is commonly represented to be.

How many have read the Socratic dialogues? How many know what he meant by his method and how he practised his approach? 

Socrates, in fact, wrote absolutely nothing. It was Plato and Xenophon who recorded his thoughts and methods through the lens of their own beliefs. We must remember, therefore, that Socrates is in fact a mouthpiece for the views of others. In fact the two pictures painted of Socrates by these two commentators differ somewhat. In the Platonic Dialogues he is witty, playful and a great philosophical theorist, in Xenophon he is a dull moraliser.

Socratic method

That the teacher should be an intellectual midwife to the student’s own thoughts is his great educational principle. His mother was indeed a midwife and he was among the first to recognise that, in terms of learning, ideas are best generated from the cognitive effort of the learner in terms of understanding, realisation and retention. Education is not a cramming in, but a drawing out.

He would claim that he taught nothing as he had nothing to teach and his lasting influence is the useful idea, that for certain types of learning, questioning and dialogue allows the learner to generate their own ideas and conclusions, rather than be spoon-fed. 

What is less well known is the negative side of the Socratic method. He loved to pick intellectual fights and the method was not so much a gentle teasing out of ideas, more the brutal exposure of falsehoods. He was also roundly ridiculed in public drama, notably by his contemporary Aristophanes in Clouds, where he uses the Socratic method to explore idiotic ideas using petty, hair-splitting logic.

Socratic philosophy of education

Beyond the famous Socratic method, he did have a philosophy of education that included several principles.

Knowledge and learning were seen by him as a valuable pursuit, with a ruthless pursuit of questioning even basic assumptions. This was achieved socially through dialogue, not by lecturing or the transfer of knowledge from teacher to learner. The aim of learning was to pursue, with a ruthless intellectual honesty, answers to difficult questions. Ultimately, and this was almost always Socrates main aim, was to get the learner to realise that they didn’t know as much as they thought they knew, the realisation of our own ignorance.

Socrates concerns himself largely with high-end, critical thought. His legacy in not so much in his method as being used by a model, by Plato, of the free and open thinker, unafraid to question the most basic suppositions. It is this spirit of inquiry, seen in Greek thought, most intensely by Socrates, that fueled education for the next two Millenia.

Influence

The Socratic method has transformed itself into the idea of discovery learning, but there have been severe doubts expressed about taking this method too far. We wouldn’t want our children to discover how to cross the road by pushing them out between parked cars! In practice, it is most often no more than a teacher using open or inductive questions. In fact, when used crudely it can frustrate learners, especially when not combined with genuine dialogue and feedback. To ask open questions about facts can be pointless and result in those awful classroom sessions where the teacher asks a question, hands shoot up and the few who already know the answers, answer the question, while the rest feel foolish. When used well, however, especially in subjects such deal with abstract thought and for uncovering conceptual clarity, it has lots to offer.

There is still a great deal of discussion and controversy around whether learning should be a process of exploration and discovery, as opposed to direct instruction. There are extremes on both sides. Discovery learning was taken up with enthusiasm in the modern age, while Universities in particular have stuck rigidly to direct instruction through lectures as their primary pedagogy. In practice, depending upon the age of the learners, type of learning and context both have their place.

Online learning

Interestingly, the Socratic approach is also often to be found in online learning. Roger Schank has taken the method forward into online designs based on questions which access indexed content, especially videos. One could also argue that search based inquiry through Google and other online resources allows the learner to apply this questioning approach to their own learning, Socratic learning without a Socratic teacher. Chatbots, which now support and deliver learning are now being used to emulate the Socratic model and deliver personalized support, tutoring and even mentoring to learners. Adaptive learning systems, truly account for where the learner has come from, where they are going and what they need to get there. Sophisticated online learning allows us to realise the potential of a scalable Socratic approach without the need for face-to-face teaching. Interestingly, it is only in the last few decades, through the use of technology-based tools that allow search, questioning and now chatbots and adaptive learning, that Socratic learning can be truly realised on scale.

As someone who abhorred didactic, talk and chalk teaching and learning, Socrates would be appalled at current education and training. He was not an institutional figure, practiced his teaching in the public space of the Agora and thought that experts were normally fooling themselves by believing they had immutable knowledge to impart to their students. The unexamined life may not be worth living but neither is a life of absolute certainty. 

Of course, if we were to behave like Socrates in the modern school, college, university or training room, we’d be in front of several tribunals for bullying, not sticking to the curriculum and failing to prepare students for their exams. Not to mention his pederasty. We can perhaps put this to one side as a feature of the age! 

Bibliography

Hamilton, E., Cairns, H. and Cooper, L., 1961. The collected dialogues of Plato. Princeton University Press.

Tarrant, H. ed., 2003. The last days of Socrates. Penguin.

Mackendrick, P., 1974. Aristophanes. Lysistrata. The Acharnians. The Clouds. Trans. AH Sommerstein.(Penguin Classics.) Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1973. Pp. 255. 40P. The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 94, pp.185-186.

Ferguson, J., 1970. Socrates: a source book.

Woodbridge, F.J.E., 1934. The Son of Apollo (Boston and New York, 1929)

Socrates (469-399 BC) - method man

Socrates was one of the few teachers who actually died for his craft, executed by the Athenian authorities for supposedly corrupting the young. Most learning professionals will have heard of the ‘Socratic method’ but few will know that he never wrote a single word describing this method, fewer still will know that the method is not what it is commonly represented to be.

