271: The Socratic Method

There it is. Did you record? Yeah, of course. You guys burp?

Yeah. Oh, we're so bad. As soon as he said, I got that burp out, I was like, a reek, start to record. Oh my gosh, welcome to classical stuff.

You should know this podcast rules. This is Easter egg. All right, let's like do an actual episode. We are.

We are. We are. We are. This is happening.

I refuse to have this video. I'm not going to talk to you. Luckily, you're not in charge. We've got it after.

We've got it after. We've got it after. I'm starting. Hello and welcome to classical stuff you should know a podcast about taking long breaks for Christmas.

My name is Thomas Maggie and I'm joined as always by laughing AJ Hindenburg. Oh, that's me. And Dower Graham Donaldson. Hey.

I was not speaking in protest. Not speaking. He burped into the mic as AJ was recording. Hopefully you didn't hear it, but if you did, I don't know, maybe you're a patron.

I don't know. All right. We're back. We're back.

We're so back. That's not cool anymore. We're so back. I'm a father.

Never been cool. Yeah, I don't. I'm turning 40 tomorrow. I don't need to be cool.

No more. I'm so old. Okay. So we actually have no idea what your topic is.

AJ is leading us today. In this episode. Yeah. Just so that we maintain credibility.

Well, I think recording an episode is cool. We haven't done that in a while. I don't quite sometimes. Sorry, patrons.

We just schedule holidays, all that stuff. We're back. We're back. Doing episodes.

Okay. So this is probably geared more and episode geared more towards teachers than other episodes I've done. So if you are not a teacher, you're welcome to listen. I'm not going to force you.

If you are a teacher, this is the kind of thing that I don't know, might help. It's a talk that I gave at our in service a few days ago. So it's on the Socratic method. So if you've ever heard that, I wonder what it is.

This is my thing on that. If you would like the slides for it, I can send you those slides and then you can show it to your teachers. Whatever you want to do with it, it's out there. This is free.

Whatever. So there you go. Socratic method. All right.

I'm sold. Yeah. I mean, it's free. I'm sure you get into all this, but like, is this some kind of tear down of how people normally talk about the Socratic method or like.

I don't know if I'm so incendiary as that. It's just like, I've heard about it a lot. And I was like, okay, is there is there like some standard method about how to do this? There's a lot of schools that claim to do teaching via the Socratic method.

And I was like, okay, well, what exactly does that mean? I remember in sophomore English, they would teach by the Socratic method, which meant we sat in a circle. We were all facing each other. Everyone had to ask at least one question.

That's how you. That's not the script. You had to ask one question and then you had to respond to at least two questions. So what I'm remembering this because I didn't want to pose any questions because I hate talking in class.

But yeah, so it's about talking amongst the group instead of it being the teacher, like lecturing. Right. Okay. That's what I remember for how that was defined.

Yeah. My only understanding was it means questions. Yeah. We ask questions, right?

So there you go. That's what it is. That's all we've done now. Yeah.

So the only thing is that I have, so I played a clip. I played the wrong one at in service. So if you're hearing this and you're a very tall teacher, this is the right one. But it's from 1973 called the paper chase.

Have you ever seen it? No. It's about a guy. A kid getting a lot of degree and he comes up against the teacher and this is that teacher's explanation of his classroom.

We're played off of my phone. No, I already did the ad. So hopefully there's no ad. So I'm looking for resources and here's a little bit about the Socratic method.

The study of law is something new and unfamiliar to most of you. Unlike any schooling we've ever been through before. We use the Socratic method here. I call on you, ask you a question and you answer it.

Why don't I just give you a lecture? Because through my questions you'll learn to teach yourselves. Through this method of questioning, answering, questioning, answering, we seek to develop in you the ability to analyze that vast complex of facts that constitute the relationships of members within a given society. Questioning and answering.

The times you may feel that you've found the correct answer. I assure you that this is a total delusion on your part. You will never find the correct, absolute and final answer. In my classroom there is always another question, another question to follow your answer.

Yes, you're on a treadmill. My little questions spin the tumblers of your mind. You're on an operating table. My little questions are the fingers probing your brain.

