How to Teach How to Think

The Socratic method and the debate format are the keys to learning how to think.

People often say, correctly in my view, that when it comes to teaching controversial matters of ethics or public policy, it’s best to teach student how to think through the issues, not what conclusions to draw.  But how can one teach students “how to think” in a way that’s accessible to all, teachers and students alike?  By employing the Socratic method and a debate format.

Ward Farnsworth, in his book “The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook,” introduces the Socratic method as follows:

Internal critique. It is natural to imagine that a philosopher—a Socrates—would try to talk you into accepting his beliefs as your own. But that isn’t the Socratic method. Or if Socrates wants to show that you’re wrong, you might expect that he would attack what you’ve said as inconsistent with the facts or as morally repellent. That isn’t quite the Socratic method, either. The Socratic method, in its classic form, consists of internal critique. It tests whether you’re being consistent with yourself and believe all that you think you do. Socrates doesn’t tell you that you’re wrong; he shows you that you think you’re wrong. This explains the value of the frequent stops Socrates makes to get his partner to say, “Agreed.” Those pauses might seem pointless, but they aren’t, because his eventual goal is to show that his partner doesn’t agree with himself.

To illustrate, I had the following experience recently.  A neighbor of mine who was running for school board introduced me to someone else who was running for city council who was opposed to the presence of police officers in public schools to maintain order.  (The current city council had already voted to remove police officers from the schools and, without the deterrent of a police presence, school fights had escalated.)  The argument ended up flowing something like this, in the style of the Socratic method:

Me: Why do you support the removal of police officers from schools?

City council candidate: I heard testimony from some minority students that the presence of police officers made them uncomfortable.

Me: Did the testimony implicate any police officers in acts of racism?

City council candidate: Not that I remember, but the testimony of the students was compelling in itself.

Me: But if the testimony was compelling, it must have been compelling because it somehow indicated police officers were behaving in a racist manner, no?

City council candidate: Yes, sure.

Me: So did anyone demand an investigation into the factual basis of the testimony so it could be determined whether or not any police officers had engaged in racist acts or not, so they might be fired if they did?

City council candidate: I don’t think anyone thought to demand an investigation because the testimony spoke for itself.

Me: So you didn’t think any evidence needed to be gathered to prove or disprove the allegations of the students?

City council candidate: As I said, the testimony of the students was inherently compelling.  And in any case, when police officers were present in schools, the data was never gathered to show the police weren’t being used in a discriminatory manner.  We need that data first before we allow police officers back in schools.

Me: But you just said you didn’t need any data to show the need to remove the police officers from schools because you thought the testimony of the students was inherently compelling.  Why don’t you think the testimony of the students who say the presence of police officers in schools is necessary to make them feel safer is inherently compelling as well, and allow police officers back into the schools on that basis?

When the city council candidate didn’t respond, I asked “Isn’t it odd that you don’t think you need data to decide that police officers should be removed from schools (because you think the testimony of a certain group of people is enough to ban them), but you do demand data before considering allowing police officers back in schools (because you don’t think the testimony of another group of people is inherently compelling)?”

The discussion ended there.  But in true Socratic fashion, it didn’t rely on any actual data to draw out a contradiction.  It simply turned on pointing out that the city council candidate’s position on the need for data and investigation wasn’t internally consistent.  This discussion didn’t resolve anything, but one would think it would have given the city council candidate an opportunity to reevaluate whether or not her position was reasonable, or even-handed.  If someone’s word alone is good enough to remove police officers from schools, why isn’t someone else’s word good enough to allow them back in schools?

As Farnsworth writes of the Socratic method:

It’s just a style of proof, but a strong one. Refuting a claim generally means showing that it’s inconsistent with something—with the facts, or with logical rules, or with other things you say. This last type of inconsistency is the one Socrates most likes to use, and it’s distinctly convincing. If someone shows that your views are in conflict with new information, you might doubt the data. When your beliefs are in conflict with each other, it’s uncomfortable in a more direct way. You can’t attack the author of the study … If you’ve said two things that can’t both be right, you’re wrong … If you don’t care, that’s your business—but if you don’t care, why are you using a balance sheet [of pros and cons]? Once you do care about reason, a contradiction creates felt discomfort—embarrassment, even.