How many have read the Socratic dialogues? How many know what he meant by his method and how he practised his approach? Socrates, in fact, wrote absolutely nothing. It was Plato and Xenophon who record his thoughts and methods through the lens of their own beliefs. We must remember, therefore, that Socrates is in fact a mouthpiece for the views of others. In fact the two pictures painted of Socrates by these two commentators differ somewhat. In the Platonic Dialogues he is witty, playful and a great philosophical theorist, in Xenophon he is a dull moraliser.

Socratic method

That the teacher should be an intellectual midwife to people’s own thoughts is his great educational principle. His mother was indeed a midwife and he was among the first to recognise that, in terms of learning, ideas are best generated from the learner in terms of understanding and retention. Education is not a cramming in, but a drawing out.

What is less well known is the negative side of the Socratic method. He loved to pick intellectual fights and the method was not so much a gentle teasing out of ideas, more the brutal exposure of falsehoods. He was described by one of his victims as a ‘predator which numbs its victims with an electric charge before darting in for the kill’, even describing himself as a ‘gadfly, stinging the sluggish horse of Athens to life’.

He was roundly ridiculed in public drama, notably by his contemporary, Aristophanes in Clouds, where he uses the Socratic method to explore idiotic ideas using petty, hair-splitting logic. This negative side of Socrates is well described by Woodbridge in The Son of Apollo, ‘Flattery, cajolery, insinuation, innuendo, sarcasm, feigned humility, personal idiosyncrasies, browbeating, insolence, anger, changing the subject when in difficulties, faulty analogies, telling stories which make one forget what the subject of the discussion was’. His great joy was simply pulling people and ideas to pieces.

Socratic philosophy of education

Beyond the famous Socratic method, he did have a philosophy of education which included several principles:

1. Knowledge and learning as a worthwhile pursuit
2. Learning as a social activity pursued through dialogue
3. Questions lie at the heart of learning to draw out what they already know, rather than imposing pre-determined views
4. We must realise the extent of our ignorance.
5. Learning must be pursued with a ruthless intellectual honesty

In practice, these noble aims were marred by a spitefulness. He would claim that he taught nothing as he had nothing to teach, but this conceals his true desire to overcome and intellectually destroy his opponents.

His lasting influence is the useful idea, that for certain types of learning, questioning and dialogue allows the learner to generate their own ideas and conclusions, rather than be spoon-fed. This has transformed itself into the idea of discovery learning, but there have been severe doubts expressed about taking this method too far. We wouldn’t want our children to discover how to cross the road by pushing them out between parked cars!

The Socratic method, although quoted widely, is often no more than a teacher using the occasional open or inductive question. In fact, when used crudely it can frustrate learners, especially when not combined with genuine dialogue and feedback. To ask open questions about facts can be pointless and result in those awful classroom sessions where the teacher asks a question, hands shoot up and a few can answer the question. When used well, however, especially in subjects such as philosophy and for uncovering conceptual clarity in other subjects, it has lots to offer.

E-learning

In e-learning, Roger Schank has taken the method forward into designs based on questions which access indexed content, especially videos. One could also argue that search based inquiry through Google and other online resources allows the learner to apply this questioning approach to their own learning, Socratic learning without a Socratic teacher. Intelligent tutors and adaptive learning systems, like Cogbooks, truly account for where the learner has come from, where they’re going and what they need to get there. Sophisticated e-learning is allowing us to realise the potential of a scalable Socratic approach without the need for one-to-one teaching. Interestingly, it is only in the last few decades, through the use of technology-based tools that allow search, questioning and now, adaptive learning, that Socratic learning can be truly realised on scale.

Conclusion

As someone who abhorred didactic, talk and chalk teaching and learning, Socrates would be appalled at current education and training. He was not an institutional figure, practiced his teaching in the public space of the Agora and thought that experts were normally fooling themsleves by believing they had the knowledge to impart to their students. It is the unexamined life that is not worth living but not the life of certainty. .

Of course, if we were to behave like Socrates in the modern school, college, university or training room, we’d be in front of several tribunals for bullying, not sticking to the curriculum and failing to prepare students for their exams. Not to mention his pederasty. (We can perhaps put this to one side as a feature of the age!) So think again when you use the phrase ‘Socratic method’, it’s not what it seems!

Bibliography

Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, E Hamilton, Princeton. (Highly recommend the Thaetetus as it is the key dialogue on the search for knowledge.)

Plato, The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Classics (trial and condemnation)

Aristophanes The Clouds, Penguin Classics (satire of Socrates)

Ferguson J (1970) Socrates, Macmillan (excellent source book)

Woodbridge F (1929) The Son of Apollo, Boston (good commentary)

Spiteful Socrates

I’ve had a go at Bloom, Gagne and Kirkpatrick, so why not an earlier target?

The ‘Socratic method’ is often hailed as some sort of untouchable principle in education and training. It is hauled out whenever one is in need of a quick dose of politically correct ‘pedagogy’. Yet how many who claim to know this edict have actually read Socrates? Very few. In fact, he never wrote a word. We know him largely through Plato and Xenophon.

I am a huge admirer of the Socrates Dialogues but squirm when I hear his name heroically mentioned in educational discussions. Why?

The method is often summed up as the teacher being the ‘midwife to the learner’s thoughts’, teasing out self-generated conclusions from the learner. In practice, Socrates was a brutal bully, described by one pupil as a ‘predator which numbs its victims with an electric charge before darting in for the kill’.

Woodbridge described him as using, ‘Flattery, cajolery, insinuation, innuendo, sarcasm, feigned humility, personal idiosyncrasies, browbeating, insolence, anger, changing the subject when in difficulties, faulty analogies, telling stories which make one forget what the subject of the discussion was. His great joy was simply pulling people and ideas to pieces’.

