Alana Makes Progress Leading Socratic Dialogues with a 9 Year Old

Hello, Alana. So, um, I think last time we recorded, I gave you all sorts of advice for your Socratic conversations with C, who is 9. Is that correct?

I think so.

Yeah. So how many conversations? I've been gone for a couple of weeks. Do you know if you've had 1, 2, 3 conversations with him since then?

I think we had one this past weekend, and the week before that we had to skip, and I forget how many weeks ago it was, it was where we talked about C, so I'm assuming maybe 2 or 3.

Okay, um, anyway, how has it been going?

So I took your advice and I asked him the question about whether or not, or what does it mean to be fair, and how do you feel when things are unfair, what counts as unfair and fair, and when I asked him questions about that topic that were maybe related to his relationship, his relationships with other people. Not his exactly, because I don't know him too well to know how many friends he has and things like that, but I gave him an example of me and my brother with the "what does fair mean" question, and I got— we had a very good conversation. He gave me a lot of responses and I was able to build a conversation pretty easily off of that. And then I did that this past week with a different topic. I think I might have asked him this before, but I had a new way of approaching it. I asked him what he thought time was and how he used it and the difference versus past and then future and what or how he thinks life would be different if maybe we didn't invent things in the past and what things we would in the future. And I asked him about his airplanes, and he was— I think he was pretty excited to talk about that. So I feel like if I incorporate that in more of my topics and discussions with him, it'll be better.

Very cool. So let's go back to the fairness conversation. Um, what's your hypothesis as to why he opened up more with the fairness conversation?

Maybe because he's had experience with that, or people have been unfair to him or fair to him before, so he knows what he's talking about.

Did he bring up any instances of unfairness?

He didn't actually, no, he didn't. But when I told him about me and my brother, he seemed to understand.

Did he show any kind of passion or enthusiasm when he was talking about it?

Nothing other than I noticed that he was quicker to respond and had more of a response than other conversations typically.

Got it. So just easier to get going, basically.

Yeah, very much so.

Got it. And then would you say, you know, I would differentiate— sometimes I get people going, you know, with the passion conversations, the injustice conversations, but then I try to make it a little bit more rational. And in the case of fairness, try to get them to articulate a theory of fairness. Would you say you got them a little ways down the road of trying to articulate a theory of fairness?

By that, do you mean what he thinks is fair and not fair?

Yeah, you know, and by theory, consistent, coherent. That is, you know, you can't say it's fair to be nice to me and it's fair to beat up everybody else, you know, because they would, if they said the same thing, that doesn't work sort of thing. So yeah, something where it would make sense in a consistent way to believe what fairness is. Does that make sense?

Yes.

So would you say he was talking about what he thought was fair in a way that made sense?

I think so. I kind of led him toward it. I asked him what he thought about cheating and whether cheating was fair or not fair, and then lying about something. Do you think— I guess lying and fair, you don't really use those two together, but I did ask him about lying and whether it was right or wrong. And if I lied about something, would you like it? How would you feel about that? And things like that.

And I assume he thought that cheating was wrong and lying was wrong?

Yes.

Did he have any interest in exceptions?

Oh, what do you mean?

Well, some people might say lying is wrong except if your aunt asks if her hat looks nice, and then you're supposed to lie and say it looks nice even if it's ugly. That is, sometimes there are exceptions people will make.

That's true. Um, he didn't come up with any on his own. I gave him a couple exceptions just to see what he said. Just like, I think one of them was maybe if you were like in a storm and there was some food sitting but you didn't know whose it was, would you take it or would you not? Would it be a bad— would it be a bad thing to do? Um, he— I think I remember that he said that Well, in that case, lying or stealing would still be wrong, but maybe if you had to, it was a survival situation, it'd be okay, but not fair still.

Got it. That sounds like a great question. Is it easy for you to come up with such, uh, kind of counterfactuals or unusual situations in real-time questioning?

No, sometimes. I mean, I sometimes I try to have like a couple different lines of how the discussion could go written out, or maybe just thought out in my head, because there's been a couple times where I like kind of froze because maybe he answered something unexpectedly, or, um, I didn't have anything else to elaborate on, and so I had to like kind of come up with a whole new thing, which felt awkward and off, and I didn't phrase it the way I wanted to, but it still came out.

Yeah, no, and I think it's good, especially if you don't have a ton of experience like I do, to think about different scenarios, write down scenarios, write out different lines of questioning, that kind of thing. So the time one, would you say that the time one went better, the time conversation went better in some ways because of the fairness conversation or not necessarily?

I don't know if— I don't think we had any discussion on— or I don't think it was related to the fairness. Discussions, but maybe he felt more comfortable talking with me because of that one conversation that went a little more smoothly. I'm not sure. I don't think there was a very big difference, but I tried to consciously try to, you know, ask him questions that, based on your theories and advice, maybe would help him give a better response. And I think it worked.

Maybe it was just my mind, but And articulate both for me and for our audience what you mean by you ask questions based on my theories. So say a little bit more about how your questioning strategy works during the time conversation.

