Derived from the conversations of classical Greek philosopher Socrates (as depicted largely in
Plato’s dialogs), the Socratic method is one of the most widely used approaches to teaching. It has
long been a staple of law school courses, and is increasingly being used in other educational settings
including medical school.^1 Beyond the college classroom, the method has even been adapted for
use in psychological counseling.^2 Though scholars and practitioners disagree about what the
method entails, the Socratic method arguably involves the use of questioning to expose contra-
dictions within a person’s thinking. Unlike the sophists, however, Socrates brings these tensions to
light not with the aim of humiliating and conquering his interlocutors; rather, he continually casts
himself as a fellow seeker of the truth interested above all in discovering what constitutes a virtuous
life and in exhorting himself and others to care for virtue. The Socratic method thus encompasses
not merely a set of rhetorical techniques, but, more importantly, the goal of“turning”the entire soul
toward what Socrates calls“the Good.”Herein lies the crux of the problem I examine in this chapter.
If the Socratic method centers on inculcating virtue or producing what might justly be termed a
conversion, is it therefore anexclusionaryapproach to teaching, i.e., one hostile to different ways of
life? Simply put, is the Socratic method culturally imperialistic?
While myriad manuals exist for training middle school, high school, and college teachers to
employ one of Socrates’main techniques–theelenchus, an argument of disproof, or refutation–
few advocates of the Socratic method stop to ask if the Socratic method is suitable for classes with
students from differing cultural backgrounds. Given the increasingly diverse composition of stu-
dent populations in both secondary and higher education, it is crucial to examine the appro-
priateness of using the Socratic method in culturally diverse contexts. As a teacher at an officially
designated Hispanic-serving institution with a large international student body, this question is of
deep personal importance in crafting my own pedagogy. Like many, I believe educators have a
responsibility to ensure that the teaching methods they employ are just. If the Socratic method
blindly privileges and imposes one set of cultural values on an audience of students hailing from
various regions of the world, then to my mind it is not just. Even those who do not share this
conception of justice will at least likely agree that good educators are committed to discovering the
most effective means of promoting student learning. If the Socratic method does not translate well
beyond an audience of Western students, then using it in a multicultural context may be counter-
productive. For these reasons, criticisms of the Socratic method as being culturally imperialistic
must be taken seriously.
Twenty years ago, Martha Nussbaum attempted to address this criticism inCultivating
Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Nussbaum presents her approach
to education as avoiding two extremes. On the one hand, she confronts more conservative thinkers
like Allan Bloom, who famously argues inThe Closing of the American Mindthat contemporary
American universities have failed students by promoting skepticism of absolute truth and openness
to all cultural beliefs, i.e., cultural relativism.^3 In Nussbaum’s view, Bloom’s solution–the“Great
Books”approach to education, which tends to focus exclusively on texts within the Western
frankie
(Frankie)
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