So, before we utter those sacred words ‘Socratic method’ let’s remind ourselves of the real Socrates – the prolific pederast, spiteful, setting out to destroy rather than enlighten his pupils.

10 ways BOTS can be used in learning

You know that bots are coming of age when Google hires comic writers from satirical site The Onion and scriptwriters from Pixar and they're being launched on major learning platforms such as Duolingo. They know that real conversations between humans and machines need to cope with light conversation idle talk and humour. The banter has to get better if we are to use voice or text activated bots regularly. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are all in the chatbot game and dozens of startups are creating bots - MykAi (banking), GoButler (personal assistant), GoodService (Concierge). Conversational interfaces and conversational commerce have arrived and, as Chris Messina, Uber’s ‘experience’ guy says ‘chat is the new black’. Messaging services are among the most popular services online and young people have flocked to them, away from the more staid posting. Messaging is BIGGER than social media. Read that one again. Why? They’re natural and liberating, more akin to normal human behaviour than other interfaces. Gartner have predicted that by 2020, 85% of customer interaction will be through bots. That I doubt, but the figure will be substantial. Whatever the future, they are here to stay.

Socrates – the first learning bot

Socrates was probably the first bot or proto-bot. Having never written anything himself, Plato used his name in a series of dialogues, to tutor younger thinkers by asking questions that exposed their inconsistencies and lack of knowledge. The ‘Socratic’ method is exactly that employed by modern bots, though Plato is replaced by the invisible hand of AI (Artificial Intelligence).
What’s given bots wings are recent advances in AI-driven text and speech recognition along with machine learning and deep learning. This increases their speed (latency can be a problem), efficacy (they are better) and their ability to get better (they learn). In the same way that Socrates remains a model teacher, so Socratic bots may be useful in education and training.

If you’re on Twitter you are likely to have followed, or have follower bots and if that attractive model wants you to follow him/her, he/she’s probably a bot. That’s their primary skill, or trick, to weakly pass the Turing test by fooling you into thinking and/or behaving as if they were human. This has already happened, from ELIZA (one of the first AI conversational programs) to Little Ice (Chinese bot that has had hundreds of millions of conversations). Customer service bots are now common and Facebook.IBM and Microsoft have launched bot frameworks. These allow you to use bots that front AI systems to deliver business services. Interestingly, you needn't believe that a bot is human, as Duolingo have found that it is NOT being human that is the advantage in language learning. More of that later. Could this form of AI replace teachers? I've written about this here. This article focuses on the role of bots in teaching and learning.

1. Firendly face and voice

We are susceptible to chatbot dialogue. Nass and Reeves, in 35 studies of learning, published in The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places, (summary here) explored this susceptibility in detail. They showed that we attribute human qualities to technology, especially interactive, computer tech that responds to our requests and actions. When Steve Jobs fought with Steve Wozniac to get the first Apple computer to open with the word ‘Hello…’, Wozniac couldn’t see the point – Jobs was right and that obsession with user experience became the driver for Apple’s success. That was the computer as bot.

We have now moved beyond this natural propensity towards seeing technology as having human qualities and agency, to actually creating AI technology, which is as good as, even surpassing human abilities. This started with tasks in specific domains, namely chequers, crosswords, scrabble, chess and now Go. This has accelerated exponentially to produce real-time trading and self-driving cars. It would be naïve to imagine that AI will be used in every form of human endeavour, OTHER than teaching. With bots, which are really just the front-end of certain forms of AI, it can surely be harnessed for learning.

2. Language

NLP (Natural Language Processing) has given us huge success in language recognition, whether text or speech. It is this form of AI that lies behind Siri (Apple), Cortana (Microsoft), VIV (bought by Samsung) and other voice systems. Most teaching is done via speech, and dialogue remains a key teaching skill. What powers, not just single query bots but longer dialogue, is AI. It all started with Markov, a Russian who used maths on Pushkin’s poem Eugene Onegin, to create Markov chains. This, with a battery of other AI techniques, has given us real speech and text recognition, essential for bot dialogue. 

Amazon’s Echo, Google Home, along with speech recognition on a range of computers, tablets and mobile devices, is making frictionless search, queries and transactions practical, as consumer technology. As the AI software raises recognition to 95% and above, consumer acceptance kicks in and with volume of use comes social acceptance. This new era of natural language interfaces, will bring opportunities for teaching and learning way beyond the current search or stilted e-learning.

3. Teaching assistant

When 300 AI students at Georgia Tech were fooled by a teaching assistant, that turned out to be a bot, we got a glimpse of their power. It was trained using data from previous electronic dialogue, to answer queries from students but only answered when it had a 97% certainty. So successful was this teaching bot that it was put forward by one student for a teaching award. Smart as these students were, they only realised it was a bot because it was too good – it replied almost immediately, something the real teaching assistants never did!

This idea, of a teaching assistant, that takes the admin and other trivial and repetitive tasks out of the teaching process, must surely be a laudable goal. Much of teaching, offline and online, is actually administration, which could surely be better handled by an intelligent bot. The fact that such bots can learn (through machine learning) means they can tailor themselves to specific subjects, courses and teachers. Assistive bots, therefore solve that age-old project of excessive paperwork and admin that so many teachers complain about.

4. Manage learning

Bots could help teachers and trainers manage delivery through the management of tasks through a LMS or VLE. Optimal scheduling, booking and delivery and other definable processes, could be requested and executed by a smart bot. We already have concierge and customer service bots that help people with queries and organisational tasks.