We do brain surgery here. You teach yourselves the law, but I train your mind. You come in here with a skull full of mush and you leave thinking like a lawyer. The movie's awesome.

The very first scene is like poor kid getting called on and he's like, did you read the material that gets the first day? It was clearly posted. You assumed. He ends up screaming in the bathroom.

Later he ends up swearing at him in class because the guy is such a jerk. Anyway, that guy is a jerk. I can't imagine. I'm serious.

I'm a massive jerk. I'm awesome. One point he calls on the kid and he's like, what is this? I prefer to pass.

He goes, he's like, what? He's like, I don't have anything of value to offer. When I do, I shall raise my hand. The guy says, come down here.

He hands up a diamond. He says, go call your mother. Tell her the chance of you becoming a lawyer is becoming very questionable. You come with the head of motion.

You leave thinking like a lawyer. That's great. It's a great line. It's like that.

The guy is a jerk. That's not quite the socratic method. I did try to look for sources. What was the wrong video you played?

It was the first scene where he calls on the kid and asks him to say something that ends up screaming in the bathroom. It was just fine. It's passable. But that's not as applicable as that particular lecture.

Wait, you were playing that as a negative way to teach. Yeah, it's not good. Graham disagrees. There are good things about it.

But there are bad things about it. Not to mention that he messed up his analogy. Like he said, you're running on a treadmill. My question is spin the tumblers of your mind like you're safe or a lot.

I'm like, bro, pick an analogy. What do you talk about that? Okay. In any case, I look for sources and I found one decent half hour lecture that this guy did.

A lot of five minute YouTube videos and one nearly unintelligible essay or I'm just dumb. But none of them seemed very useful to actually telling you what the socratic method was. It's not like there's an original text except for Socrates himself. You guys read Socrates.

I read Plato. I read Plato. Everybody else felt like Socrates never wrote anything down. You were doing your vian walking while you were doing like sneaky?

Yeah, I mean sneaky. I hold people raised their hand in the service and I was like, yeah, you have to be liars. So they loved you in the service. Oh, yeah.

They just loved it. And the best place to look are his big seminal works. So the dialogues, which I've been going over in our podcast for a while. So you're familiar with them.

But if this is your first jump into classical stuff, I'll give you a basic rundown and then of course the Republic. So there's a few dialogues in each. They ask a big question. So in Uthefro, there's a guy who the big question is what is pious, right?

So he drummed up his dad on a charge of murder after the dad had captured another murderer and threw him in a ditch to figure out what to do with him. The guy died overnight. And so now he Uthefro feels like he is beholden or compelled to go bring his dad up on a charge of murder. The apology is Socrates defending himself against the judges of Athens.

In Crito, it's one of Socrates' buddies who goes and says, hey, we have a way for you to escape. Please come escape jail with us and we'll get you out of here. And Socrates says, no, I am sorry for the laws I have to stay. A dialogue on almost radical civic obedience as post-ac civic disobedience.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. And then Mino is the classic example of the dialogue that just starts with a question, hey, Socrates, do you think virtue can be taught? And of course, Socrates is like, I don't even know what you mean by virtue. In Fado, Socrates, his death is imminent.

He's going to die that day. And all of his buddies are like, why do you seem so chill? And he says, well, I'm not afraid of the afterlife. And it's him explaining why.

In the symposium, it's a bunch of drunk guys talking about what love is. And then the republic- We've all been there. We've all been there. We've had a couple of bevies and we'll be like, what is love?

It's just chemicals in your brain. No, no, no. Why you to show me? See for me, it's what is love.

Baby don't hurt me. Bev, bev, bev, bev, bev, bev, bev. And then the republic, which is actually better to be just or just appeared to be a just person. And then they eventually build a whole country.

So those are the basic platonic source material for this. The funny thing is they don't really follow much of a pattern. And so what they mean by Socratic dialogue is a little bit shifty. So here's what I could put together.

The Socratic dialogue is. So it all begins with some sort of proposition. And the proposition doesn't have to be stated. It can be a question.

Like, hey, Socrates, do you think Fritche could be taught? It can be someone says something that seems a little wonky, seems like it's got some assumptions. Like, just as helping your friends and hurting your enemies. Yes.

