Sophistry and philosophy: two approaches to teaching learning

Abstract

As university teachers, are we heirs to the Sophists or to Socrates the philosopher? Do we teach students institutional know-how like academic ethics and strategies like writing and study skills, which offer shortcuts to institutional competence, or do we draw forth knowledge from students, eliciting wisdom from them and developing what the Greeks called ethos (character) and fidelity to a way of thinking? In short, do we teach a skill or a good? The first approach is sophistical (after the Greek teachers of rhetoric, the Sophists), and seeks to produce efficient knowledge-workers. The second approach is Socratic, or philosophical (after the Greek teacher of philosophy, Socrates), and seeks to produce good citizens. As these ancient names and terms suggest, this is a problem with a long history, but it is one with a local and contemporary resonance, in terms of the state of tertiary education both in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where I live and teach, and at this historical juncture. My question here is how we university teachers might negotiate this binary: how we might bridge these two positions and thereby perhaps transcend them.

Keywords

• Sofistas
• Sócrates
• mayéutica
• aprendizaje transformacional
• evaluación
• crecimiento mental