Reflective Wanderer

     Learning requires thinking on the part of the learner. It is, therefore, the role of the teacher to provide the conditions that force the learner to think; this is best done through questions. The questions are then tailored to a particular end, getting the student to reach a conclusion by themselves. This requires the teacher to have a specific aim to which the questions tend, molding the conversations through questions. There is a didactic intention behind it. This is not the same thing as dialectic, which is between educated people hoping to arrive at a higher truth; it is Socratic teaching rather than Socratic discussion in the full sense. This can be exemplified in Plato’s Dialogues (especially with the slave in Meno), the teaching ministry of Jesus Christ, and St. Augustine in his Confessions. Scientific studies back up that the retention and educational growth of students forced to engage in class are higher than those who passively listen to content. The questioner too must know the topic better than the lecturer. The students should be prepared through reading or lecture to participate in the discussion, and class sizes must be smaller to facilitate a discussion-oriented format. The aim of teaching with questions is not an exercise in subjective opinion, but rather a tool for teaching in a manner designed to guide students in thinking.

     Without questions, there can be no learning. Questions, asked with an authentic desire to know, are how the learner humbles himself before that which he or she does not know and seeks it out. It is the goal of the teacher to get students to ask questions that they want to answer. Teaching with questions implies that the teacher knows—or thinks they know—the answer. The questions, or information, given by the teacher are there to get the students to ask the questions themselves, to make connections between what they already know. In the classic handbook for teachers, The Seven Laws of Teaching, the sixth law states: “Excite and direct the self-activities of the pupil, and, as a rule, tell him nothing that he can learn himself” (Gregory, p. 82). If this is to be the method, then, “Questioning is not…merely one of the devices of teaching, it is really the whole teaching. It is the excitation of the self-activities to their work of discovering truth” (95). The students do not come into knowledge because they have been told, but only through thinking (98). Pointed questions or statements of fact that elucidate an important idea can serve to make the student think. If this is happening, then teaching is taking place.

The aim of teaching with questions is teaching. While book clubs might ebb and flow with the subjective feelings of the readers, using questions to teach means there is something definable being taught. For instance, in a discussion on Dante, the teacher might ask about the relationship between Dante’s love for Beatrice that leads him to a greater love for God. The intention is to teach something about Dante’s view of lesser loves, and how, then rightly ordered, they bring one to the greatest good (see Purgatorio Canto XXX). Using a discussion format, students are able to think about that point by using their own words to grapple with the ideas themselves. As one of the founders of modern Great Books education explains, “All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory” (Adler, p. 50). For students to have something to question, they first must have ideas presented to them. This is the role of reading texts or even listening to lectures. However, the ideas only belong to the student when they use them, either in group discussions or writing projects and the like. Anything less than this is, to borrow a phrase from Adler, stuffing the mind without affecting the memory (51).

     Teaching with questions, while having its basis in the so-called Socratic method, is not the same as dialectic. In many of the dialogues, Socrates is taking the juxtapositions of his various interlocutors, seeking to expose the falsehood of their assumptions and eliciting truth (e.g. Euthyphro). While this does occur in teaching with questions, true dialectic takes place among those who already received a liberal arts education—for Socrates, it was mostly the young, free men of Athens. In the classroom, the teacher is looking to communicate something as a teacher to those not yet fully prepared for dialectic. Socrates exemplifies this teaching in the Meno, where he famously takes a slave boy—one who would not have had a liberal arts education—and through questions leads him to answer right conclusions in geometry. This method could be considered as training for dialectic, since students put together what they have learned, synthesize it, and spot poor arguments, but teaching with questions—or question-inducing ideas—necessarily lacks the free objectivity of dialectic in the Socratic sense. However, it is teaching, as Susan Bauer notes, not by telling a student what to think about a book, but by “asking select questions that direct the student’s thoughts in the right way.” The goal is not for them to arrive at the “right” answer, but to encourage them to think (50).

     How did Socrates teach? Socrates seldom told anyone anything that he could not get his interlocutors to say themselves first. In the Apology, he refers to himself as a Gadfly, goading people in the right direction—he was so effective that he was killed for his peskiness. A midwife, there to deliver the thought already within other men, is another self-applied epithet used in the Theaetetus for the Socratic approach. In guiding the thoughts of the slave boy in the Meno, he says, “I shall do nothing more than ask questions and not teach him” (Meno, 84d). This, of course, was to prove the Platonic doctrine of learning as recollection, but even if one is not remembering that which was forgotten before birth—Plato believed souls pre-existed the body, and all teaching was causing previously known things to be recalled—teaching with questions allows whatever is in the mind to come out. This lets teachers challenge assumptions, praise good ideas, and encourage more thinking, which improves the ability to remember what was learned. Socrates rarely told what he actually thought. Instead, he asked questions or gave pertinent examples until the underlying assumptions are laid bare. While teaching with questions is more like Socrates with the slave boy and less like Socrates in the form, the basic principle is constant: great teaching happens when the learned discovers that he or she already has the answers.

