Loving your child's mind: Francisco and I discuss Alana on memory

Hello, Michael. Good morning, Francisco.

Good morning.

How are you?

I'm well, how are you?

I'm well, thank you. So did you enjoy the conversation with Alana this morning?

I did. I think memory is a fascinating topic and the way you discussed it was very interesting as well.

Yeah, thank you. No, I really enjoyed it. Sometimes I just have so much fun And, you know, it's something that I think people— you know, there's some versions of Socratic where you're never supposed to kind of tell the students things. For me, the goal is to have a rich conversation. And so, when she thought memories were just random, you know, first I asked her about different memories. I was kind of hoping that she would perhaps come up with the notion that memories might depend on emotion. But she didn't, and that's totally okay. But I thought the conversation would be more interesting if I brought that up as a hypothesis for her. And, you know, I think one of the things I do is, even with a 7-year-old, is talk about theories and hypotheses. Occasionally I explain a little bit, but in general I think you just start using it. And I will, I pretty much take it for granted that she has some sense of what a theory is and a hypothesis. Not super sophisticated, but when I talk about a theory of memory and then a theory of learning later on. You know, she's going to get there. What it is, is we're talking about how we make sense of this stuff. So I'll pause there and see if you had any responses either related to that or related to the video itself.

Yes, I did notice. And it was— I think the conversation took a turning point the moment you introduced the theory of memory and then she had to respond to that. It became much more— Alana analyzed much more what she said at the beginning, and then she was able to follow you through with that. And I did notice in that something very interesting, which is framing her responses to your questions as a theory of memory or towards a theory of memory. And I think at the end you congratulated her for having a more deeper theory of learning. These things seem not age-appropriate on first glance. Can you talk a little bit about that, how you think they are age-appropriate?

Sure. Sure, no, I think you're radically right. And even in middle school, I've had— it's funny, in science class in middle school, they'll maybe have a, you know, on the whiteboard they'll say, "This is a theory, blah blah blah," and students repeat the words, "This is a theory, blah blah blah." They have no idea what the words mean. You know, it's just blah blah blah, and then they spit it out on a test. Theory is blah blah blah. But I think we all understand concepts by means of examples of those concepts, and even more by means of experiencing those examples. And so, you know, she and I have been talking for almost 4 years now, and it's become normal for us to talk about how we make sense of things. So one way I think of a theory that makes sense, using that language, even for maybe a 4-year-old, is how do we make sense of things? And, you know, I see theory as a consistent, coherent way of understanding the world. I think intuitively we try to make sense of the world by being consistent and coherent. That is, if there's a contradiction, hmm, what's going on here? And so I kind of go from that super spontaneous, natural, you know, making sense impulse to the language of theory. And, you know, we both know enough kind of epistemology and philosophy to know that from that simple roots of making sense with consistency and coherency in mind, you can get into arbitrarily sophisticated epistemology and philosophy.

Yeah, no, I think this is a very, very powerful insight, the fact that examples themselves in many of the interlocutors in the Socratic conversation. They constitute a theory, and the moment the student is aware of that, it's also a moment of power. The moment Elena realizes, oh yes, what I'm saying is actually towards a theory of what I think memory is, or what I think learning is. I think that's very, very good for her, which is bringing me to another thing that I noticed that you often do and that you did this time, is that the responses that Alana gives you, you basically sometimes translate them into a high-level talk. In other words, Alana will give you a response maybe about her personal life or her experiences, and you say, oh, okay, that's a very interesting contribution in your theory of learning, for example. So you translate her responses into what's happening more abstractly. You talk a little more about, about that.

