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Monday, September 6, 2010

Socratic Circle Number 1

I'm sure when socratic circles were explained to the class most of the students decided they were going to have nothing to say and that this exercise was going to accomplish nothing. Group one got off to a slow start, this being the first socratic circle of the year, but soon the ideas were bouncing back and forth and most everyone had an opinion to share. Most people agreed that a bias towards any particular subject in history was imminent. Others said that only the most blatant facts should be placed in a textbook. Others believed that a teacher having the only copy of the textbook and teaching it to the students would be the best form of learning. How things are represented in a textbook or taught by the teacher will determine the connotation which people feel towards certain events. The second group admittedly didn't understand the paper they read and simply continued the first group's argument, paying little attention to what their article pertained to. Fortunately for them it was an article in response to the topic the first group discussed. They ignored facts and ideas that were only presented in their article and focused on textbooks and bias rather than the author's possible solutions. Neither group made very many arguments about the viewpoints of multiple ethnic groups. The general feeling was that all ethnic groups should have a voice in history. Overall the discussions were enlightening and well debated.
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2 comments:

  1. White-SteeleSeptember 8, 2010 at 9:48 PM

    Looking back i think you're right about how the second group kind of got off topic, and just continued the debate from the first group, which is one thing the second group could have done better, i forgot which one you were in but i was in the second group. Good observation on that. Besides that i think you did a good job summarizing the class discussions, and i like how you did so without having to use the word "opinion" a million times. And i dont know about you but i was suprised that so many people took part in the discussion, like you said i thought a lot of people weren't going to say anything. Good job on the post

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  2. kdaySeptember 9, 2010 at 10:16 PM

    I think I definitely agree with you in the fact that group two debated more about our debate than theirs, excuse me, discussion(: but I think that there is a lot of different ways to learn something and the way you teach to one student may not teach the student next to him anything. As a successful teacher, one would figure that out and implement many different ways to learn, not just the single "textbook" way. This brings you back to the textbook discussion, and about what should be in the book. I think that the textbook, as important as it is, would be more important if, although maybe less effective, were the only thing used in teaching.

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