5. Curation

Content curation can be bot driven, as it crawls the web looking for relevant content based on filters deliverd as dialogue. Voice systems such as VIV already handle complex queries with Boolean logic. Such systems are rapidly being embedded in consumer technology like Amazon Echo and Googlr Home. Lesson plans and resources could be designed, found and shaped by bots. They could draw upon databases of existing lesson plans and crawl the web for suitable content.

6. Online subject teaching

Moving up a level to online teaching, bots have become learners in the sense of being capable of learning from real human data sets that capture human expertise. This can be subject knowledge, where content can delivered by an intelligent bot that has a broad and deep knowledge of a subject, way beyond that of even a trained teacher. With access to knowledge-bases, greater than anything a human memory could hold, at some point the queries and answers a learner would want within a subject domain could be handed by a bot. We saw evidence of this with Watson, when it beat the two World Champions in Jeopardy.

Subject bots have huge potential to teach, especially at more basic levels, where 101 courses are run repeatedly. Whenever there is a human task that is repetitive and replicable, it tends to be automated. I have seen this operate in HE courses from history to science, where significant attainment rises, along with correlated reductions in drop-out happen. This will happen in teaching at levels where it is possible to replicate the tasks.

7. Online teaching

Beyond this query level, where bots answer student queries, bots can be driven by algorithms that embed good, evidence-based, learning theory. Chunking, search, concept identification, recommendations, relevant feedback, spaced-practice – there are many principles in teaching and learning that can be ‘captured’ in software and replicated by technology. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the qualities of an expert teacher be captured and replicated, especially if the human delivery side can be replicated through bots.

Those elusive qualities in teaching - inspiration, motivation and emotional intelligence – may also now be possible through AI bots. Sentiment analysis is available through a number of APIs on the internet, allowing bots (AI) to real the emotional state of the learner, such as disinterest, boredom, puzzlement and so on. On motivation, online activity can be tracked and used to signal flagging students, then give them support to stay on track.

8. Language learning

Learning a language is tough. Millions try in school and fail. Millions try with online learning and fail. The one thing that is missing is often conversation, which is what language use is largely all about. Duolingo’s chatbot is a good example. They found that bots fill a gap. Most people learning a new language are too embarrassed to speak to a real person who know that language. A bot, which you know is not a real person, is a great middle-ground substitute. The interesting thing about bots is that they learn or at least widen their responses based on use. The more people who sue the bot, the better it gets. As Luis von Ahn, founder and CEO says “We’ve done the measurements: we know we’re as good as a classroom, a standard high-school classroom in the US. In a standard US classroom, kids are getting a minute of conversational practice a day. But we would like to be as good as a human tutor, and that’s where we want to go.” That means an all-purpose bot.

9. Performance support

We learn much of what we learn, not on formal courses, but in real-time, responding to real problems and overcoming those problems. In corporate learning and development, this form of needs-driven, just-in-time, online delivery is called performance support. Many attempts have been made at this but most fail because they don’t deliver on the promise of accurate and relevant help. With AI-driven support, the system learns from previous queries, successful solutions and adapts towards future efficiency. It learns by watching you learn, then delivers better learning. Bots that focus on customer care do exactly this, learning to answer queries and solve customer problems, learning how to do so dynamically. This sort of realtime performance support would be ideal in workplace learning.

10. Online assessment

There’s formative and summative assessment, although given the emphasis on the latter at the expense of the former, you see why education has become such a chore for learners. In formative assessment, the idea of bot-driven feedback makes sense, especially where teachers have to cope with large numbers of students (beyond a handful), where personalised, realtime feedback becomes impossible.

A good example of how far we’ve come on this front is in search, where every letter you type into Google, triggers a search query and, using AI, tries to provide an answer. In writing, spelling and grammar checkers do a great job in spotting your typos and mistakes. These increasingly use AI to do the checking. If your organisation uses a plagiarism tool, such as turnitin, then you’re using AI to spot things that have not been written by the supposed student. This is moving towards essay marking software that can be taught by training it with human data and allowing it to learn from every essay submitted.

Problems

Let's not get too carried away however, much of this is future implementation. We only have to look at Microsoft's Tay to see what can go wrong. If a bot can learn, it can be taught bad things. In this case the bot Tay was taught to become a sex-crazed Nazi. There's also a problem with sustained dialogue. That problem is a matter of degree and will get better. Oddball output is another common feature as the AI guesses badly.

Conclusion

What makes teaching bots not only possible but desirable, is AI. Technology gives them some beneficial staring points. A bot is free from cognitive biases along with racial, gender and socio-economic biases. They never get ill, don’t forget much of what they are taught, operate 24/7, and can deliver from anywhere to anywhere where there is an internet connection. Unlike our brains they don’t sleep for eight hours a day and, in a fatal objection to human frailty, neither get burnt out, retire or die.

Bots are already out there, operating without us even realising that they are either there, or not human. This is bad if they’re being used to defraud us or fool us in some malicious way. Bots, such as Microsoft’s Tay, have also been turned into sex, crazed Nazis, by deliberate false training on the web. On the other hand, if used for good, think bots-for-good, in education and training, they take some of the drudgery out of teaching, provide valuable assistance, support learners, even teach and assess. This technology enhanced teaching would be wonderful if it helped tackle the real problems we face – attainment gaps, high drop-out rates, education in poorer countries, expensive HE that produces huge debts for governments and students. Bots ahoy!

School of Athens: explains a lot about modern schooling?