Robert Litan, of the Brookings Institution, wrote a book called “Resolved: Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save Our Democracy,” and in it he lays out a pretty simple way to dramatically improve public education based on the Socratic method and, more generally, formal debate.  He writes:

What if every high school student had debate training, and specifically the research, thinking, organizational, and speaking skills that debaters develop, and most important, the ability to take both or multiple sides of an issue in a public way before a real audience? Wouldn’t students have more fun in school and learn more while they’re there? Wouldn’t students be better prepared for the workforce? Wouldn’t our country and our democracy be in a better place? … [I]ncorporate debate or evidence-based argumentation in school as early as the late elementary grades, clearly in high school, and even in college. Debate-centered education, as I call it (it has other names, as you will learn) would excite students about learning, thereby enhancing their engagement and performance. In addition, there are good reasons for believing it also would enhance their earnings prospects throughout their working lives while helping to heal our political and economic rifts. Debating has deep historical roots. Its use in education, resolving legal disputes, and by deliberative bodies of all sorts hearkens back to ancient Greece and Rome, and to famous philosophers such as Aristotle and Socrates. Civil discourse through debate among candidates for political office, and among citizens, also has long been a characteristic of effective democracy … Debating in school develops [a] much more important set of skills: research; thinking logically and critically and doing it on your feet; listening carefully to others; backing up arguments with evidence (not fake news!); working collaboratively with partners; speaking persuasively in a civil fashion; and perhaps most important, being able to argue both (in some cases more) sides of nearly any issue or subject. Understanding how to identify and articulate the merits and drawbacks of multiple sides of almost any subject or issue is important in all phases of life and is key to a healthy democracy.

Of course, for teachers who might be guiding this sort of debate, it would be a problem if any given teacher wasn’t willing to recognize, or wasn’t comfortable recognizing, that there was any legitimate “other side” to any given issue.  Or maybe a given teacher simply wouldn’t know enough about all sides of an issue to present a plausible case for one side or the other.  If that were the case, such teachers wouldn’t be able to effectively use the Socratic method for that issue.  (This recalls something I experienced at my public high school back in the late 1980’s.  I started a debate club, but the teacher who agreed to sponsor the program would consistently interrupt only one side of the debate to insert his own points to buttress those particular arguments.  When that happened to a friend of mine and I, we, as co-editors of the high school paper, proposed an editorial criticizing the debate sponsor on those grounds, but another teacher who was our newspaper sponsor wouldn't approve the editorial.  Nothing changed, and the debate club folded.)

But provided open-minded teachers could be found to guide their classes, a school debate program shouldn’t cost much, if anything.  The professor who taught me contracts law, Phillip Areeda -- who inspired the professor portrayed by John Houseman in the movie The Paper Chase -- was a master of the Socratic method and a joy to learn from.  I depicted Professor Areeda in several cartoons I drew for the law school newspaper:

As Litan writes:

With a limited amount of upfront training, and some coaching or mentoring throughout the school year, any teacher instructing any subject can transform her classes, using the same curriculum she is already teaching, into debate-enhanced centers of excellence. The modest cost for doing all this can and should come out of existing professional development budgets that are now used to fund a variety of professional development programs for teachers.

And incorporating debate into schooling would yield not just more learning, but better citizens.  First, as Litan argues, by focusing on argument, the debate method has

the virtue of separating ideas from the identities of those who offer them, while teaching participants to avoid putting labels—conservative or liberal, democratic or republican—on ideas, which should be considered on their merits rather than as markers of identity.

Second:

[I]f all Americans had the skills that debate imparts, many more of us would be more open-minded and, thus, the voting public eventually would be less—I believe much less—politically divided. In this age of information silos on the internet and on television, the last claim may strike some readers as hopelessly idealistic … For now, it should be sufficient to note that our Founding Fathers recognized that reasoned, fact-based debate is essential for any democracy to function. It directly follows, therefore, that a citizenry equipped with the skills debaters must master should improve political discourse, the understanding of essential government activities, and thus the functioning of government itself … Benjamin Franklin recognized this over three centuries ago when he observed: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” … There is no better way of involving students in their own learning than having them research, defend, and debate a proposition relevant to their classroom material.

Eighty years after the founding of our country, the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill summarized his defense of free expression, and the necessity of encouraging contrary arguments, this way, in four brief points.  Mill wrote in On Liberty:

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true.  To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.  Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Mill continued:

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.  And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession … preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

All these points emphasize the need for people to be willing and able to confront arguments that might make them feel uncomfortable if we are to ever achieve lasting individual and collective knowledge.

Indeed, some of the most prominent Founders were of one mind on the need for a spirited education in a functioning and enduring democracy.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson wrote about the importance of knowledge in a democracy.  Washington wrote, “Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness … In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”  And as Thomas Jefferson reminded us, “Knowledge is power … If a nation expects to be ignorant – and free – in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

James Madison wrote of the inherent connection between free speech, learning, and liberty, writing “What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support … A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both ... And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

And John Adams wrote specifically of his concern for young people in a democracy, writing that “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage … If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”

It’s often said the right to vote is the most fundamental right in our democracy, and of course that’s true in an important sense.  But it’s only part of the truth, because without the tolerance and encouragement of free expression, we can have no confidence in our democracy -- because in a democracy, a bad idea, if left untested, can become enshrined in law.

And even worse, if we stop encouraging freedom of expression and debate, we can have little hope that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”  That’s because, regardless of our ideological positions, hope for achieving greater justice relies on everyone understanding that those with better ideas are free, and able, to express them in a compelling manner that can withstand competing arguments.