This article originally appeared in Educational Leadership (May 1997)
 David
H. Elkind and Freddy Sweet, Ph.D.
This classical technique
leads students to recognize contradictions between values
they avow and the choices they make -- and shows them that
they have the power to choose.
Is it really possible to teach
young people good character? And, if so, what’s the best
approach to take? As producers of character education and
guidance videos, we’ve pondered these questions for many
years. If you believe, as we do, that character is best expressed
in the kinds of choices that people make, then by teaching
students how to make good choices, we are, in effect, educating
for character. The question then becomes, can we teach young
people to make good choices?
In our work, we have found that
one approach works particularly well: the venerable
Socratic method. In this time-honored technique,
the teacher asks a series of questions that lead the students
to examine the validity of an opinion or belief. This is a
powerful teaching method because it actively engages the learner
and forces critical thinking, which is just what is needed
in examining ethics, values, and other character issues. The
method is also dramatic and entertaining, and it triggers
lively classroom discussion.
A Kinder, Gentler Dialogue
The Socratic method derives from
the Socratic Dialogues of Plato, in which Socrates
made people jump through intellectual hoops trying to defend
a "truth." He would ask a progression of seemingly
innocent questions that ultimately led the respondent to a
logical conclusion that was incompatible with that person's
originally stated belief.
What people have usually overlooked
or been unaware of is that Socrates used his method more to
shred people than to educate them. His Dialogues, were
adversarial and ended with the respondent confused and demoralized
- not exactly a formula for building self-esteem. Nonetheless,
for use in contemporary classrooms, we can apply this technique
in a kinder, gentler way.
Consider this spontaneous, unrehearsed
dialogue from our high school video series, The
Power of Choice.
Facilitator: You're offered a $500 bike for $100. You
know it's hot. What do you do?
(One boy in the group takes
the bait.)
Boy: I would buy it.
Facilitator: What would
you do if you got caught?
Boy: I bought it. I would
just refer them [the police] to the person who sold it to
me.
Facilitator: All right,
you're in court, and you say, "Well, it really wasn't
me. I didn't know it was stolen."
Boy: I didn't.
Facilitator: But wouldn't
that be a lie?
Boy: I did buy it. I paid
for it. I paid $100 for it.
Facilitator: All right,
but didn't you know that it was stolen? You're on the witness
stand right now.
Boy: I’d have no
choice but to say I knew it was stolen.
Facilitator: What if You
weren't on the witness stand, and you were just talking to
the cops, and they came over to the house, and they said "Hey,
what about this bike you've got here. Did you know that it
was stolen?"
Boy: Spur of the moment,
I may just say, "No, I didn’t know."
Facilitator: Okay, what
would make you say that?
Boy: Initial fear of being
locked up. (laughter from the group.)
Facilitator: What would
you think of yourself now that you’ve said that you would
lie to the cops out of fear, that you would probably be the
kind of person who would say, l’ll go for this. $500,
$100. That’s not a bad deal at all. I need a bike."
What vision would you have of yourself at this point?
Boy: Well, nowadays ,
from what I’ve been learning, I personally would feel
low. In a yesterday sense, I wouldn’t have cared. I was
younger. I was more immature. I didn’t care.
Facilitator: Do you have
a different image of yourself now?
Boy: Yes. Prideful. I
think more of myself today than I would have yesterday. Because
I know that there’s better for me out there instead of
just running around stealing. You know, that’s no good,
that won’t get me to where I want to go. Okay, I’ve
got big dreams, hopes. I feel like this: I can make it.
(One of the participants in
the group discussion can’t contain herself. She speaks
directly to the boy.)
Girl: But you still bought
the bike! (All the kids laugh. The boy gets the point.)
We suspect that even Socrates
would have smiled at seeing such a clear contradiction between
the boy's stated beliefs and his behavioral choices. As the
boy wends his way through the challenging process of making
and then justifying choice after choice, he, as well as the
rest of the group, is getting a natural lesson in character.
Know Where You're Going
When conducting such discussion,
you must have clear vision of the lesson you want your students
to take away from it. It is essential to have your endpoint
in mind so that you can always be angling toward it. Then,
launch the discussion by asking something provocative. This
will force the kids to take a position that you can use as
a point of departure. For example, you might ask, "Do
You agree or disagree with the following statement: 'Finders
keepers, losers weepers'?" Regardless of their response,
you will find yourself well positioned for a spirited discussion.