If one artwork captures the roots of our Western intellectual tradition it is The School of Athens (Scuola di Atene) by Raphael. Note the title. The figures are set within a ‘school’ both the place, and metaphorically, the golden thread of a tradition that still has he influence on education today. The school is actually Roman architecture, not Greek, but is meant to echo the schools of the two central, principle figures; Plato (Academy) and Aristotle (Lyceum).

Plato and Aristotle

Plato steps forward and points to the sky (heavens), while Aristotle stands still with his hand level, palm down to the ground (real world). This represents two different philosophical traditions that were to shape, not only western philosophy but also religion and learning, both theory and practice. In their hands, Plato holds his Timaeus, Aristotle, his Ethics. This shows a divergence between the theoretical, cosmological and metaphysical concerns of Plato and the grounded, earthly and practical approach of Aristotle. They represent two schools of thought but also two approaches to schooling. This is a simplification but Plato, the rationalist is contrasted with Aristotle, the empiricist. This persists today in the arts/academic versus science/vocational debate around curricula and educational policy.

(see Plato and Aristotle as learning theorists)

Socrates

Another figure, stands off to the left, dressed simply in green, a secular colour in the Renaissance, in deep dialogue with a young man, with his back to Plato and Aristotle. Although the figure behind looks across to Plato, as it is through the Platonic dialogues that we know most about this man - Socrates. He had a profound influence on the western approach to learning that is still alive today. The sceptic, whose educational approach was to deconstruct through dialogue, strip away pre-conceptions and expose ignorance. He doesn’t conform to any of the traditions around him and survives today, in the Socratic method, as someone who believes in an approach that eschews lectures for dialogue, feedback and reflection. (see Socrates as learning theorist)

Mathematics

There is in this image, another theme, related to both Plato and Aristotle, but also other figures, such as Euclid and Pythagoras. Pythagoras is the figure writing in a book in the foreground on the left, surrounded by acolytes. He represents abstract mathematics and the idea that learning is about the master transmitting immutable knowledge to their students. His parallel figure in the foreground on the right is Euclid (some say Archimedes), leaning down to demonstrate his proofs, on what looks like a slate, with callipers, where the students are in discussion, working through the proofs in their heads. Again, this contrast exists between the didactic teaching of a canon and the more learner-centric view of the learner as someone who has to learn by doing and reflection.

Other figures

Diogenes sits as a sceptic, alone, looking at no one, in front of Plato and Aristotle. He’s a check on these systematic thinkers, representing another learning thread that was by this time coming alive in the University system and certainly came from the Greeks – scepticism, and its close relative, cynicism. There’s a host of other characters, such a Zoroaster and Averroes, showing non Greek threads but the main pantheon of teachers are mostly Greek.

Artists

That an intellectual tradition is represented as a great work of art is one thing, but Raphael also injected another theme into the fresco. He represents some of the figures from known representations of busts, others, it is speculated, have the faces of famous artists, Plato (Leonardo da Vinci), Aristotle (Giuliano da Sangallo), Heraclitus (Michelangelo), Plotinus (Donatello). Raphael is thought to have included himself, as the figure at the elbow of Epicurus (on left lifting the bowl from the plinth). The sculptures behind the figures are Apollo (left), God of music and light, and Athena (right) Goddess of wisdom, again reflecting rhetorically the arts and knowledge as underlying themes in learning. Again, we have a lasting theme in education, the role of the arts.

From philosophy to theology

It may seem odd that this painting was commissioned by a Pope and is to be found in the Vatican. However, remember that this fresco is one of many frescos in this room, and adjoining rooms, that represent largely Christian and theological issues. Theology had, well before this point and for many centuries, held an iron grip on the educational process, that was to continue, and never really disappear, even in our supposedly secular age.

Technology

There’s no large-scale lecturing in this image, although nascent technology in the several books (3), scroll (1), pens and notebooks in which notes are being taken (3), compasses (1), globes (2) and what appear to be slates (2), are already being used to assist learning and teaching.

Conclusion

The main triumvirate of Greek philosophers define the strands for learning and educational theory that are alive today. The great schism between the academic and practical was set in motion and the Socratic tradition defined, but, so often ignored.

Plato (428-348 BC) – lifelong learning, 3Rs, mind & body but ban fiction!

It is through Plato that we know Socrates, but Plato is no mere mouthpiece. All western philosophy has been described as ‘footnotes to Plato’. Like Socrates, he believed in the power of questioning as a method of teaching and most of his writing is in the form of ‘dialogue’. Indeed, his dialogues do not feature Plato himself. They illustrate by example his view that the learners must learn to think for themselves through dialogue. But he was a direct and detailed, and shockingly controversial,  commentator in his utopian vision of education in The Republic, The Laws and other dialogues.

Plato’s Academy

Plato’s Academy is thought by many to have been the first University, open to both men and women. He founded The Academy in 387 B.C. a philosophical school that remained in use until A.D. 526, when it was finally closed down by emperor Justinian. Having run for 900 years it rivals any current western university for longevity. Above its door were the words Do not enter here unless you know geometry, and he did see mathematics as important training for the mind, along with the idea of proof and clear hypotheses.

3 Rs

School, he proposes, should start at six with the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. A strict curriculum is recommended in early years. The educational system should also be designed to determine the abilities of individuals and training provided to apply to the strengths of their abilities. In other words, a severe form of streaming. These ideas were to be revived by the humanists during the Renaissance and shaped the Western schooling system with its focus on the 3 Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic. Mathematics, in particular, provides an education in sound reasoning towards the immaterial Forms, simply amassing knowledge was seen as wasteful. However, and this is where we should take note, he did not recommend that young minds should be introduced the mathematics and abstract reasoning too early. This simply induces rejection and rebelliousness. At this early stage one must develop character.

