What

Is the
Value
of Life?
and Other
Socratic Questions
With these four simple steps, teachers
get all their students thinking and talking.
Casey Cuny The quality of classroom discussion
is closely connected to the quality of
student problem solving, compre-

H
ow many students arrive
to school on Monday and
leave on Friday without
having said a word in
any of their classes? As a
high school English teacher, I wonder
whether this is true of many of my
students: some of my quieter students
who do well on a­ ssignments but never
share their thoughts, my English
language learners who rarely vol-
unteer answers, the students who
do everything they can to avoid eye
contact when I ask a question. More
students than I probably realize sit
through their classes without uttering
a word, sharing a thought, or asking a
question.
hension, and performance on aca-
demic tasks (Mercer, 1995; Nystrand,
Gamoran, Kachur, & Prendergast,
1997; Wegerif, Mercer, & Dawes,
1999). Discussion helps students
engage with material, and students
who are actively engaged in their
own learning do better in all aspects
of school (Tredway, 1995). How do
we engage all students in meaningful

54 Educational Leadership / November 2014

Cuny.indd 54 9/26/14 8:16 PM


discussion, especially when our class-
rooms are bursting at the seams with
40 or more students?
The Power of Socratic Seminars
When I started teaching, I knew about
Socratic seminars but shied away from
them because they seemed too compli-
cated. I would need to put students in
circles within circles and create lami-
nated sentence starter cards—I just
didn’t have time. Then I discovered
the simple and effective method being
used at the Urban Academy in New
Cuny.indd 55
For years, I have taught a unit
focused on the essential question,
What is the value of life? We read
Hamlet’s “To Be or Not To Be”
soliloquy; an excerpt from It’s Not
About the Bike, Lance Armstrong’s
book about surviving cancer; an
online article from the nonprofit
group Life Happens that includes an
interactive calculator to determine
the value of a human life (www.life​
happens​.org/insurance-­calculators/​
­calculate-human-life-value); and a
February 2002 article from Time mag-
azine by Amanda Ripley titled “What
Is a Life Worth?” about how money
from the 9/11 fund was distributed to
victims’ families.
Previous students completed
numerous assignments connected to
each article, created a thinking map
bringing their thoughts together, and
then wrote an argumentative essay
answering the essential question.
Every year, the essays were, for lack
of a nicer term, horrible. The papers
showed little synthesis, the sources
were sparingly used, and students’
thesis statements were superficial and
thus difficult to support. My students
© JUD GUITTEAU/theispot
were frustrated, and so was I.
But one year, I tried a Socratic
seminar. Students spent two class
periods discussing the value of life as
explored in the assigned texts. The
York. I began using their practice as a results were astounding. I watched
model. students search through texts for
I teach at Canyon High School in evidence, discuss the language and
Santa Clarita, California, just north of structure, and connect the material to
Los Angeles. Canyon High is a com- their own lives.
prehensive high school with 2,500 stu- One student discussed her mother’s
dents. We are a fairly diverse campus, experience with breast cancer, and she
with 43 percent of our student connected her situation with a quote
population categorized as white and from the Lance Armstrong (2000)
42 percent categorized as Latino. excerpt: “One minute you’re pedaling
Twenty-six percent of our students along a highway, and the next minute,
are socioeconomically disadvantaged, boom, you’re face-down in the dirt . . .
and 13 percent are English language Cancer was like that.” She read the
learners. quote and then addressed the essential
ASCD / w w w . ascd . o r g 55
9/26/14 8:16 PM
 question, stating that a crisis like cancer increases the value
of life. She and her mom had grown closer, and she placed
more value on the time they spent together. Every student
in the room listened to her comments, and many took notes
in their notebooks. Everyone was engaged.
Another student asserted that his life encompassed more
than just himself—that to give value to his life he must
also include his parents, his brother, his grandparents, and
even his friends and his teachers. This was when I saw the
true power of this method. There were audible exclama-
tions. Students were nodding their heads as they listened.
They suddenly realized that they agreed and that their
own lives encompassed much more than just themselves.
It ­completely changed their view on life and its value. In
­isolation, maybe one or two students would have come
to this conclusion, but in the seminar, they all shared the
insight.
Socratic seminars are essentially scaffolded critical-
thinking sessions that enable the entire class to engage
in critical thinking at their own level. By the end of the
seminar, all students in the room have raised their thinking
to the level of the collective group. As Linda Elder and
Richard Paul (1998) point out,
The goal of critical thinking is to establish a disciplined
“executive” level of thinking, a powerful inner voice of
reason, to monitor, assess, and reconstitute—in a more
56 Educational Leadership / November 2014
Cuny.indd 56
rational direction—our thinking, feeling, and action. Socratic
­discussion cultivates that inner voice by providing a public
model for it. (p. 299)
The seminar provides an environment for addressing
the essential question with real depth. One student spoke
about surviving childhood cancer and the effect the trauma
had on her value of life. Another student cited a powerful
passage in the Time article in which a widower from 9/11
discussed a note his wife had slipped under the door of his
home office before she left for work at the World Trade
Center. The man read the note at her memorial, and her
words gave him the fortitude to carry on. The student
observed that the value of life goes beyond money. The
next student who spoke contrasted the 9/11 example with
another of our sources, the human life calculator.
The student engagement in those moments was
inspiring. Students flipped through their articles, anno-
tating and highlighting, and took notes on their peers’ com-
ments. As students gave examples, they cited page numbers
and paragraphs so other students could find the evidence
as well. There was engagement, participation, and genuine
interest in one another, the material, and the essential
­question.
Four Easy Steps to a Socratic Seminar
1. Create a list of prior questions.
Elder and Paul (1998) describe prior questions as “ques-
tions presupposed by another question” (p. 298). To create
your list of prior questions, start with the “big” question
or essential question for the unit or text. Then backtrack
and brainstorm a list of questions that you need to answer
before you can answer the essential question. Then decide
what questions you need to answer before addressing those
questions, and so on. This list of questions becomes the
blueprint for the discussion.
These are a few of the prior questions I came up with for
the discussion on the value of life: What gives something
value? How does the concept of scarcity relate to life? If a
whole item is made up of parts, what is one’s life made up
of? Who or what are part of your life? How can the value of
life be determined?
2. Explain the basic guidelines.
Before we begin a seminar, I make sure students understand
these guidelines:
n All students must answer each question in their notes.
n Students raise their hand to be added to the speaking
list.
n Students must wait until their turn before speaking.
9/26/14 8:16 PM

