Fifty Greatest Teachers From History
By Eric Westervelt
NPR, October 29, 2014



This is the first of a year long series being explored by NPR. I may miss some of the articles, but I will catch as many of them as I can. I have included a number of the reader comments, as I think the comments are often as interesting as the article. I can't wait to find out who the other great teachers are, since I can only think of Socrates, Plato, Jesus and Confucius.


Photograph – Seventh grade students respond to teacher Tim Ogburn's questions about a Japanese creation myth. Their school, Black Pine Circle, in Berkeley, Calif., follows the Socratic method.

Today, NPR Ed kicks off a year-long series: 50 Great Teachers.

We're starting this celebration of teaching with Socrates, the superstar teacher of the ancient world. He was sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for "impiety" and "corrupting" the minds of the youth of Athens.

But Socrates' ideas helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and the scientific method of inquiry. And his question-and-dialogue based teaching style lives on in many classrooms as the Socratic method.

I went to Oakland Technical High School to see it in action.

It's the first period of the morning and student Annelise Eeckman is sparring with teacher Maryann Wolfe about Social Security. They get into the roller coaster nature of the U.S. stock market and the question of what role the market should play, if any, in workers' retirement plans.

"It's not influencing me" Wolfe says.

"You're not retired currently," Eeckman counters.

"But I have stock," Wolfe says. "You know what happened Thursday and Friday right? Friday it started going back up again yesterday it went up a little bit more."

"And what if tomorrow it dips?" Eeckman says.

"Well, yeah, but you depend on one day?"

In this 12th grade Advanced Placement American government class, students are not just encouraged — they're expected — to question the teacher ... and each other.

That's at the heart of the Socratic method that's come down to us from the streets of Athens: dialogue-based critical inquiry. The goal here is to focus on the text, ideas and facts — not just opinions — and to dig deeper through discussion.

On this particular Tuesday morning, students are tackling the history of third parties in American politics. They're poring over the platforms of past candidates, including Ross Perot, Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan.

"I'm just trying to figure out what the Republicans must be thinking. What Pat Buchanan must be thinking," says Wolfe as she leans on her lectern.

"Well if we look at the group of people that the Republicans tend to focus their opinions on, they're usually of the more wealthy classes," one student says.

Senior Jonah Oderberg confidently pushes back on the idea of school vouchers, which Wolfe is defending.
"If you have that high-enough income to afford that private education," says Oderberg, "that should be coming out of your own pocket. There's already adequate public schools."

"So you want me to pay double?" asks Wolfe, smiling as she walks closer to Oderberg's desk in the back of the room.

"Um, no" Oderberg says. The class laughs.

"Sounds like it," Wolfe counters and turns back to the front of the class.

'The Complexity of The Issues'

This is good classroom jousting.

Ok, one student is falling asleep.

But everyone else is wide awake and into the discussion.

"I think the Socratic Method means that you're going to have a whole bunch of ideas floating to the surface," says Wolfe, who helped build this school's Socratic seminar program, which is part of a national Paideia program that encourages the Socratic method.

"I want them to see the complexity of the issues. I believe the students really learn that way. Because they have to speak, they have to be engaged in what we're trying to learn."

For Wolfe, the Socratic method at its core means getting students to actually listen to each other and to differing opinions. It's been her main teaching tool during her nearly three decades in the classroom.

"Maybe we won't find exact truths in this class," she says. "But we will at least look at all possibilities and they will have a truth right at that moment. And the moment comes when they have to stand up and debate it. When they have to write an essay about it. They have to take a side."

As part of the class, Wolfe requires students to get involved with a local political campaign, ballot measure or issue. Senior Sierra Robbins is volunteering for a local effort to boost the minimum wage ... which she says has changed her views about the power of civic engagement and the role of government.

"It felt so distant and too big to be changed," Robbins says. "And I went out and talked to people and it felt really different. It felt like you could really do something."

'Critical Dialogue'

Socrates didn't write anything down. And details of his life remain largely unknown. Many of his ideas, and life as a teacher and philosopher, are known largely through the writings of his best student, Plato, in his Dialogues.

But we do know that Socrates — the man and myth — valued reasoned, logical oral arguments that sought truth through probing discourse.