Or for you, throw, it is pious for me to turn in my dad for murder. Even though he caught a murderer. Pity is what the gods love. Pity is what the gods love, right?

So there's some sort of proposition. Or even just a question, hey, Socrates, why don't you look afraid, right? So it doesn't necessarily have to be stated. It doesn't have to be a question.

It doesn't have to be questions on questions on questions like this. And while you're here, it can really be somebody that just says, this is what I think. But there are some hidden assumptions there. And then come the actual questions.

So there, it's not like there's one type of question that you ask. There's a variety. Socrates asks a massive variety of questions. Often he'll push for definition, like he does with youth throw.

Right? What do you mean by piety? He says, well, piety is what the gods love. And Socrates says, well, the gods seem to love a lot of different things.

Sometimes they fight with each other. How do you pick? And then he goes on and on. He sometimes Socrates asks clearly leading questions as he does in Mino.

There's a point where he talks to a slave. And he's trying to make the point that he thinks knowledge is recalled, remembered from a previous life, not discovered. And so he's clearly asking this kid leading questions. Like, how many squares is this?

And the kid's like, two. And if I double the length, it'll be how many? And the kid's like, eight. And he's like, don't you think it's four?

And he goes on and on. And so it's clearly leading question. There sometimes he asks legitimately honest questions. Like, why do you think this?

Like, Socrates is just curious. He's not leading you anywhere. He points out examples that don't fit the definition like he did with piety. Right?

Some of the gods don't love the same thing. So how do you tell exactly what is pious? And sometimes Socrates will just give a statement that clearly contradicts what you're saying. And he's like, I don't think that's true at all.

And here's why. So there's not one specific type of question you have to ask or stick to. And you can even use statements to point out somebody's assumptions and then move on from there. So it's not just like our lawyer friend, you don't just have to ask question on question on question.

It can be an actual dialogue back and forth. That can be part of the Socratic method. There's no real specific technique here other than to use questions and sometimes a statement or two. And this should lead us to a second proposition.

Right? So for example, with Euthafro, he points out that that that's not probably piety, just what the gods love. And then Euthafro comes up with another definition of piety. Right?

And he says, I don't think that's it. Right? So usually it's an attempt at a new definition by the defender of whatever proposition it was. And so you ask questions and then you get to a new proposition.

And it's this sort of process. And it'll repeat. Right? So give a new proposition, ask more questions of it, end up at a new proposition.

And you can do this until we have a couple of outs from that little cycle. Out, out, number one, weirdly enough is just success. Success is when you think you have found a proposition that everybody agrees on. Now this is what doesn't exist in our lawyer friend's classroom.

Right? He says, if you think you've got the answer, that is a delusion. You have never found the answer. There are always more questions.

Socrates did not really think that way. There's a couple of places where they do get to an answer. So in Fado, Socrates says, you know, I'm going to have your life. Everyone says, how do you know?

And then he basically attempts to prove that the soul is immortal. And he says, and I quote, then C.B.'s beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable. And our souls will truly exist in another world. And C.B.

says, I am convinced Socrates and have nothing more to object. Right? And then he asks his other friend, like, yeah, I'm chill. In Mino, Socrates again says supposedly proven that the soul is immortal by showing that we remember rather than we learn.

And Socrates says, and if the truth of all things always happens. If he exists in the soul, then the soul is immortal. Wherefore be a good cheer and try to recollect what you do not know or rather what you do not remember. And Mino says, I feel somehow that I like what you are saying.

And Socrates says, and I'm, you know, like what I'm saying. So there are a couple of times where they get the answer. And then everybody has a good time. In Fado, after he's proven that he's headed to a better place, he then goes on this really weird diatribe about how the world is like, we're like frogs at the bottom of a pond and there's a whole other world if we could just get up to the surface and describes the nature of the world and how the rivers work.

It's this crazy thing, but it's not certainly not like questions leading to another proposition. And they've gotten somewhere that they're pleased with. Everyone is like, yeah, okay, so what's the moral? I buy it.

