Frankenstein Socratic Seminar Report
Frankenstein and Pride & Prejudice Socratic Seminar Reflection
This Socratic Seminar made me agree much more with Socrates’ beliefs: that extended discussion and continual questioning facilitate the most meaningful learning experiences. It helped me understand the novel much more than I had before because I got to hear about the book from the perspective of others and how they interpreted the story and discussed what they thought were the positive and negative aspects of Frankenstein. I discovered that many others interpreted some meanings of the novel in the same way that I did. Overall, the seminar went very well in both groups, but there were some negative aspects in both seminars. In the Pride & Prejudice seminar, none
of the members proposed any questions in response to an already given question (a rebuttal question). This was not the case in the Frankenstein group, which is good. However, although we did ask rebuttal questions, our group failed to use quotes for support and our discussion was more of a modern conversation between people with a lot of agreeing and disagreeing, but no evidence for backup. I believe that there was only one person who used quotations and cited them to backup his/her point, who was Matt Kane (I hope you didn’t want us to specify names; at least it’s not a bad comment). The Pride and Prejudice group did fulfill the use of quotations, which evened out the differences between the seminars. There were also many great points brought up in our discussion of Frankenstein, which almost everybody agreed with such as how we appointed Victor Frankenstein as the monster of the novel and not the physical monster that he has created.
I would not have thought about many of the things with deeper meanings that were discussed in the seminar by myself. Not only was the seminar itself what helped me to further understand the story, but also the pre-seminar tasks (question responses and formation). Each question coincidentally asked me something that I had thought about at least one time during the reading, and the required quotations helped remind me of when and where I had encountered the question while reading it. The post-seminar paper (this thing) is helping me because it makes me remember what we talked about during the seminar and how it was effective to understanding the story. Being reminded of how effective the seminar actually was, will make me believe more in the beliefs of Socrates, as well as want to do more seminars for different novels in the future.
This Socratic Seminar made me agree much more with Socrates’ beliefs: that extended discussion and continual questioning facilitate the most meaningful learning experiences. It helped me understand the novel much more than I had before because I got to hear about the book from the perspective of others and how they interpreted the story and discussed what they thought were the positive and negative aspects of Frankenstein. I discovered that many others interpreted some meanings of the novel in the same way that I did. Overall, the seminar went very well in both groups, but there were some negative aspects in both seminars. In the Pride & Prejudice seminar, none
of the members proposed any questions in response to an already given question (a rebuttal question). This was not the case in the Frankenstein group, which is good. However, although we did ask rebuttal questions, our group failed to use quotes for support and our discussion was more of a modern conversation between people with a lot of agreeing and disagreeing, but no evidence for backup. I believe that there was only one person who used quotations and cited them to backup his/her point, who was Matt Kane (I hope you didn’t want us to specify names; at least it’s not a bad comment). The Pride and Prejudice group did fulfill the use of quotations, which evened out the differences between the seminars. There were also many great points brought up in our discussion of Frankenstein, which almost everybody agreed with such as how we appointed Victor Frankenstein as the monster of the novel and not the physical monster that he has created.
I would not have thought about many of the things with deeper meanings that were discussed in the seminar by myself. Not only was the seminar itself what helped me to further understand the story, but also the pre-seminar tasks (question responses and formation). Each question coincidentally asked me something that I had thought about at least one time during the reading, and the required quotations helped remind me of when and where I had encountered the question while reading it. The post-seminar paper (this thing) is helping me because it makes me remember what we talked about during the seminar and how it was effective to understanding the story. Being reminded of how effective the seminar actually was, will make me believe more in the beliefs of Socrates, as well as want to do more seminars for different novels in the future.