Today you can call Wolfe's Oakland classes Socratic. But maybe this is just what good teaching looks like: an engaged, passionate teacher facilitating a critical dialogue and acting as a kind of intellectual coach. Not a teacher merely lecturing or teaching to a test.

I asked 17-year-old Maddie Ahlers what she's gotten out of the program.

"I think that the Socratic method has to be a part of good teaching because it's one thing to write an essay or be able to take a test," Ahlers says. "But later in life you're gonna have to be able to articulate your own views and say verbally what you think about an issue or anything you believe."

Black Pine Circle

At Oakland Tech, Socrates lives on mainly in its AP classes and seminars. At some other schools, he is literally everywhere.
At Black Pine Circle, a private school in Berkeley, Socrates' stenciled face peers out at students from many of the walls and hallways.

"Now remember, in the inner circle we don't need to raise hands," sixth- and seventh-grade teacher Tim Ogburn tells his students. "Let's just try to have a conversation. Outer circle for right now, I just want you guys listening."

Every class is imbued with Socratic style, and the pedagogy includes regular Socratic seminars. (Ok, Socrates likely skips gym class)

"When you hear people tell a story it kind of gives you an idea of who they are" says one seventh grader in Ogburn's class. Students sit in semi-circular rows discussing a Japanese creation myth. One circle is tasked with talking while another is supposed to just listen — and think.

Ogburn's trying to get students to look beyond the basics: that the myth was part of a pre-scientific society trying to explain the world.

"So inner circle tell me, how is this story about balance?"

When done right, Ogburn says, he is facilitating a real dialogue. It's a method he hopes his students can use to approach lifelong learning as well as life itself.

"The Socratic method forces us to take a step back from that and ask questions like, What's going on here? What does this possibly mean?" Ogburn says. "What's important? What's less important? What might be motivating this person to say this?"

Head of School John Carlstrom agrees. "What we're trying to teach kids is to ask the question, 'What makes you say that?' " he says.

"I think that the best scientists and mathematicians — that's the question they're asking in all of their work: 'What makes us say that? What gives us this idea?' "

In the eighth grade, students are expected to take charge. In English class, teacher Chris Chun sits to the side and largely stays quiet while eighth grader Alexander Blau leads a small-group discussion on George Orwell's classic dystopian novel,Animal Farm.

Another group silently listens while a third group will offer critical feedback.

"Does anybody here know what 'beatifically' means and could you guess it based on the context?" Blau asks the group. "Tommy, do you think you have an idea?"

After the discussion, teacher Chun asks the class how they did. The other students comment on the discussion. One student suggests Blau shouldn't have let another student, David, take over as the leader. Then the groups switch, and another student-led discussion begins.

"We really remind our teachers that what we're trying to get at is the process of learning for learning's sake," Carlstroem says. "Let's not make this all about learning to gain information but to learn how to learn. I think that's when the democratic process comes through in all this."

Start 'Em Young

At this K-8 school it's never too early to start a Socratic seminar. At Black Pine Circle, kindergarteners start with a Question of the Day. On the day I visited, first graders were doing basic addition — as a group — using dominos.

"I think of it as the teacher doesn't have the one true answer, the class constructs knowledge together," says first-grade teacher Leila Sinclaire. "They need to learn how to listen to one another and learn from one another and celebrate mistakes. I don't explain things by saying, 'This is what we're doing and this is why.' I ask them: 'What are you interested in and how can we explore that together?'" Sinclaire says.

Principal Carlstroem say young children respond well to this style of teaching.

"Five-, six- and seven-year-olds are so naturally curious that in many ways they may be the most naturally Socratic," he says. "Those of us who have had three-year-olds know that that's a part of what that is when they say, 'Why? Why? Why?' all the time."

Some scholars argue that Socrates was being ironic and playful when he said that all he knows is that he knows nothing. His call for intellectual humility was also meant to poke fun at the pretensions of Athenian society. So maybe it's fitting that the Bay Area has a school dedicated to the Socratic Method. At times Silicon Valley's 'We're saving the world one app at a time' ethos could perhaps use a dose of Socratic humility.