The same kind of thing happens in the Republic. Like they kind of figure out what justice is. If you're out what justice is in the person, then he talks about the afterlife for a while. So you can arrive.

If everybody's happy and you kind of get the answer, then it's okay. I have a question. Yeah. So with Socrates on the places where Socrates does seem to arrive at a conclusion, it seems like Socrates already had that arrival in his mind and was trying to get the people around him to see his point of view on it.

Like it's not like Socrates just discovered it himself right then. It seems like Socrates has thought about it by himself, came to the conclusion. So let's say for example, let's use his definition of justice. That justice is the balance between all of the three parts of the soul.

So yeah. When Socrates gets Glaucon and what's his face to come to those conclusions in Republic, it seems like Socrates has already come to that conclusion himself and he's leading Glaucon and Adomantis there. Or do you read it as Socrates is just discovering that that is true in the moment. It's been a while since the Republic.

Or do you read it in the ones that you've read? But in Fato where he's going to another world, there's a couple of times where they bring up contradictions that he's like, oh, that's interesting. But we should be afraid of the question. Let's dive in.

It seems like he hasn't already thought about it. And then in Mino, they start with Socrates being like, I don't even know what virtue is. Can you tell me? I wish I could tell you.

But I don't know what virtue is. And they kind of go around and around until they kind of arrive someplace. And it seems like Socrates is discovering it at the same time. He's got a couple positions he defends.

Like that he thinks knowledge is remembered or recalled rather than learned. But exactly what virtue is, he seems to be picking up on the spot. Do you think that that's posturing on Socrates? I think it's posturing on Socrates.

I think when people are talking about, I can teach your child to be virtuous. And Socrates has had quiet moments where himself where he's like, okay, like virtue. What is that? And he's gone through this thinking this method himself by himself.

And he's gone to the point where he's like, I don't even know if they know what virtue is. I don't even like what is virtue. So when someone says, hey, do you buy the advertising line when someone says that he can teach your kids to be virtuous? And Socrates is like, what?

I don't know what virtue is. Like, let's start there. I get the sense that like Socrates has already done his method privately by himself and in public is doing it more as an instructional tool as a like, we're discovering it together on our own. I think it might be half and half.

I mean, I think what we know of Socrates is that he claims to know nothing. And we have his dialogues. I imagine that what he did was not sit by himself and think these things through. I think it really did go talk to people.

And so on some of these, I think he is also half discovering it on his own. Sometimes he doesn't discover anything. Like in Youth for O, they don't really arrive anywhere. But we'll get there.

Yeah. So anyway, I think that in a couple, he is earnestly seeking. And a couple, he clearly has an idea of what he thinks is right. Like in the symposium, he's got an idea about what love is and he's going to tell everybody.

But in Mino, he doesn't seem to have his like definition of virtue until the end. And at this point, we're still looking at what is the Socratic method historically you're going to get to eventually like what this can look like in a classroom. Yes. Yeah.

So I've got more of what this looks like in a classroom or at least what I think it looks like in a classroom if I'm going to be like Socrates, which I imagine is what your question is sort of aiming for. Like should I as a teacher have a vision of what I want them to learn a little bit? Yeah. I just wonder how much of what Socrates is doing is posturing an instructive tool as opposed to a discovery tool.

Yeah. Okay. So you go in circles until either you reach a proposition that you all like or the person being questioned gets to a thing. They leave.

Well, that's one outcome. We'll get there. A thing called the idiot phase and during our presentation, this is where I shot a picture of Graham. But he wasn't there.

So then I was just making fun of the absent guy. I was under the weather. Yeah, he was sick. So I took a picture of myself in front of the screen.

That's what it was. Anyway, I call it the idiot phase, but then I had a picture of myself right after. So if you ask for the slides, listen, or I will send you both and they're funny. Okay.

The idiot phase is where the person being questioned realizes that they don't have a good answer. Right? I don't. I don't actually know what virtue is or I don't really know what piety is.

And I think there's a few different outs from this. Like when you hit the idiot phase, you were in a tender position. It is an important place to be like the students need to realize they don't know everything. Right.