Yeah, no, that's a great insight. And I think I've become so habitual in that, I'm not even so aware that I'm doing that. But very much so. So, I'll go big picture and then go small picture. Big picture, and in some ways, I see Socratic as so simple, but simple and infinitely, infinitely complex. And so, just as I love the expression, you know, all Western philosophy may be seen as a series of footnotes to Plato. Likewise, I think all of Western intellectuality may be seen as a series of applications of Socratic reasoning. How to be consistent and coherent. Interlocutors exchanging, you know, consistent asking questions. Oh, how does that work? And so, for me, that basic expectation that you have a consistent and coherent understanding of the world, I do. And if we don't, we both want to— we want our contradictions to be drawn out. And we want to kind of learn how to fit all the pieces of evidence together. And so already baked into that, there's this notion that our life's project— and so whether you're a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 14-year-old, 22-year-old— our life's project is to make sense of the world. And in a world as complex as this is, it's taking all of the evidence, and either from external facts or own personal experience, and trying to, you know, work that together into a consistent framework, which is a massive, immense project. And nobody's got it mastered. But my expectation of any student is that they're working on this, that that is their project. And so when I see a student, whether she's 4 or 8 or 14 or whatever, I'm like, you know, where are you in this process of making sense of things? And how does this piece of evidence fit into your theory of memory, your theory of learning, your theory of truth, your theory of goodness? So for me, every individual is on the path, as it were, the philosophic path, of making sense through the universe. And so, everything they say, you know, I may notice, as it were, how sweet and charming it is, or, you know, there are non-cognitive intellectual— but I'm very focused at bottom, despite any kind of playful interaction or appreciation of a human being and so forth. You know, I think the social-emotional thing is huge, but beyond that, I'm always very focused on the denotative meaning, and how does the denotative meaning of a statement fit into that person's rational construction of sensemaking. I'll pause. And did that answer your question to some extent?

Yes, definitely. And it really shows some of the philosophic, the epistemological underpinnings of engaging in a Socratic conversation. That it is an awareness that what you are doing and what the student is doing is engaging in your very own projects of understanding, of making sense of the world. As you say, of putting pieces together and try to rephrase them in order to make a sensible whole. And that, I think, gives you as a teacher— maybe you could speak a little more about this— an attitude, right? An attitude towards someone else's arguments and examples and conversation. It's often called in other circles steelmanning as opposed to strawmanning, or an attitude of empathy and charity, it's also called in some other circles, but in the decision to make the other person's responses or arguments as strong as possible, even stronger than they think they are.

No, absolutely. And thank you for connecting it to the steel man, straw man, and to the kind of principles of sympathy and an argument and empathy. Totally right, totally right. And those have become kind of more popular terms. You know, I'm sort of embedded in this older one where, yeah, for me, it's I want to understand your world, whether you as Francisco or you as Alana or you as Ethan. And part of wanting to understand your world is I assume that your world makes sense to you. And so, the first assumption is not that you're a stupid, you know, a-hole. It's like, okay, you must— this must make sense to you. If I don't understand how it makes sense, it's up to me to figure out how it makes sense. That may require asking you arguments. If I really don't see how you can believe A and B, you know, going the other direction, it can seem rude. How can you believe A and B? And even very, very gently with Ethan and Alana, I'll ask, well, earlier you said this and now you're saying this. Yeah, I did it super gently this morning with Alana where, you know, she remembers things a year, a year ago, she doesn't remember last Sunday. Why is that? And I wasn't being rude or mean. It's just kind of more as part of the process of creating a theory of memory, how interesting it is that she can remember some things from a year ago, she doesn't remember last Sunday. That's just interesting. And so yeah, then I want to work with her within her system to see how she can make sense. And her first approach was just random. And that's totally OK. But then again, I thought the meaning thing was emotionally charged. And if she seemed to get emotionally charged like that, afterwards I thought, should I have explained it? No, Alana will get this. So she gets— and she can see it, yeah, happiness and sadness and so forth. So yeah, I'm working collaboratively. Socrates talked about being a midwife. And I always loved that metaphor, where we're a midwife to the ideas of the other. And it's not our job to tell the other what their ideas are. It's just we're going to kind of pull them out. And we're pulling out not just random ideas, but this consistent coherent of who I am and what I believe and what I stand for.

Yeah, and I think that's very, very well put. And I think it speaks to a common misconception about Socratic dialogue. Many people hear the term Socratic, and from a surface, acquaintance with Socrates, they picture a pedantic jerk, right, who is, who is intent on, on putting people down and making their arguments seem weaker. But in fact, the decision to have a Socratic conversation is the opposite. Like you said, the idea of midwife, to make sure that you are a collaborator in their process of learning and someone else's process of learning. And I think this also speaks to the community aspect of having Socratic Conversations, which I know you're very, very keen on, that a Socratic Conversation creates a community in a way that many other learning environments fail to. And by the very fact of what it is that you're engaging with, your experiences, your history, your emotions, you're putting it all out there when you're having a real conversation. Does that sound right to you? Can you hear me well, Michael?

