The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education

Lessons from Plato and Postman: The Place of Dialogue in Christian Education
by Autumn Hinrichs

Socrates, in his educational dialogue, Meno, bases his pedagogical method upon his understanding of human nature. Believing that the soul experiences knowledge of the true forms prior to its embodiment, Socrates explains that this knowledge can be drawn out of a person’s memory through reasonable dialogue in a process that he calls recollection.[1] Another thoughtful educator living many centuries after Socrates suggests a similar pedagogy, but bases it upon an extremely different concept of knowledge and human nature. Neil Postman, in his book Teaching as a Subversive Activity, argues that humans are makers of meaning, and that through language, a student can express the meaning he has projected on the world around him. Therefore, he says, a teacher must engage his students in dialogue to draw out this meaning. What is it that makes dialogue such an effective method, even in the context of thoroughly contrary worldviews? While neither Socrates nor Postman has a perfect understanding of human nature, they both recognized certain truths about the human experience which must be considered in the production of an effective education, whether it be Christian or secular.

Man is a creature who values and is able to grasp meaning. This principle is at the core of both Socrates and Postman’s pedagogical methods, but they hold to polar opposite beliefs about the nature of meaning. Postman locates meaning in man, while Socrates locates it in the forms. Postman’s view of meaning may be summed up in his statement that, “we do not ‘get’ meaning from things, we assign meaning.”[2] As the maker of meaning, man is “at the center of the universe.”[3] Socrates’ man, on the other hand, is far from being at the center of the universe or the source of meaning. Rather, meaning is found in the forms, which the immortal human soul has seen before entering the body, and which a person must endeavor to recall through searching and learning.[4] Whatever the source of meaning is, both Socrates and Postman help their students access it by means of dialogue. In both cases, dialogue is successful as a pedagogical method because it guides students to meaningful questions and enables them to hone and express their thoughts through the art of articulation.

The Christian worldview is much more akin to that of Socrates than of Postman: humans get truth; they don’t assign it. Therefore, a Christian pedagogy ought to draw more from Socrates than from Postman, but this is not to say Postman’s pedagogy is thoroughly unuseful. Postman presents dialogue as a way of discerning relevance, by which he means that which is truly of interest for the student. He writes that a “teacher cannot always project himself into the perspective of his students, and dare not assume that his perception of reality is necessarily shared by them.” [5] Postman held that “man is an island,” and therefore, each man must ultimately pursue his own sense of meaning. It is true that a teacher must seek to understand the perspectives of his students because he can only be effective when he understands what they care about. It must be noted, however, that this understanding is not the only purpose of dialogue. Socrates’ worldview enables a teacher to use dialogue not merely to draw out the thoughts of the student, but to relate those thoughts to the reasonable reality of the outside world. Hence, he asks his students questions that expose their ignorance and make them wonder about things. By this method, he stirs up an interest in the learner that is born not only from the student’s own self, but from the mystery of the knowledge which has hitherto alluded him. In this way, Socrates opens his students’ eyes to meaningful topics of inquiry that ought to be considered because they are good in themselves, not merely because the student takes personal interest in them.

A Christian pedagogy will help students desire to learn both by understanding (as Postman recommends) where the student is at in his thinking and questioning, and by guiding the student to important questions he had not yet thought of, as demonstrated by Socrates. Contrary to Postman’s claim, Christianity dictates that man is not an island: he has access to eternally objective truths. Lewis gets at this concept in his discussion of objective value, which is “the Way the universe goes.” “It is also the Way,” he writes, “in which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and super cosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.”[6] Because men are not islands, they can assist one another in conforming to the great cosmic Way, which is the ultimate source of meaning. The dialectical method of Socrates is an effective way to do this.
In addition to producing meaningful content for education, dialogue also serves as an effective method for helping students to think well and grow in understanding. Postman advocates a “language-centered” education because it is through language which men attribute meaning to things.[7] While Postman’s reasons for this method are incompatible with a Christian worldview, the method itself is not. Language is a significant means by which humans grasp reality and articulate ideas to themselves and to others. Melanchthon, in his oration, “Praise of Eloquence,” emphasizes the significance of speaking well because we “represent the sentiment of our mind by speech.”[8] A conversation-based pedagogy requires a student to do just that: to externalize his ideas by expressing them in verbal form. This process entails thinking through his ideas, clarifying them, and organizing them in a sensible way through words. As a result, a student increases his ability to think critically and deepens his grasp on the meaning of things.

God has created man with the capacities of reason and speech in order that we might know and express His truth. Dialogue is an excellent method of helping one another grow in understanding of the objective reality of God and his creation. The uniquely Christian aspect of dialogue is that enables growth and learning to occur in the context of human relationships. As we dialogue, we are not only growing in knowledge; we are communicating truth with another human soul.

Footnotes


[1] Plato Meno.
[2] Postman 99.
[3] Ibid., 98.
[4] Plato Meno 81.c-d.
[5] Postman 60
[6] C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, 18.
[7] Postman 102.
[8] Melanchthon “Praise of Eloquence.”