Many of them think they do. They think they have all the answers to what life is all about and what religion is all about and what politics are all about. But they're 13. They don't actually know.

And so you have to show them that they don't know by asking them until they run out of answers. This also opens them to more inquiry, right? When they think they have the answer, they aren't going to be looking. It also humbles the kids who need to be humbled.

And this is the stage of exposed assumptions. We call these enthymemes in logic. Now, if you're not a logic person, a logician, an enthymem is a type of syllogism where one of the things is obscured or left out. So for a syllogism is just two premises in a conclusion, like all men are rational creatures, no women are men, therefore no women are rational creatures.

Right? That's a fallacious one. What's that? Not interesting.

Anyway, that is the form of a syllogism. That one commits a particular fallacy where you change the definition of a word in the middle of it. Men as referring to equivocation. Yeah.

Do I say something else? No, that's equivocation. That's equivocation. So that's not a good one.

An enthymem is where one of those things is left out. So for example, if I went up to Donald's and I said, you're not invited to my party because you're a teacher, well, the hidden premise there is that no teachers are people invited to my party. And this is often the weakest thing in the argument. And so he could point out that, well, you've got some other teachers going to your party.

You are a dealer. Yeah, exactly. You are a teacher. So how can the syllogism be true?

So it is this hidden assumption. It's usually the weakest spot. Like I for people say, like, I should vote my conscience. Well, what the hidden premise here is that the US government should be involved in imposing my moral precepts, my conscience on everyone else, or even on me.

Right? Maybe I think it's a bad thing for everyone to swear. But is it really? Do I really want the government to be the thing that makes sure everyone doesn't swear?

Like that's my conscience. I don't think people should be swearing all the time, but I'm not sure I want the police to tell me not to. Right? So there is a little bit of a hidden assumption there.

The conclusion can also be obscured. What an enthymim is. This is just how we naturally argue. We have hidden assumptions all the time.

And so this is the stage, the idiot stage, where those have come to light, right? The weak assumptions, the weak premise has been exposed, and now they don't know what to say. For example, here's a quote from Yuthafro, where Yuthafro finally, oh, this is from Mina, when Mina kind of runs out of answers as to what virtue is. So he says, oh, Socrates, I used to be told before I knew you that you were always doubting yourself and making others doubt.

And now you are casting your spells over me. And I'm simply getting bewitched and enchanted and that my wits end. And if I may venture to make a jest upon you, you seem to be both in your appearance and in your power over others to be very much like the flat torpedo fish who glorifies those who come near him and touch him as you have now torrified me, I think. For my soul in my tongue are really tormented and I do not know how to answer you.

And though I have been delivered of an infinite variety of speeches about virtue before now and to many persons, and very good ones they were, as I thought, at this moment I cannot even say what virtue is. So he arrives at a place where he's like, I don't know what to say. You've shocked me, Socrates. Okay.

So you said, what is one outcome from this when a kid hits the idiot face? What was one you said? I said, they get frustrated and leave, right? They quit.

Which is exactly what happens with Yuthafro, the guy whose dad had caught a fellow who had killed one of his servants, tied him up through him in a ditch and then went to ask the diviner what to do. And while he was gone, the guy died of exposure. And so Yuthafro says, I got to take you to court for this. Well after they go round and round and round, Yuthafro tries four different definitions of piety.

Socrates says, I am confident that you would never on behalf of a serf have charged your aged father with murder. You would not have run such a risk of doing wrong in the sight of the gods and you would have had too much respect for the opinions of men. I'm sure therefore that you know the nature of piety and impiety. Speak out then, mind your Yuthafro and do not hide your knowledge.

Yuthafro, who by the way, we know is in line to go into court. You know what he's doing and where he is and that he has to wait in line. He says, another time Socrates, a friam in a hurry and must go now. And that's the end.

He just like bolts. So he leaves the line? He doesn't take his dad in. Apparently not.

Or else he like hustles forward in the line and he's like, I got to get away from the Socrates guy or moves back. Who knows? Don't you think the dad did deserve to be put on trial for leaving a man in a ditch to death? Yeah, probably.

So then isn't Yuthafro doing the right thing? Yes. I think probably. But Socrates just convinced him he's not.