Students must take notes on their
n
peers’ responses.
n Everyone must be respectful and
tolerant.
n Everyone must use evidence
from texts to support their claims and
preface comments with the title of the
text and page number so that everyone
can follow along.
I typically post the first question on
a PowerPoint slide and give students
several minutes to answer the question
in their notes. Then I ask for volun-
teers. Hands go up, and I jot down the
names on my speaking list. Students
answer the question in the order they
are listed. If, during the discussion,
other students want to speak or add
something, they just raise their hand,
and I give them a nod and add them
to the bottom of the running list. After
we have exhausted a question, or I feel
it is time to move on, I post the second
question, and the process repeats.
Students must listen to all their
peers’ responses and summarize each
response in their notes. I model the
process in the beginning by reading
back the notes I wrote for the first few
people. For many students, note taking
has meant copying down the text of
PowerPoint slides, and it’s challenging
to take notes in this new way.
Having every student answer each
question ensures engagement, and
having them take notes gives them
a transcript of the discussion to use
later. After the discussion, rather than
sitting down to a blank computer
screen to compose a difficult essay,
students will have several pages of
notes filled with excellent commentary
and numerous examples of evidence
from the text to guide them.
3. Guide the discussion.
It is imperative that the teacher sits at
the students’ level and takes notes just
as the students do while also acting as
Cuny.indd 57
Tips for Socratic Seminars
1 Be patient. Socratic seminars can be uncomfortable at first. The first two
or three students to speak may not go in the direction you had envisioned.
Let four to six, maybe even eight, students answer before moving on. Fight
the urge to tell them the answers.
2 Embrace silence. There will be silent moments. Avoid filling the silence
with lecture. Allow students to persist through it. Ask another question if the
silence goes on for more than a minute. Ask students to look back to their
text and their notes, and give them time to develop their thoughts.
3 Ask follow-up questions. Help students expand
their statements by asking clarifying questions: Do you
mean _______? Are you saying that ______? What do you
mean by ___________? When one student said her life
encompassed her family, I asked, “What do you mean by
family?” She talked for several minutes about her grand-
mother who had raised her and how now she took care of
her grandmother. If I had let her stop at the word family, the
rest of the room, myself included, would have had no idea what
reality she was describing.
4 Use your list of questions as a blueprint, not a strict plan. Some-
times the best insights come from a spontaneous moment. Let go of the
desire to control the discussion. Know where you want it to start and where
you want it to end, but don’t be afraid to let it fly off in different directions
along the way.
5 Scaffold the process. For one class, I wrote the following on the board:
claim, support, explanation. When students answered their questions they
needed to follow that format. Other teachers use sentence starter cards.
Scaffold as necessary to help all students succeed.
6 Be an exemplar. You want the students doing the bulk of the dis-
cussion, but there will be times when you need to step in. When you do
address a question, be sure to state a claim, give evidence, cite a page
number, connect the evidence to the claim, and further explain the point—
just as you expect students to do.
7 Be flexible. A particular seminar may run for one class period, and
another may take two or even three. The goal is depth of knowledge, and it
may take some time to get to the essential question. It is time well spent.
8 Pair the seminar with a performance task or assessment. Ideally
the seminar should precede a larger assessment—an essay, a lab, a project, a
presentation, a debate. I typically grade seminars themselves for completion
only. Students turn in their notes to show they’ve answered all questions
sufficiently. I don’t necessarily give more points to the students who spoke,
because all students are participating, even if only by listening and writing
their comments in their notes. But the conversation should lead to a task in
which students use the understanding they gained.
ASCD / w w w . ascd . o r g 57
9/26/14 8:16 PM
 the leader, clarifier, summarizer, and
moderator. During the discussion, I
remind students to provide evidence
for their comments or ask follow-
up questions to help them articulate
their point. I sometimes repeat the
gist of students’ statements back to