I missed a little bit there. You— I heard you say you're putting all out there and then the connection got fuzzy. So what did you say after you—

After that, I just asked if that sounds right to you.

Okay, great. Yeah, absolutely. So, one— couple of things and I think I love— one of the reasons I love talking to you about this is you appreciate the nuance. People, you know, teachers like, "What's the method? How do you do this?" You know, the standard in pedagogy is, uh, give me steps 1, 2, and 3. What are the clear learning objectives here? You know, and what we're talking about is an endless process of refinement and sophistication. So on the one hand, there's a very strong individualistic component where we're developing a strong sense of self. Sometimes I describe this as the conscious development of personal identity. I want Ethan and Alana to know who they are and what they stand for. On the other hand, there's very much this communal thing where I've described this as an opportunity for intellectual intimacy. Now most people think intellectual is this sterile classroom thing with boring professors and intimacy is this wonderful romantic thing or, you know, their family intimacy and so forth. But very few people, I think, have an experience of intellectual intimacy. Messy. Whereas I think that by means of being in these conversations where we're talking honestly and authentically about what we believe and what we care about, we develop very intimate relationships, and yet it's based on intellectuality. And that's part of why this Socratic process is an incredibly powerful way to have people come to identify their ideas as an important part of who they are, their intellectuality as an important part of who they are, You know, in a way, we're creating a social environment. This goes back to the social. We're creating a community in which it's normal to love and respect and care about each other's ideas. And just going, you know, one of my hobbyhorses is teen culture and how atrocious teen culture is in the US. It's not mostly focused on learning. And there's a huge amount of bullying and social status quo sorts of things and sometimes just hedonism. You know, what did you buy today or what game did you play? And you know, some of that's okay. I'm not a Puritan completely, but I really love to enlarge the social space of intellectuality and develop this realm where it's normal for us to relate to people as bearers of the truth, the good, and the beautiful. I want all of us to love and respect the truth, the good, and the beautiful being pursued by each of us. And so that's a way to kind of create a stronger, more moral culture that on the one hand is, I would say, far more morally focused than is our present culture. And yet everybody has their individuality as distinct from, say, you know, cancel culture, where if you don't believe what I believe, we're gonna get rid of you. So just relatedly, and then I'll pause and let you respond, I was reading an article just when you called on moral rebels, and it turns out that moral rebels are people who, through practice of standing up for their own ideas, ultimately are willing to stand up for ideas that are against the social norm. And I see this social process of one where we become habituated into standing up for our own ideas, maybe initially in small ways, but it becomes normal that we don't have to believe the same way, that we can respectfully disagree and help each other develop even our differences.

No, I think, yeah, that's great. It's great. I'm glad you brought up the emotional intelligence and the moral aspect of what you do as a Socratic educator, especially in contrast to the, to the conventional model. I know you and I share a lot of the same views that the, that many aspects of the conventional model create solipsism and pathology. You are asked to sit in a row of chairs and with a group of people that you're not allowed to engage with. So the whole resource that a human being is, is being squandered there, is being wasted because of the very— that very fact that you are just engaging with one person and receiving instead of participating. But whereas a Socratic conversation makes you confront everyone else in their full humanity because everyone's bearing their thoughts, their ideas, their way of making sense of the world out there. And in a sense, you're also, it gives you a lot of responsibilities and exercise in responsibility because you are responsible to state your own opinions, to have an opinion, and also you are responsible in a sense for the— well-being of someone else.

Big time. Big time. No, absolutely. I'm inclined, because we've been going on for a while, to wrap this one up for today. And our connection seems strange. I keep losing you. So no, again, you and I can go endlessly deep on this. And we will. Any last comments you want to kind of make before we wrap this one up?

None other than I like, I like where these conversations are going, and I'm looking forward to see where they continue to go.

Absolutely. Well, I look forward to our next one. Have a good week, Francisco. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Michael.