No, he's a corrupting the youth. I mean, the outcome of Socrates is not always good. No, he just convinced the kid to know what he was doing. But we'll get there.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I will say later that there is something that Socratic method is missing. And that is, I think, what would have helped poor Yuthafro here.

Okay. So that's one outcome is that they just leave, right? Your students will check out. Now they've been exposed and they are just furious for the embarrassment and they are out.

Like at least mentally, sometimes physically, they'll just get out of there and you have, I feel like that's a loss, right? Outcome number two is murder. That's another way out of the idiot phase. So in the apology where Socrates is defending himself for the charge that he is an atheist and corrupts the youth.

So Socrates was told by the oracle, or sorry, he had a friend who was told by the oracle that Socrates was the wisest man around. Socrates said that can't possibly be. He goes around and asks everybody questions to find the wisest guy. But he finds that all of those guys think they know stuff when they don't.

And at least he knows that he doesn't know anything. And so he must be the wisest. So he says, in defense, and so I go about the world obedient to the God and search and make inquiry into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise. And if he's not wise, then in the indication of the oracle, I show him that he is not wise.

And my occupation quite absorbs me. And I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own. But I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the God. So he will later say he considers himself the gadfly of the state.

It's his job to encourage them to virtue when they are not being virtuous. And they do put him to death. He makes them embarrassed. He makes them feel bad.

He makes them enemies. And they kill him. And the outcome for probably a teacher is that your students hate you. Just like in Paper Chase, that kid does the teacher does mean a lot to him.

And he goes to the teacher and says, hey, this class has been a lot to me. Like it's been really hard. The guy's been a jerk. And he's grown a lot.

And he says it means so much. And he thought that this teacher had out for him. And the teacher goes, what's your name? Who?

And the kid just like, at that point, I think he checks out. He gets his grades in the mail and he throws them into the sea. And he's like, whatever. Or I'm sure you've had students that, if you embarrass in the class, they eventually get a grudge.

Or they think you hate them. Or something. It's a rift in the relationship as another outcome. So that's not great.

OK. So those are the two outcomes that we see in Socrates' dialogs. Either they're satisfied, outcome number one. Or they get to the idiot phase and either leave or want to kill him.

Those aren't great places. You think those are like, is that a problem with the person Socrates is talking with? Is it immaturity or they are disposed to anger? Has Socrates unveiled some moral flaw in them?

Or is it actually Socrates is just that annoying? I think it's a mix. I think there is some sometimes a moral flaw, even though Eutharou is trying to do the right thing. I think sometimes, Socrates also has a lot of buddies that he does this with.

A lot of kids who now know that they don't know anything, which is one of his ways of corrupting the Euthis. Eutharou is trying to do the smarmy sanctimonious thing. Eutharou is really concerned with his reputation of being the highest one. That's fair.

Like, you just gave the example of the guy who was like, this classman so much. And the teacher was like, I don't know who you are. And he goes, oh, and he goes and he throws his grades. It's like, get over yourself, buddy.

Come on. I don't know. Grow up. We're talking about penetrating the questions of the universe, and you're going to be upset because your feelings got hurt in your class.

Like, come on. Yeah, but the way that you do Socratic dialogue is by exposing one person's assumptions. And that's a scary place for anyone to be. The teacher needs to be charitable with it.

But there is a certain, you can't just, the teacher can't be so scared of that outcome that he's not willing to challenge the assumptions. Yeah, so I'm going to talk, you're leading me directly to my next point, which is that in the idiot phase, you have a kid who is either going to end up being a cynic or a scholar. Either he'll become disenchanted. Like, he'll think this is stupid.

We're not never going to learn anything. I don't like this. You're just tearing everything down. And now I feel like an idiot.

And I don't really want to be here. And you've got a cynic. There is no knowledge to be had. There's just more questions.

And nobody really knows anything. Because I don't know anything. It's just a shame game. It's just a game of like, who can know, who can rip people's arguments faster?

Yeah, be the cleaverist or whatever. Or you get a kid who's like, oh, I don't know. I should research this. It's just a smoke show and whatever.

