Tonight I've been reading 1-2 page responses I had students in my Philosophical Inquiry class write to Book III of Plato's Republic. Not every student wrote a response (a chronic problem in this class, which may be another student paradox to discuss later), but of the 15 or so I did get, every one of them had an interestingly different take on the reading.
Book III is where Socrates discusses the "myth of the metals," which is the "necessary lie" told to the people of the ideally just city in order to let get the people to accept the system. Socrates further explains the social status and role the ruling "guardian" class will have, and the communal focus of the entire effort. The ideal city is ideal in its overall justice, in Socrates' argument, and every group must play its appropriate role. There's a discussion of natural predisposition to certain tasks or traits, and the development of those traits, but this is only the beginning of Plato's long discussion of proper education for just leadership.
The papers have challenged the lie, challenged the restrictive class system, questioned the communal conception of justice. They've delved into the strange minutiae of Socrates' argument, asking why it would be necessary to exert such firm control over musical rhythm, for instance, or why only telling stories where the gods are good helps the guardians understand justice.
Now, here's the paradox. These engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful response papers have so far not corresponded to engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful class discussions. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, I don't behave in a way that discourages contributing to class discussion. In fact, I encourage it. I ask at the beginning of class what surprised them about the reading, what their impressions were, what they found important, but with few exceptions, despite their evidently having found something surprising, impressive, and important, they don't tend to speak up.
So I need to develop a further element to the response paper technique, and move from those papers into finding ways those papers can structure class discussion. Partly, I am absolutely sure, this is a matter of experience: students in my upper-division general ed classes, particularly Professional Ethics, make this connection and jump into discussion on this basis.
Book III is where Socrates discusses the "myth of the metals," which is the "necessary lie" told to the people of the ideally just city in order to let get the people to accept the system. Socrates further explains the social status and role the ruling "guardian" class will have, and the communal focus of the entire effort. The ideal city is ideal in its overall justice, in Socrates' argument, and every group must play its appropriate role. There's a discussion of natural predisposition to certain tasks or traits, and the development of those traits, but this is only the beginning of Plato's long discussion of proper education for just leadership.
The papers have challenged the lie, challenged the restrictive class system, questioned the communal conception of justice. They've delved into the strange minutiae of Socrates' argument, asking why it would be necessary to exert such firm control over musical rhythm, for instance, or why only telling stories where the gods are good helps the guardians understand justice.
Now, here's the paradox. These engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful response papers have so far not corresponded to engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful class discussions. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, I don't behave in a way that discourages contributing to class discussion. In fact, I encourage it. I ask at the beginning of class what surprised them about the reading, what their impressions were, what they found important, but with few exceptions, despite their evidently having found something surprising, impressive, and important, they don't tend to speak up.
So I need to develop a further element to the response paper technique, and move from those papers into finding ways those papers can structure class discussion. Partly, I am absolutely sure, this is a matter of experience: students in my upper-division general ed classes, particularly Professional Ethics, make this connection and jump into discussion on this basis.
2 comments:
You could offer extra points on the papers for people who are willing to do a 3 minute talk in class on what they wrote... like 5 points or something, just to get some discussion going.
Well, honestly, it's not as though I don't have any techniques for starting discussion. What I meant to say was weird is when people writing nice, pithy responses don't bring up the issues in class. Sometimes it works to bring them up myself - the students who recognize that I'm addressing their comments often jump in at that point. Students are terrified to speak to the class in any presentational way.
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