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NPR is starting off a series titled "50 Great Teachers" and is starting with Socrates:
We're starting this celebration of teaching with Socrates, the superstar teacher of the ancient world. He was sentenced to death more than 2,400 years ago for "impiety" and "corrupting" the minds of the youth of Athens.
But Socrates' ideas helped form the foundation of Western philosophy and the scientific method of inquiry. And his question-and-dialogue-based teaching style lives on in many classrooms as the Socratic method.
Most of us have been influenced by our teachers, and some of them may have even been great ones even if, unlike Socrates, they toiled in anonymity. So, I ask this question: Who were (or are) your greatest teachers, why, and what did you learn from them that made them so great?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Thursday October 30 2014, @05:34AM
unlike Socrates, they toiled in anonymity.
Socrates would have toiled in anonymity, had it not been for Plato, his student, that kept the dream alive in his dialogues. Great teachers are not great themselves, only if they are blessed with even greater students. And I just want to say, the worst teacher I ever had taught me more than the best "educational reformer" out there! Those who can do, do. Those who cannot, teach. And those who cannot teach, go into administration. And those who cannot administrate run for elected office. And those who cannot get elected become educational reformers! (Or they develop systemd!)
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Thursday October 30 2014, @07:04AM
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday October 30 2014, @03:35PM
Socrates was actually a bit of a celebrity in Athens in his time (indeed, one of the motivations for trying him was that his accusers wanted the political points gained by taking him down, sort of like how prosecutors enjoyed going after Michael Jackson). When Aristophanes wrote The Clouds he was continuing a trend of lampooning notable people who were in the audience (he also regularly mocked Athenian politicians, who would have been in the front row at the time) - like Jon Stewart, if nobody knew who Socrates was, nobody would have gotten the joke. Another fun fact: Socrates had fought in several battles for Athens, and acquitted himself rather well, which was one reason people respected him.
There were others who wrote about him too.
We also owe a lot of our knowledge about any of these guys to those who made efforts to preserve the documents about it: First the Byzantines, and then the Muslims kept and copied it all down when documents from the Roman Empire were constantly getting lost or destroyed in Western Europe.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.