Paul Woodruff Socratic Education Analysis

Further, I will use the ideas presented in Paul Woodruff’s Socratic Education (2005). Here, the author describes the way in which Socrates would question his pupil’s untested assumptions in order to continually reflect on and improve their ideas. This is critical for a flexible pedagogy because we all have biases and assumptions that shape our behaviours, and especially our reactions. If I were to go through my career as a teacher without critically questioning myself, I would be doing my student’s a disservice. I will have student’s that come from a different home and social life than the one I have experienced, and that will also shape their behaviours. If I am not willing to look at their lives through their own lens, I will not be making …show more content…
Her reflections in the article From Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994) gave me a more in depth understanding of what this liberation can look like in the classroom. While I won’t be able to necessarily understand the oppression my student’s face in the way her teachers were, it gives me hope that I can inspire my student’s to reach for freedom and liberation through supporting their education. I hope that I can create a space in which my students feel free to explore their ideas and themselves as human beings. This exploration will, hopefully, give students the courage to make the changes their communities need to lift themselves to a higher place. She also discusses the idea of excitement and community in the classroom, both of which I think are very important. I can recall the classes from my childhood that I loved attending, and it was because I felt connected to my classmates and my teacher, and I was genuinely excited to collaborate with them in education. Even in subjects where I felt less competent, the excitement shown by my teachers was infectious, and as a result, I was able to push myself further than I would have if left to my own