And I don't care. I thought he'd just be clever and mess up some of these arguments. But he actually doesn't hold any positions. That's a good question.

I'd say, smoke show. It sounds awesome. Smoke screen? Is it?

Yeah, there you go. OK, thanks. Anyway, so he's a cynic or a scholar. So either you are a smoke show.

Thanks, buddy. I work out sometimes. OK, so there are a couple of other outs. We have those three possible outs in Socrates, right?

They either find a solution or they quit or they murder him. You have some other outs. Out number one is you provide an answer. So as a teacher, sometimes you can say, OK, I've asked you some questions.

You've gotten to a weird spot. Think about it for a day and come back and we'll discuss it. Or if it's a really precarious situation, you can just provide for them an answer. I had a hardness the other day where I asked the kids, OK, what exactly is required for someone to come of age in a healthy, holistic way?

So what do you need to become a real person, like a good citizen as you grow? And some people are like a good example. One kid said, you need firm parents who set boundaries and tell you what's right. And I was like, OK, it was Luke Marson.

It's awesome. Yeah. Someone else said, but how do you know if your parents are right? And he's like, well, they'll tell you.

And he's like, OK, then what if they had bad parents? And then eventually they just got into a shouting match about how do you even know which parent is right, if you can't trust them on saying what's right. So they almost themselves devolved into moral relativism right there. They're like, well, it's just your opinion.

It's just your parents' opinion. And I was like, all right, sit down. I stopped the hardness and I said, OK, you guys have arrived at moral relativism. Here is what goodness is.

And I sort of gave them a functioning definition of goodness. It is a premise. It cannot be proved. And you can make no moral conclusions unless there's some sort of moral assumption.

I cannot say one should be healthy unless health is a thing desirable in and of itself. So I kind of gave them an answer. And hopefully it satisfied them. If I wouldn't have done that, I might have had kids who walk away thinking, I should question my parents and nothing is true in this world because it's all just opinion.

So sometimes you do have to be willing to just get up and give an answer, which means, and this is, I think, one of the gram stances, is that the teacher is the curriculum. If you are playing the Socratic dialogue game, you have to know some of the answers. Because your kids are going to get to a place where those questions come up. And if you don't have the ammo prepared or the humility to approach something you don't understand, then you are in trouble.

Or say, you know what, we've gotten to an interesting place. I don't know the answer to this. But I'm going to find it and do some research and come back to you with something satisfying. Yeah.

You can't be so dialectic that you just tear everything down and pull everything into pieces and leave it there and be like, all right, we'll see you next class. That's almost irresponsible. Exactly. That is the one big criticism of this Socratic method.

It's really good at shipping away to get the essence of something. But there are some things where you can chip and chip until you have nothing. And so the teacher at some point, you need to get to the place where it's like, all right, you are going to have to be making assumptions that can't be proved about morality. Or you are going to be making assumptions that can't be proved about the nature of reality.

Man, you're just leading me directly through my, like, we probably would have come up with the exact same talk. No, you are. Well, we are in this game. Yeah.

We do the same job. Same job. Yeah. Same thing.

OK, so on that point that the Socratic method is good at tearing things down but not building them up, CS Lewis says, you cannot go on seeing through things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How have you saw through the garden, too?

It's no use trying to see through first principles, like that health is worth having in and of itself. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a holy transparent world is an invisible world. To see through all things is the same as not to see.

So that is the big criticism of Socratic dialogue. It's the last lines of abolition of man. That's so good. OK, so what is the balance there?

Well, one is you just provide an answer. The other thing is what we would call mythos, right? What David Hicks talks about as mythos, and eventually we'll talk about the ideal type in his book, Norm's Nobility. So here's a quote from David Hicks' Norms Nobility.

In his quest for the best education, the ancient school master possessed two advantages over the modern educator. First, he knew exactly what kind of a person he wished to produce. He shared with his contemporaries a prescriptive understanding of man inherited from the past and embodied in the ideal type of mythos. This led considerable agreement in substance when it came time to tick off the items on the list of what every educated man ought to know.