them in the form of a question: “So,
you are saying that tragedy, like the
example in the 9/11 article, can teach
us the true value of life?” To help stu-
dents with note taking, I often take a
moment and read back over some of
the answers and ideas we have heard.
As moderator, I decide when to move
on to the next question or when to ask
an improvised question to move our
thinking deeper or toward a related
idea.
For each class, this role will be dif-
ferent. Some classes move quickly
through the questions and have an
amazing discussion. Other classes
labor through the first question, and
I may need to ask supplemental ques-
tions to help students along.
4. Let go.
Part of the challenge of running
a Socratic seminar is letting go of
control. But this doesn’t need to be
scary. I am always a little nervous
before starting a Socratic seminar, but
I am surprised and delighted by the
end. Time and time again, students
surprise me. They are full of ideas
and bring unique perspectives to each
­discussion.
I may know more than my stu-
dents about the meaning of Hamlet’s
soliloquy, but I will never forget when
one of my students related Hamlet’s
dilemma to his own when he first
immigrated to the United States and
felt so incredibly alone and isolated.
The bravery of that student in sharing
his perspective was contagious, and
the insights that poured forth from the
students that day trumped any lecture
58 Educational Leadership / November 2014
Cuny.indd 58
Socratic seminars
enable the entire
class to engage in
critical thinking at
their own level.
or activity I could have designed. We
all learned something about the value
of life.
Try It Yourself
Socratic seminars work in any class.
The physical education department
at my school ran a Socratic seminar
asking students whether pain was
necessary for gain. My history
department ran a session asking the
essential question, “Why did Lincoln
fight the war?” They used multiple
primary source documents and the
textbook as sources. Studies have
found that discussion increases com-
prehension and critical thinking in all
subjects (Murphy, Wilkinson, Soter,
­Hennessey, & Alexander, 2009).
Although these discussions don’t
have to be complicated to set up,
running them can be a challenge for
teachers who are new to the process.
The suggestions in “Tips for Socratic
Seminars” on p. 57 can help you get
through the rough parts.
In the spirit of the Socratic seminar,
I would like to give my students the
final word. Following our rich dis-
cussion, they wrote essays answering
the essential question, What is the
value of life? Here are several thesis
statements:
The value of life can be measured
through knowledge, experiences, and
memories with one’s friends, family, and
loved ones.
Life is valuable if one gains wisdom
through experiences, uses that wisdom
to inspire the world, and ultimately
makes the world a better place with a
brighter future.
No matter what ails you, if you fight
hard enough and believe in yourself
strongly enough, life will open its doors
to you and shine a light you may have
never seen before.
Would they have written these state-
ments without our discussions? EL
References
Armstrong, L. (2000). It’s not about the
bike: My journey back to life. New York:
Putnam
Elder, L., & Paul, R. (1998). The role
of Socratic questioning in thinking,
teaching, and learning. The Clearing
House, 71(5), 297–301.
Mercer, N. (1995). The guided construction
of knowledge: Talk amongst teachers and
learners. Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual
Matters.
Murphy, P., Wilkinson, I. G., Soter,
A. O., Hennessey, M. N., & Alexander,
J. F. (2009). Examining the effects of
classroom discussion on students’ com-
prehension of text: A meta-analysis.
Journal of Educational Psychology,
101(3), 740–764.
Nystrand, M., Gamoran, A., Kachur, R.,
& Prendergast, C. (1997). Opening
dialogue: Understanding the dynamics
of language and learning in the English
classroom. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Tredway, L. (1995). Socratic seminars:
Engaging students in intellectual dis-
course. Educational Leadership, 53(1),
26–29.
Wegerif, R., Mercer, N., & Dawes, L.
(1999). From social interaction to indi-
vidual reasoning: An empirical investi-
gation of a possible socio-cultural model
of cognitive development. Learning and
Instruction, 9(6), 493–516.
Casey Cuny (ccuny@hartdistrict.org)
is an English teacher, professional
develop­ment coach, and English lan-
guage development coordinator at
Canyon High School in Santa Clarita,
California.
9/26/14 8:16 PM
Copyright of Educational Leadership is the property of Association for Supervision &
Curriculum Development and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or
posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users
may print, download, or email articles for individual use.