“I’ve seen many college profs conduct high school classes with the same game plan they use in a Lit 510 discussion of Milton or Dante. It doesn’t work. They ask a lot of provocative questions and get a lot of short answers, bad answers, or silence. Socratic discussions work far better among older people who have a bit more experience than the average high school freshman. College profs who think a Socratic discussion on Milton will work with fifteen-year-olds end up having to joke, “You all are a quiet bunch,” to save face. If you’re teaching a one-hour sample lesson, prep a thirty-minute lecture which is interspersed by a dozen quick questions you ask students (“Can someone give me a three-word description of Odysseus’s relationship with his wife?”) to keep them involved.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 