Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Can't very well use leeches for that, can you?

 

Heh. Peter the Great is my favorite Kremlin war criminal.

 

I’m a bigger fan of Socratic bloodletting. Not quite as random, but a lot is aired out before someone can’t stand it any more

 

Who here can tell us why the Socratic method sucks and should be abolished from all campuses forever? @doctorquant?

 

I hear you when you suggest the “suckiness” of Socratic Seminar, but might I put forth—based on the writings of Piaget and Vygotsky—it does not in fact suck and is underutilized. I welcome my mathematical brethren to weigh in, but what about questions without a concrete answer? Like why teach statistics if it will just be misused anyway

 

You mean, like ... tradeoffs? (shudder) I have been told and told that those (and any correspondingly divergent points of view) could absolutely not be discussed.

 

The Socratic seminar is a safe space

 

It was a useful tool in my law school classes because it forced you as the student to be prepared rather than just sit and wait for the others (incl prof) to explain everything for you. And it was an engaging discussion tool.

 

When the process by which you arrive at the/an answer is what you're trying to teach/learn, ain't no better way. But it's a dicey proposition when there actually is a right answer (and, by implication, many, many, many wrong ones).

 

Two years ago, in the middle of a pandemic was not the time for it.

 

Socrates: In what circumstance is the common good the enemy of individual freedom?

Plato: Put this mask on old man, you're spitting on me. And take six steps back.

Socrates: I say again, on what occasion is the protection of the group an injury to the independence of the individual?

Plato: You should have just cancelled class. What the fuck . . .

Socrates: In service of the collective we must often . . . [coughing]

Plato: I am out! [EXITS]