Censor fiction

Now here comes a recommendation that sounds shocking to modern ears: censor fiction at this age, literature and especially poetry and drama. For those who believe that education is about ‘story telling’ Plato has some salutary warnings. Fiction can cloud a child’s mind and reduce their ability to make judgments and deal with the real world. More than this, he thought that fiction could lead to self-deception, in particular acting, where learners develop a false-sense of themselves. He also thought that they may be tempted to emulate some of the immoral behaviour in such texts. Morality was, for Plato, the bedrock of the educational process and education was a structured and intense process.

Mind and body

Music and sports should then be brought into the curriculum with more serious attention paid to military training at the age of 18. The Greek ideal of body and mind is seen in an educational context with a structured approach to education across one’s entire lifetime. This idea lived on in the European tradition of education with its focus on competitive sports, the revival of the Greek ideal of the Olympics, even military cadets.. The Greek lettered fraternities in the US, the ‘classical’ education that so influenced 19^th century schooling, still so influential in Western Universities, show that this Greek tradition lives on.

Lifelong learning

We must remember that Plato doesn’t see this as education for all, merely a minority destined to rule, although The Republic analysis can be seen a an analogy for the individual mind. On the other hand, his appreciation that people learn differently over time has been taken up by those who see ‘andragogy’ as a theoretical construct. He does see the mind developing over time with age as an important factor in education. The child is not capable of sound reasoning and must be protected from harmful cultural influences but in time, at 18 and 21, higher educational goals are introduced, with philosophy at 30. It is only at the age of 50 that the educated person should be allowed to rule – the philosopher king. There is a sense of lifelong learning.

Conclusion

Plato’s lasting contribution to educational theory has pros and cons. It led to severe, selective streaming, cast doubt on the use of literature, poetry and drama and put an undue emphasis on abstract, academic knowledge at the expense of the vocational. This last point is perhaps the most pertinent, as it was based on a very abstract and metaphysical theory of knowledge (Forms). On the other hand, it led to rigour in mathematics and reason, laying the foundations for The Academy, the forerunner of the modern University. Theoretically, he mapped out a developmental educational theory that rested on the Greek ideal of mind and body but saw education as developing at different ages, an early conception of lifelong learning.

Bibliography

Plato (1955) The Republic, London: Penguin (translated by H. P. D. Lee).

Murdoch, Iris (1977) The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the Artists, Oxford University Press.

Hare, R. M. (1989) Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Succinct introduction. 

Dewey (1859 - 1952) – Habits, practical and problem-based learning

John Dewey was a philosopher with a deep interest in politics and education. Dewey spoke out against communism as well as the right-wing threat in US politics, including what he saw as reactionary Catholicism. He was a typical American liberal believing in a secular approach and reform in education, moving it beyond the limitations of traditional ‘schooling’. Did you know that Dewy headed up the commission that investigated Trotsky in Mexico? He also took an interest in finding out about how schools operated with trips to Japan, China, Mexico, Turkey and the Soviet Union. 

As a philosopher he was what is called a ‘pragmatist’, a school of philosophy that picked up on ideas from the German idealism of Kant (Dewey’s doctoral dissertation was on Kant) and Hegel, and later emerged from Pierce and James in the 19th century. 

Education and society

As befits an American with strong democratic beliefs, he saw education as leading towards the enhancement of and authentic participation in a democratic nation. His reflections on the nature of knowledge, experience and communication, combined with his views of democracy and community, led to an educational theory that started with a broad based vision of what education should be, an identification of educational methods and a practical view of its implementation. He practised what he preached through his own elementary ‘Laboratory School’.

Schools – realisation through practice

That schools had become divorced from society was one of his basic claims. He was refreshingly honest about their limitations and saw schools as only one means of learning, ‘and compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means’. In fact, he was keen to break down the boundaries of school, seeing them as a community within a community or an ‘embryonic society’. Schools are necessary but must not get obsessed with streaming, testing and not be overly academic in the curriculum. They must reflect the real world, not sit above and apart from society. 

His Pragmatist beliefs led him to believe that schools should create real-life, learning opportunities that could be put into practice, by engaging in occupational activities, as practised by the rest of society. He was keen on ‘occupational’ learning and practical skills that produced independent, self-directing, autonomous adults. In his model school, the students planted wheat and cotton, processed and transported it for sale to market. It was about fulfilling the potential of the many, not the few.

Problem based learning

John Dewey, like Socrates, was a philosopher first and educational theorist second, and like Socrates, his progressive educational theory has been simplified to the level of caricature. It is often assumed that he favoured an extreme version of student-centred or discovery learning but this was not in fact the case. In Democracy and Education (1916) he presents a sophisticated interplay between teachers and students, where the teacher must not simply present the subject matter but pay attention to efficacious methods of instruction and meet the developmental needs and interests of learners 

He is best known for his scientific or problem-solving approach to learning, presented in How we think (1910).  In line with his view that science, experimentation and practice lay at the heart of learning, for both a person and society, he encouraged innovation and abhorred dogmatic principles and practices. For Dewey, exposure to certain types of learning experiences are more important than exposure to others but his concrete advice is often absent.

