Open Socrates, Agnes Callard (3.5)

Not an easy book to read, but the author makes some interesting points about what Socrates and the Socratic method really represent. She uses the dialogues written by various peers and students to describe his motivations and where many people have possibly gotten things wrong. The main point I took away was that the method was not asking questions in order to get the student to the correct answer on their own. It’s to learn and grow together through dialogue and questioning – the key being together. He believed that thinking happens out loud with conversation. And that you need to have the right kind of conversations to learn. I also liked the idea that we often think of questions as solving a problem, but answering a question is a quest not removing a barrier.