Scholars today are still trying to parse what's truly Socratic from Plato's idealized accounts. Was the great teacher mainly a creation of his student?

Maybe it doesn't matter.

"Would we still do it if it was called Frodo's practice?" asks Principal John Carlstroem. "My answer is yes, because the proof is in the pudding. When we look at what happens in a Socratic classroom and how it works — it's amazing. I think the reason we call it Socratic practice is because, like a lot of things, we're working at it."

They're practicing and refining the techniques of critical thinking all the time, he says. It's a process that's never really finished.




COMMENTS


Yo Teach • 3 hours ago
Wow, look at society's progress in valuing teachers! Now we no longer face the death penalty for doing our jobs!

tim moor  Yo Teach • 33 minutes ago
no just death by a thousand benefit cuts.

Len Lewis • 2 hours ago
Hey, If it teaches my students to listen while others speak I'm all for it. That basic skill is mostly lost in our society today. You can see in people's eyes that they are, if they are polite and not butting in, simply repeating in their head what they want to say to you instead of actually listening to what you are saying. Very difficult to break that habit.

Sophia R.  Len Lewis • an hour ago
Len, this is a big problem. Listening is a skill that should go hand in hand with being able to ask questions. My take is that we as a society are too distracted by technology, we have been trained for instant gratification and we are confusing confidence with knowing. A confident person can admit to not knowing and can feel confident asking a question and listening to the answer. A confident person can take the time to really listen. A person who really listens connects with the other person. A person who doesn't listen is disconnected from the other person.

Contrary  Sophia R. • 43 minutes ago
It seems like one of the skills we need to be teaching today is how to ask a succinct question.

itsdarts • 2 hours ago
I only wish this style of teaching was taught back in the 60s & 70s, i might have finished school, i might have more understanding of authority figures who preach "do as I say, not as I do", I might have had the courage to ask Why? Using critical thinking at work has gotten me in trouble a few times, but in the end, changes were made because of it.

Michael Walling  itsdarts • an hour ago
We should never "finish school".

Class A  Michael Walling • 42 minutes ago
Twain said he never let his schooling interfere with his education. Perhaps it is education that we should never finish. ;-)

torqued8  Michael Walling • an hour ago
Sounds to me like the person you're responding to has been an excellent student - ongoing. Hundreds of thousands of young people in this country do not even get their high school diplomas. This means they most likely will never be gainfully employed. That's the importance of finishing school. A diploma, as lowly as it may seem to some, can be a world-opener for the people who have it. Those who don't, face a smaller, more closed world.

Linda Nichols • 3 hours ago
I wonder how Socrates would do with testing?

bs jeffrey  Linda Nichols • 3 hours ago
he might question it.

ZenderTranscender • an hour ago
Bravo! I wish your series could be piped into administrative offices and teachers' lounges in all public schools.The "What makes you say that?" question is essential to ask, as opposed to 'What do you think about that?" In the real world of earning a living, we often have to use hard documentation to bolster what we say. Just having an opinion about why some project or sales technique might work is not enough.

Michael Walling • an hour ago
learning to learn is a lifelong labor.

Slicktop Texan • 2 hours ago
caught this on the radio on the drive in this morning. Great story, great start to the series... really looking forward to the rest, NPR. Thanks!

tim moor • 44 minutes ago
I found the socratic method in law school to be a waste of time.

Contrary • an hour ago
You say "teaching to the test" like it's a bad thing. If the teachers aren't teaching to the curriculum as measured by test(s) aligned with that curriculum, then what ARE their goals and how do they assess how students are doing?

justateacher • an hour ago
Question-and-dialogue did not start with Socrates. Please. It is natural for a real teacher.

joe pet • an hour ago
Great teacher,what,no i pad?

Mark Kropf • 2 hours ago
Would Socrates believe that true learning was ever completed? Was knowledge to be a set conclusion or more a process?
A problem with the method may be assessing its full benefit.
I have no doubt that students achieve more learning and get better grades. I also suspect that much learning is collateral to the intended syllabus. 
While the last point can be viewed as a dividend, it is important to understand that a Socratic form of Education imparts some non-standardized materials (hardly undesirable!) and that the benefits derived thereby are systemically underestimated.