As the above dialogue shows,
a good hypothetical situation is a powerful springboard for
discussion. Here is another example from our middle school
series, Big Changes, Big ChoiceWhat if you saw an elderly
woman in a department store unknowingly drop a $50 bill and
walk away? You are the only person who saw it. What would
you do?
You can usually count on a lot
of disagreement over whether to keep the $50 or give it back.
Those who favor giving it back typically take the position
that keeping it would be wrong. When a student gives a "right"
answer like this, we ask questions such as:
How did you arrive at that
choice?
How does that choice make
you feel?
What makes you the kind of
person who can make such a good choice in the face of negative
pressure?
Questions like these almost always
make children feel like heroes and reinforce their better
instincts.
Of course, there will also be
those students who would keep the $50 and consider themselves
lucky. This is where the Socratic method shines. instead of
telling students that they made a bad choice, we ask a series
of questions designed to bring the students around to that
conclusion on their own:
How do you justify that choice?
How would you feel if it happened
to you?
Aren't you taking something
that belongs to someone else?
What's the difference between
that and stealing?
Raise the Ante
If a student sticks by the unethical
choice, we raise the stakes and introduce consequences:
What if the woman was very
poor and that was her grocery money for a whole month?
The student may try to rationalize
the decision: "I had to do it because my friends were
depending on me." But we keep the pressure up.
If the student seems fixed in
this position no matter what, it's often helpful to turn the
spotlight onto the person making the choice:
Let's say you were watching
a movie and the hero of that movie made the same choice you
just made. How would you feel about that character on the
screen?
Or, you might ask the student
to reconcile the position with his self-image:
How does that choice fit in
with your vision of who you are as a person? Don't forget,
you are the hero of your own movie.
By now, the student almost always
becomes unglued from making the "wrong" choice.
In the dropped $50 discussion, our final holdout admitted,
"I'd think he was a scum."
This progression of challenges
to the student's position will eventually lead the student
to a recognition that he initially made a bad choice. But
instead of taking the authoritarian approach and saying it
was a bad choice, we ask a series of questions designed to
bring the student around to that conclusion on his own.
Adjust for Age
Hypothetical situations like
these work very well with older students, whose abstract thinking
skills are well developed. For younger children, we've found
that a dramatized situation involving characters they can
see and hear is more meaningful.
In making our elementary
school series, Getting Along with Groark, You
Can Choose, and The Six Pillars of Character we used puppets and appealing
live action characters the children could identify with. In
each of these videos, one of our characters gets into a dilemma
and has to make a tough choice. It's up to the children to
figure out what that character should do - this is where the
discussion (and the leaming) take place.
Regardless of age, kids like
to respond to these kinds of decision-making challenges.You
might also ask, "What would be the right thing to do?"
If you ask kids what they would do in a certain situation,
their responses will range from noble and altruistic to selfish
and calculating. But if you then ask them what's the right
thing to do, a consensus develops. Kids usually know what's
right, they just need the confidence and the encouragement
to act on it.
Because the Socratic method triggers
fruitful group discussions, children get to see how their
peers are thinking and feeling about these important issues.
Very often, they are relieved to learn that others are having
the same thoughts and feelings that they are.
Of course, all this presumes
that you want to teach children how to make good choices for
themselves. Some parents and teachers believe that children
should simply be told what to choose. Our aim in our videos
is to teach young people that they have the power of choice,
that they are responsible for the choices they make, and that
they owe it to themselves to choose the best. We are also
encouraging students to think critically.
By discussing real-life dilemmas
now, we are preparing students to make better choices in the
future. Our experience with the Socratic method shows it to
be a highly effective approach for helping children become
ethical, respectful, responsible people who think critically,
solve problems nonviolently, and make choices based on what's
right instead of what they can get away with. That's character
education.
Copyright (c) 1997 by David H.
Elkind and Freddy Sweet.
David H. Elkind, a television/video
producer and educator, and Freddy Sweet Ph.D., a television/film
producer and a former Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature
at the University of California at Berkeley, are co-Presidents
of Live
Wire Media and Elkind+Sweet
Communications, Inc.
(e-mail: elkind@livewiremedia.com
and sweet@livewiremedia.com)
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