I guess I thought about it as like approaching his emotions. So maybe I think you remember, I remember you saying like stimulating something that he knows or recognizes or something that he feels strongly about. And during time, I think I don't know if this is the best— if this was the best way to put it, but I asked him, you know, how do you think life would be different without, um, electricity? Do you think you'd be able to do all your school stuff? Do you think you'd be able to build your airplane? Things like that. And I think it did go a little better when I was trying to phrase the questions like that.

Excellent. No, that makes a lot of sense. Um, so it sounds as if, uh, the kind of hot emotion, you know, unfairness is sort of a emotional and based in his experience, sort of intense emotions based in his experience, got the fairness conversation going. What's interesting with time is time is typically less emotional, but it sounds like you kind of dug into relating it directly to his life, as in the question you just asked. And that also— so maybe two factors led to the second one being better. One is simply the previous conversation being a bit better, and then the second is asking a time question in a way that related directly to his life. Is that accurate?

Yes, exactly. Got it.

Um, well, good. Do you feel empowered now to go ever deeper and broader and getting C engaged in conversation?

Yes. Now I just have to come up with another topic. Um, but I think it'll be great now that I've, like, implemented this question-asking structure.

Would you say that both he enjoyed it and you enjoyed it the last two times?

Uh, well, I'd say for sure I enjoyed it more. I can't really tell if he enjoys our conversations. They're usually like 15, 16, 17 minutes long. Um, sometimes he seems a little distracted, like he's moving his— I don't know if it's an iPad— around a lot and like kind of mumbling sometimes. So I don't know if he enjoys it or finds it as good of his experience as I do. Um, but my goal is to hopefully have him maybe express that in some way.

Got it. And I would— I only had one conversation with him, but my perception is he is prone to kind of being a little bit opaque. Do you know what opaque means?

Like, in terms of art, like see-through?

It's the opposite.

Or is that a different thing?

Yeah, it's transparent and opaque are opposite. So transparent is when you can see through it. Opaque is when you can't. So I'd say he's not transparent, meaning he's hard to hard to get a take on, that he sort of hides his— I don't know if he hides his emotions or just by nature, he's not very open with his expressions. Is that your kind of read on him?

I wasn't able to form that in words, but yes, for sure.

And that's okay. Different people. Part of the art of learning to ask questions is working with different people because everyone's different. It might be worth checking in at the very end of your conversation something like, what was the, you know, was anything fun today or anything frustrating today? You know, we use debriefing questions like that in some of our Socratics at school, right?

That's true. Yeah.

And I like that better than just asking, did you like it? Yeah, no, okay. You know, bland. I try to say anything exciting or anything frustrating because it's a little bit sharper. And I find if I ask sharper questions, You know, was anything frustrating? Usually I get no, but occasionally somebody was frustrated and asking them was anything frustrating is a way to get them to say, yeah, that kind of annoyed me, you know. And then exciting, inspiring, fun, you know, well, it was okay, Alana, but not fun. That is, I try to ask questions that exaggerate a little bit so that people are inspired to say yes or no. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So maybe instead of saying, like, was it, or how, what did you think of the conversation? Say something like, did you find this topic interesting or fun or something like that?

Yeah. And even be more provocative. Was it exciting? Was it, you, in some ways you want to ask a question that's so provocative you get a yes or no. If you say, what do you, and, and I'm not picking on you, but I would say a lot of students when they debrief do say something like, what do you think about today's conversation? And, you know, I can imagine Alana might pipe up and articulate something, but a lot of kids will just, meh, you know what I mean? And so that's why I like to ask a sharper question, kind of poke them a little bit. You know, was, or a 0 to 10, you can ask them rank 0 to 10. 10 is the best conversation ever, the most fun I've ever had in conversation. 0 is the most horrible thing, the worst thing. Almost nobody is gonna say it was a 10. Almost nobody's gonna say it's a 0. So kind of another question-asking strategy I have is to almost poke people with my questions in terms of asking extreme things to get them to say more than, "Yeah." Does that make sense?

Yes.

So for a debriefing, you could either ask, "Yeah, was today amazing or was today horrible?" It probably wasn't amazing. It probably wasn't horrible. Depending on how he's feeling, he might like, "It wasn't amazing, Ilan. It was okay." Or he might say, well, it wasn't horrible, but I was kind of bored. Whatever it is, your goal is to kind of poke them to get a little reaction. And I don't mean poke in a mean way, but you know what I mean by kind of poking somebody to get to kind of go beyond the, okay, I'm being mean, but you know what I mean?

As a leader, yeah, no, for sure, you want a reaction.

And so, yeah, and I think it makes it more fun to have, you know, a little bit of pushed engagement to stimulate a little bit, especially if there's trust, you know, if it's first time with a kid, you know, very first time with C, I would never have done that the very first time I met him because it's way too sensitive. He's way too shy. But it sounds like if he's kind of engaging with you, you might be able at the end of an engaging one, you know, if he was terrified, if for some reason you had a conversation with him and he was terrified the whole time, I wouldn't poke him at the end. But if you kind of had a relatively engaging one where he was kind of engaged, then you might do a little poke and see if he'll give you some feedback. Make sense?

Yeah, for sure.

Go ahead. Okay. In which case, uh, have a great workout today, and I can't wait to hear about how it goes in the future with C, okay?

Thank you.

You're welcome. Bye-bye. Have fun.