     Discussion and questions provide a better framework for understanding and recalling material that has been previously provided in textbook or lecture form. When asked questions that encourage students to analyze, compare, and debate questions of interest, comprehension improves (Tofade et al.). Indeed, in one study, students without the oversight of a teacher held class discussions, showing an improvement of general understanding of at least eighteen percent (Smith et al.). According to a meta-analysis of two hundred and twenty-five studies in 2014, STEM students in lecture-based environments were reported to have an average failure rate of 33.8%. Under active learning models, that dropped to 21.8%—a 55% increase (Freeman et al.). Hearing information is necessary. Students will not learn without first being told something, whether in a lecture or a textbook, but that alone will not force the mind to engage with the ideas like trying to think through them. An approach fitted to the subject being learned, tied to questions, class discussions, and written or oral activities, bolsters what was already encountered. Done in the company of both peers and with a guide, the discussion becomes key to making ideas internalized. Sayers notes that, while modern education teaches subjects, it fails to teach students how to think (5). Socratic teaching teaches students to think.

     While teaching with questions looks different depending on the class being taught, they all need to begin with a shared experience, since for any discussion to take place, there needs to be shared knowledge. In the context of education, this usually means having read a key text or attended lectures on the subject to be discussed. The teacher, of course, must know the topic better to ask the right questions, as well as tie in pertinent information surrounding the discussion. It is easier to prepare a lecture, covering the limited topic at hand, than to be equipped to guide a conversation that might take surprising turns. The student, too, must possess an understanding of the topic for discussion to gain from the discussion. The slave boy in Meno, while able to be led to the right answer by questions alone, did not understand the geometrical problem, having never studied. It is not enough for students to say the “right” answers; they must possess understanding. Of course, the teacher may need to resort to lecture mode if there is key information not known to the students, or in the interest of time, an important point might be summarized, but when possible, students should be engaged in discussion. These discussions should model how to think through important books or analyze key concepts. The purpose of the discussion is, for the most part, not to teach the topic—that is what the textbook or lecture was for—rather, it is to guide students in their ability to think clearly and communicate well. As Adler points out, “The primary goal of Socratic teaching is to help students become thoughtful, autonomous learners” (29).

     Using question-based discussion after a course of taking in information from books, lectures, or other means, prods the student to begin thinking through his assumptions while reading the text and to have these challenged by both an experienced guide as well as by his or her peers. This is done with the end of guiding students to understand the subject under consideration in a way pre-determined by the teacher—though some room should be left for exploring surprising connections as well. This kind of teaching is mirrored in the Socratic method of dialectic, but is more akin to Socrates’ interactions with the slave than his conversation with the free men of Athens, since the student is being taught and not necessarily asked to help bring about a synthesis of ideas in the full Socratic sense. Discussion-based classes have been proven to enable students to comprehend topics being studied better, as well as retain them afterwards. The teacher in this scenario needs to know the subject under consideration well, better than the lecturer, and the students must approach the topic with a certain level of interest. Most importantly, teaching is about learning to think, and that cannot be done by the teacher, but must take place in the mind of the student. This is why discussion-based class time is essential.

                          Works Cited

Bauer, Susan. The Well Educated Mind. W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.

Freeman, Scott, et al. Active Learning Increases Student Performance in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111, no. 23, 2014, pp. 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111. 

Gregory, John Milton. The Seven Laws of Teaching. General Press, 2025.

Mortimer, Adler, J. The Paideia Proposal. Touchstone, 1982. 

Plato, Meno. Hackett Publishing Co, 1997. 

Dorthey, Sayers. The Lost Tools of Learning. Methuen & Co, 1948.

Smith, Michelle K., et al. Why Peer Discussion Improves Student Performance on In-Class Concept Questions. Science, vol. 323, no. 5910, 2009, pp. 122–124. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1165919.

Tofade, Toyin et al. Best practice strategies for effective use of questions as a teaching tool. American journal of pharmaceutical education vol. 77,7 (2013): 155. doi:10.5688/ajpe777155