Learning

Dewey was not, as some assume, a full-on progressive and had little time for Rousseau’s free approach to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Structure and teaching were important. Perhaps his most important contribution to education is his constant attempts to break down the traditional dualities in education between theory and practice, academic and vocational, public and private, individual and group. This mode of thinking, he thought, led education astray. The educational establishment, in his view, seemed determined to keep themselves, and their institutions, apart from the real world by holding on to abstract and often ill-defined definitions about the purpose of education. Aghast at the teaching of religion in schools he also thought that high-end social theories such as neo-Darwiniasm, capitalism and socialism were inappropriate and was against those who believe in dogmas and ideologies.

Habit and practice

Dewey, like Pierce and James, in Human Nature and Conduct (1922) saw ‘habit’ as a fundamental mover in learning. Not the mechanical reinforcement of habit, not the exercise of pure reason but the active formation of emotion and reason in tandem, an active process with biological, cognitive and moral components. He is a post-Darwinian thinker, who sees in habit a flow of given, learnt and social dispositions. Education is a social function and habits are social functions. In Democracy and Education (1916), he promotes diversity of interests, pluralism, experimentation and freedom of thought, where changes in social habit are also important to overcome the barriers of class, race and geography.

Communication  and dialogue fuels democratic social action and move individuals towards growth with democracy and science providing degrees of consensus, to encourage this type of growth.

Criticism

Many criticise Dewey as being a man of his day, subjecting himself to uncritical, faithful adherence to science and capitalism. Critics suggest that this is not truly diverse and pluralistic, as it does, as mIll noted, lead to the tyranny of the majority. He was, despite his pragmatic bent, also non-specific on many aspects of teaching and learning. leaving is somewhat in the dark on detail.

Influence

Dewey is a child of the Enlightenment, a believer in social progress, a progressive thinker, not a traditionalist. His reputation was and continues to be global, although his practical influence tended to be at the academic and policy level. He forced us to see education as not the teaching of a fixed canon but a dynamic process in dynamic democracies. There is much to be gained by seeing pragmatism as a way of eliminating faddish and non-evidence-based practice in teaching and learning. Their belief that biology, emotion and reason guide inquiry is also useful, along with the focus on habits obvious in Pierce, James and Dewey.

His pragmatic ethos also aligns him with those modern thinkers who support a rebalancing of education away from the overly academic, towards more vocational skills, such as Shank, Caplan, Sandel and Goodhart. Interest in experiential learning, through Kolb and others, has its origins in Dewey. His views on schools and how they relate to a modern, democratic society are also of lasting interest, going back to his ideals of the role of education in creating autonomous citizens in the context of a greater good. Those who see a more active role for schools in their community can benefit from a re-reading of Dewey, as he raises important issues about the relevance of education, the destructive institutional practices and the lack of practical, pragmatic, vocational and life-skills teaching.

Bibliography

Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.), New York: Free Press.

Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (Revised edn.), Boston: D. C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education, New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963).

Dewey, J. (1929) Experience and Nature, New York: Dover. (Dover edition first published in 1958).

Campbell, J. (1995) Understanding John Dewey. Nature and co-operative intelligence, Chicago: Open Court.

Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, New York: W. W. Norton. 

Dewey (1859 - 1952) – practical, problem-based learning

Did you know that Dewy headed up the commission that investigated Trotsky in Mexico? John Dewey, like Socrates, was a philosopher first and educational theorist second, and like Socrates, his progressive educational theory has been simplified to the level of caricature. It is often assumed that he favoured an extreme version of discovery learning. This was not in fact the case. As a philosopher he was what is called a ‘pragmatist’, a school of philosophy that emerged from Pierce and James in the 19th century. As befits an American with strong democratic beliefs he saw education as leading towards authentic participation in a democratic nation.

His reflections on the nature of knowledge, experience and communication, combined with his views of democracy and community, led to an educational theory that started with a broad based vision of what education should be, an identification of educational methods and a practical view of its implementation. He practised what he preached through his own ‘Laboratory School’.

Problem based learning

He is best known for his problem-solving approach to learning. In line with his view that science and experimentation lay at the heart of learning for both a person and society, he encouraged innovation and abhorred dogmatic principles and practices. For Dewey, exposure to certain types of learning experiences are more important than others. Schools should create learning opportunities by engaging in occupational activities, as practised by the rest of society. He was keen on ‘occupational’ learning and practical skills that produced independent, self-directing, autonomous adults. That schools had become divorced from society was one of his basic claims. In his model school, the students planted wheat and cotton, processed and transported it for sale to market.

Schools – divorced from society

Dewey spoke out against communism as well as the right-wing threat in US politics, including what he saw as reactionary Catholicism. A recent reappraisal sees him as a typical American liberal believing in a secular approach and reform in education, moving it beyond the limitations of traditional ‘schooling’. He was refreshingly honest about their limitations and saw schools as only one means of learning, ‘and compared with other agencies, a relatively superficial means’. In fact, he was keen to break down the boundaries of school, seeing them as a community within a community or an ‘embryonic society’. Schools are necessary but must not get obsessed with streaming, testing and not be overly academic in the curriculum. They must reflect the real world, not sit above and apart from society.

Learning

However, Dewey was not a full-on progressive and had little time for Rousseau’s free approach to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Structure and teaching were important. Perhaps his most important contribution to education is his constant attempts to break down the traditional dualities in education between theory and practice, academic and vocational, public and private, individual and group. This mode of thinking, he thought, led education astray. The educational establishment, in his view, seemed determined to keep themselves, and their institutions, apart from the real world by holding on to abstract and often ill-defined definitions about the purpose of education.

