We can begin by contrasting Franklin with the early (positive) appraisals. The first print reference
to the Socratic method in America can be traced to the English hymn writer, Isaac Watts, who
dedicated a chapter to the“Socratic Way of Disputation”in hisThe Improvement of the Mind.^7
Watts’description of the Socratic method reads like a contemporary educational manual. The
Socratic method was essentially a tool for keeping students awake. Questioning is a more“easy”
and“more pleasant”and“more sprightly way of instruction.”It is“more fit to excite the attention
and sharpen the penetration of the learner, than solitary reading, or silent attention to a lecture.”
Franklin, as we will now see, read the method against the backdrop of the historical experiment in
republican government. TheSocraticmethodcertainly had its place,but not merelyasa teachingtool.
Franklin’s views ofSocrates aresketchedbrieflyinhis thoughtsonthedevelopment ofaneducational
curriculumfor the Academy and CollegeofPhiladelphia(nowthe University ofPennsylvania).Inhis
Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvaniaand in letters to friends,^8 Franklin
emphasizes the importance of education in a modern republic. Education, he says, is the“surest
Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Commonwealths.”In this sense, the
American republic is no different from all previous experiments in popular government. By contrast
to monarchies, all republics must make education“a principal Object of their Attention.”
Franklin makes a few deviations from classical republicanism models of education, however.
First, he notes that Americans do not need to be as well educated as the“first Settlers.”The next
generation have more pressing needs, and thus require an attention to practical education. The
practical needs of the next century will be best achieved by an education that focuses less on
rigorous philosophical analysis, and more on a proper understanding of liberal-republican morality.
Importantly, moral education should be available to the common man, and it should not be con-
fusing. It should focus on what we now call the bourgeois virtues,“the Advantages of Temperance,
Order, Frugality, Industry, Perseverance, &c. &c.”^9
On occasion, Franklin notes, debates will arise as to the bigger ethical and philosophical
questions, matters“of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice.”In these circumstances, Franklin
writes, the youth should break from the lecture mode to openly“debate”these questions both“in
Conversation and in Writing.”The purpose of debate, however, is pragmatic. Dialog and ques-
tioning will lead young Americans not to contradictions and moral confusion, but to enjoy the
excitement of winning the argument–in Franklin’s words, they will learn to“ardently desire
Victory, for the Sake of the Praise attending it.”This account is not strictly utilitarian. After the
students have acquired a taste for victory, a few students will go further. Some will acquire a deeper
love of learning and become acquainted with the pleasures of“discover[ing] Truth.”What is truth?
What sources should students turn to when they achieve this level of learning? Not Plato. The most
advanced students should read Grotius, Puffendorff, and“other Writers of the same Kind.”
Franklin’sAutobiographyprovides a window onto the Founders’view of the problem of
adopting the Socratic method. The Socratic technique is not insufficient because it is not useful (it
was for some, including Franklin). Rather, Franklin views the Socratic method as deficient because
it tends to create good scholars rather than a good–meaning sociable–citizenry.
Franklin is just a young man, sixteen years old, when he first encounters Socrates. Coincid-
entally, this is roughly during the same period that he describes his flirtation–and ultimate
abandonment–of the philosophy of vegetarianism. Franklin’s encounter with Socrates begins with
a chance encounter with Xenophon. As a youth, Franklin, notes, he was interested especially in
natural philosophy or science. He had devoured books on“Arithmetick, Navigation, geometry, and
English grammar.”He soon becomes interested in rhetoric and logic. Logic opened the doors to
what he calls a“specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method.”^10 Franklin writes:
I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation,
and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and
Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this methodThe Americanization of the Socratic Method 73