Second, he agreed to inform upon an inquiry-based or knowledge centered as opposed to child centered approach to education. Whether he was a philosopher, hoping to elicit knowledge or a rhetorician hoping to implant it, he ignored the child and appealed directly to the father of a man within his student. So ancient educators had an idea of what a good person was. Now this came down to them through myth, right?

We still have that. At least much of the Christian culture does. We've got Jesus, David, Paul, the saints. We have heroes.

We still give medals to heroes in battle. We think people should be brave. We think they should be good. We think they should take risks.

We think they should be responsible. All of these things are just things that we, the older educators, assume, this is stuff that people should know. This is how people should be. And so when you get to the place with your students, if it's a precarious position, you're like, you know what?

We've been trying to discover what goodness is, and we don't have a good answer. Well, if you cannot express the essence in a definition way, you can always just point to somebody and say, I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I sure know it when I see it. Here's some examples of goodness. So that mythos has to be balanced with logos.

If all you have is myth, you end up following things and you don't really, in complex moral situations, like with EuthaFro, you might get stuck. But if all you have is the logos, you are going to get into a complicated, confuddled place. If you can't also point out goodness and say, well, when I am lost, I'll just follow that because I know exactly what that is. Those two things together, logos, the practice of logic, and mythos, the great examples of the past and things that we can point to and say, this is clearly good, combine to make the ideal type of education.

So any teacher going into his room should know, hopefully, some decent logic, some decent philosophy, have a good grounding in theology if you're a Christian teacher as well. But you should have some of those big answers if you can. And the places where you can't, you can say, well, I have good examples, right? These are things that people still argue about.

I can't solve it for you. But I can show you some examples of people who are good despite not knowing exactly how to define good. Does that make sense? So you have to have those things.

So you have five outcomes, really, from Scratic's dialogue. One is you all find an answer. I've had Harkness discussions where the kids get it in the first five minutes. Can you define Harkness?

Oh, great question. Harkness discussion is essentially a talk around a big old table. We all face each other. We are sitting at one right now if you want to go look us up on YouTube.

We are on one edge of a giant Harkness table. So all of the students are in a circle. I forget Harkness's method. I think it might have been guide on the side, like the kids kind of run the discussion.

We'll talk about that in a second, whether I think that's a good idea. But Harkness, he is proposing a way to do Socratic dialogue or something. It's cool. I do research Harkness.

I do research Harkness. You do the Sarcness thing every day. So that's fair. That is fair.

That is a fair criticism. It's no hardness when I see it. It's almost those things. So we were having a, oh, I forgot my example.

Now what was I saying? Harkness. You got to the conclusion real fast. Oh, yeah.

So I sometimes I have kids say it in the first five minutes. And either I say, ah, well, we got it. Let's go outside. Or I just let the kids just blow past it.

Because I don't catch it when it happens. So I'll give that kid some points and then wait until they sort of spin their wheels. Or I'm like, you guys, somebody already answered it for you way earlier 10 minutes ago. And that was this.

So you have, you find the answer. You have the idiot phase where the outcomes are, they quit. They hate you. Or you can provide for an answer for them.

Or you can point to some sort of mythos if you cannot find an answer. Those are acceptable outcomes. So if you don't have the answer for sure, don't give them a platitude, give them something real. You may not always know the answer.

And actually there have been several instances where I thought I had an answer and a kid asked a good question. And my answer was torn down. And something else had to come in its place. I think of what I often know in the first day of class is ask what is the essence of education.

And I give them the answer that Aristotle and Plato would have given. And it's that you want to teach the people to love good things, to love what is worth loving. One kid, one year, asked, OK, well, who besides was worth loving? It's a great question.

I have a good answer. I said, me and the administration? And he's like, and he rightfully distrusted that. The right answer is that we've known for millennia.

Every human culture has essentially had the same definition of goodness with different emphases throughout history. And it's been pretty much agreed upon what is good philosophically or at least the basis of it. So if we want to talk about enthymemes, that question, who decides what is good that we should study? You have to decide.

It means that in his mind, he thinks that goodness is a thing that is sort of like given to. There are other kinds of good that other institutions could agree on as to study. Whereas the correct answer is the good. And it is what you just answered.