Conclusion

Dewey is a child of the Enlightenment, a progressive thinker, not a traditionalist. More importantly for our purposes, experiential learning through Kolb and others had its origins in Dewey. His views on schools and how they relate to a modern, democratic society are also of lasting interest. Those involved in the modern debate about a more active role for schools in their community can benefit from a re-reading of Dewey as he raises important issues about the relevance of education, the destructive institutional practices and the lack of practical, pragmatic, vocational and life-skills teaching.

Bibliography

Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.), New York: Free Press.

Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process (Revised edn.), Boston: D. C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education, New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963).

Dewey, J. (1929) Experience and Nature, New York: Dover. (Dover edition first published in 1958).

Campbell, J. (1995) Understanding John Dewey. Nature and co-operative intelligence, Chicago: Open Court.

Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, New York: W. W. Norton. 

Plato (428-348 BC) – Man of reason... but wary of fiction!

It is through Plato that we know Socrates, but Plato is no mere mouthpiece. All western philosophy has been described as ‘footnotes to Plato’. Like Socrates, he believed in the power of questioning as a method of teaching and most of his writing is in the form of ‘dialogue’. Indeed his dialogues do not feature Plato himself, they illustrate by example his view that the learners must learn to think for themselves through dialogue. But he was a direct, detailed, and controversial commentator in his utopian vision of education in The Republic, The Laws and other dialogues.

Plato’s Academy

Plato’s Academy is thought by many to have been the first University, open to both men and women. He founded The Academy in 387 BC, a philosophical school that remained in use until AD 526, when it was finally closed down by the Emperor Justinian. Astonishingly, having run for 900 years, it rivals any current western university for longevity. Above its door were the words Do not enter here unless you know geometry, as he saw mathematics as important training for the mind, along with the idea of clear hypotheses and proofs.

3 Rs

School, he proposes, should start at six with the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. A strict curriculum is recommended in the early years and the educational system should be designed to determine the abilities of individuals and training provided to apply to the strengths of their abilities. In other words, a severe form of streaming. These ideas were to be revived by the humanists during the Renaissance and shaped the Western schooling system with its focus on the 3 Rs: reading, writing and arithmetic. 

Mathematics, he thought, provides an education in sound reasoning towards the immaterial Forms, simply amassing knowledge was seen as wasteful. However, and this is where we should take note, he did not recommend that young minds should be introduced the mathematics and abstract reasoning too early. This simply induces rejection and rebelliousness. At this early stage one must develop character.

Censor fiction

Now here comes a recommendation that sounds shocking to modern ears, that we should reject the teaching and consumption of fiction at an early age; literature and especially poetry and drama. For those who believe that education is about ‘storytelling’ Plato has some salutary warnings. Fiction can cloud a child’s mind and reduce their ability to make judgments and deal with the real world. More than this, he thought that fiction could lead to self-deception, in particular acting, where learners develop a false-sense of themselves. He also thought that they may be tempted to emulate some of the immoral behaviour in such texts. Morality was, for Plato, the bedrock of the educational process and education was a structured and intense process.

In the Phaedrus, he also cautions us about being too reliant on a technology such as writing. It may have the opposite educational effect from that intended, as it creates a sense that something is learnt but actually results in forgetfulness. He wars us that writing may be the enemy of memory, as one is not recalling from one’s own mind but the written text. Interestingly this is a strong finding in recent cognitive science, where effortful learning through retrieval is recommended. 

Mind and body

Music and sports should be brought into the curriculum with more serious attention paid to military training at the age of 18. The Greek ideal of body and mind is seen in an educational context with a structured approach to education across one’s entire lifetime. Gymnasion was literally a “school for naked exercise” and they were common in Greek cities, with complex buildings, run by public officials, often linked to games and festivals. Educational activities such as lectures, philosophical discussion and the reading of literature were also held there. 

Lifelong learning

We must remember that Plato doesn’t see education for all, and certainly not slaves, merely a minority destined to rule, although The Republic can also be seen as an analogy for the individual mind. He sees the mind developing over time with age as an important factor in education. The child is not capable of sound reasoning and must be protected from harmful cultural influences but in time, at 18 and 21, higher educational goals are introduced, with philosophy at 30. It is only at the age of 50 that the educated person should be allowed to rule – as philosopher kings. 

Influence

In education, the ‘classical’ education that so influenced 19^th century schooling, still so influential in Western Universities, show that this Greek tradition lives on. Greek is still taught in many schools and the Glory that was Greece is still recognized in the philosophy, history and drama that is still studied to this day.

The word gymnasium lives on in Germany as a form of school and elsewhere as a place for physical exercise and sports. An education involving both mind and body lived on in the European tradition of education with its focus on competitive sports and the revival of the Greek ideal of the Olympics. We even have the Greek lettered fraternities in the US.

Plato’s lasting contribution to educational theory has pros and cons. It led to severe, selective streaming, cast doubt on the use of literature, poetry and drama and put an undue emphasis on abstract, academic knowledge at the expense of the vocational. This last point is perhaps the most pertinent, as it was based on a very abstract and metaphysical theory of knowledge (Forms). On the other hand, it led to rigour in mathematics and reason, laying the foundations for The Academy, the forerunner of the modern University. Theoretically, he mapped out a developmental educational theory that rested on the Greek ideal of mind and body and saw education as developing at different ages, an early conception of lifelong learning. 

Bibliography

Plato (1955) The Republic, London: Penguin (translated by H. P. D. Lee).

Plato (1955) The Laws, London: Penguin (translated by H. P. D. Lee).

Murdoch, Iris (1977) The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the Artists, Oxford University Press.

Hare, R. M. (1989) Plato, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, P.C., Roediger III, H.L. and McDaniel, M.A., (2014). Make it stick. Harvard University Press.