The Spirit of Socrates - Part 3: Dangerous Learning

School works perfectly. But it shouldn't.

“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.”

~ Socrates ~

Introduction: A Moment of Disillusionment

It’s only 8pm, I shouldn’t feel this tired. I read the instructions again…nothing. This was the third time I’d tried to read the mark scheme; it looked like English, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t. The words just wouldn't stay in my head long enough to make sense of them. Stacks of student exam papers sat in front of me waiting to be marked. Frustrated rage tightened my chest. “How the fuck is this learning?”

It wasn’t just that I had to mark this drivel, it was that my students had to write it. These are great kids! What did they do to deserve being trapped in this systematised hell?! It felt like we were stuck in a cruel board game, with impossible instructions designed to make life suck as badly as it could, and I was the Dungeon Master.

Something snapped inside, 'I can't be complicit in this charade of learning!' With seven other exams in the session, my students had spent weeks poring over reams of educational fodder - exhausted, anxious, and sometimes in tears. The day before, I sat beside one of them as she gasped for breath, waiting for an ambulance. A panic attack, brought on by school.

It wasn't only that I didn't believe in what I was teaching; I was harming the ones I was trying to help. I wasn't just tired, I was morally appalled.

I became a teacher to empower transformation, not compliance. Learning should be life-giving, awe-inspiring, profound. That's what it is for me. I know how wonderful learning can feel, and this wasn't it. This wasn’t education, it was ritualised compliance.

Five Provocations for a Socratic Education

Make Questioning the Curriculum

I'm going to say something controversial: I don't believe in ‘knowledge transfer’. Information, yes; but knowledge requires lived experience and/or space for insight, which classrooms rarely offer. As T.S. Eliot asked, "Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" (The Rock, 1934). When we dish out content without meaningful application we strip learning of nuance. We replace tension with certainty, and certainty kills curiosity.

What if we stopped asking students to remember, and started asking them to respond in meaningful ways? Embodied lessons take root.

In my Introduction to Social Sciences course (14–16 years), I ran a term-long project called A Diary of Questions. Students asked five questions, inspired by classroom discussions, illuminated by quotations from significant thinkers. They then explored their own thoughts on the subject, asking new questions in response.

Reading their work offered insights into who they are and what mattered to them. The work became personal and meaningful.

Samples of student questions:

• Is the influence of technology good or bad in today’s society?

• Is capitalism only affecting the economy, or are there other consequences for society?

• How is success measured in today’s society, and should it be changed?

• Does education determine our futures?

• What does it mean to be happy?

Teach for the Soul, Not the Score

Socrates saw education as self-investigation. He rejected sophistry, which filled students with the content of consensus rather than confronting their values. He didn’t add dogmas, he uncovered what laid beneath.

Proficiency matters, but not more than a grounded sense of self. Schools rarely nurture the intrinsic qualities that ground and empower competence. We must draw out more than we press in.

In The Dojo, a holistic writing course, I provide almost no external content. I draw from myself and ask my students to do the same. Each assignment explores a different form, but the content arises from within. Not every class should be this way, but there at least one class in every student's timetable should be designed for self-investigation and self-expression.

Restore the Agora

For Socrates, learning happened in the agora, the public square. It was where people rubbed shoulders, transacted business, and exchanged ideas. Ideals lived and died through dialogue and action.

Today, our schools are insulated from civic life; too busy to commune, too sheltered to be influenced. While space to focus and practice is important, completely isolating students sterilises learning. We create the illusion of knowledge, untempered by friction and deprived of exhilaration.

In LALTech Lab, a student-led course structured as a real-world start-up, the school walls are porous. Students are strategists and decision-makers in a laboratory that engages the outside world. They have agency and responsibility as they build relationships with tech firms and industry professionals. While they create and collaborate, the course meets curricular goals through structured feedback, guided reflection, and portfolio assessment.

Honour the Teacher as Midwife

Socrates didn't see himself as a teacher. Like his mother, he described himself as a midwife "…over the labour of their souls" (Plato, Theaetetus, 150b–151b). True learning happens when the moment is pregnant; when we’re receptive and ready to understand.

In schools, we force a pace that is indifferent to the processes of life. We race to advance a curriculum; pressing hardest when nature is resting, and resting when nature is most productive. Students get left behind yet are advanced anyway. We’re impatient for results, regardless of the costs. But the pace of teaching has little to do with learning. The pressure to keep up makes many students feel insufficient, for an objective they did not choose and may not desire. If Socrates was a midwife, modern education is a caesarean section.

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Tom Welch of

Still lighting learning fires

about the Facilitated Interdependent Language Learning (FILL) programme. In one Delaware high school, 23 students learned one of ten different languages in a single classroom. There was no fixed curriculum, no direct instruction, and no standardised assessments. After one semester, many students earn two language credits through STAMP testing. Learning wasn't forced, it emerged. This example points to a future where students can partner with AI and educators to pursue self-chosen goals, where teachers become catalysts holding space for learning, rather than imposing it.

Teach at the Threshold

Socratic inquiry is accelerated revelation. There are no correct answers, only alignment with core ideals. Socrates trusted the process because truth, once it’s glimpsed, creates its own unrest. But the process, like birth, is painful. It scrapes away dogmas that provide the illusion of knowledge, in exchange for the clarity of uncertainty.

What schools call critical thinking is mostly analysis; the two aren't the same. Analysis is dissection; tidy and remote. Critical thinking is deconstruction; it’s messy and confronting. It's filled with the blood, snot, and tears that should be expected when the foundations of one's life collapse. You don't need a grade to know it’s worked, your world changes and you see with new eyes.

It's not only students who are avoiding this discomfort, it teachers as well. Our schools, textbooks, and societies are steeped in dogma. It oozes from the pores of consensus and standardisation. We must teach our students to sit in the tension of unknowing, and to demonstrate that, we must learn to sit in that tension ourselves. Confusion is not failure, it can be a source of ignition, but only when accompanied by a commitment to inquiry.

In my first year of university, I took a Critical Thinking course. I don't remember much, other than the teacher's comments on Aristotle: 'If someone’s ideas are sounder than yours, you’re morally obliged to let go of your own.' That seed was planted at just the right time in just the right soil. I began to scrape away layer after layer of belief. It's been decades and I'm still scraping.

Some dogmas lurk in the shadows, cowering from the light of scrutiny. Others hide in plain sight, like fish looking for water. The cost of letting go is high; societies reward conformity, and being misunderstood is not a price most are willing to pay. But the reward is clarity and autonomy; qualities that are rarely earned in other ways.

Begin Here: Three Small Acts of Defiance

Three dogmas in standardised education continue to shape educational practice. (There are more, but these are a good start.) There is very often reason and truth within dogma, but over time contexts shift and human understanding deepens, leaving dogma incomplete, more than wrong. In response to each, I offer a subversive activity. Adapt them, refine them, ignore them as you choose.

Dogma 1: Teachers possess knowledge, students are there to consume it.

Students need guidance. Without clear direction then learning stalls. Teachers not only offer knowledge, but structure, coherence, and confidence. If we reject authority, we risk leaving students adrift. They will become confused, disengaged, and unsupported in a noisy, dangerous world.

Creating dependency does not facilitate learning, it weakens it. When we entangle authority with education, treating the teacher as a high priest of knowledge, we mislocate agency in the learning process. Teachers may plant seeds, but these take root only when the student is ready. Knowledge cannot be 'transferred' because revelation requires lived experience and/or insight - the unclenching of the mind. Until then, it remains information with unrealised potential. Our highest priority should be given to tending the soil of our students; opening their hearts and readying their minds. This shifts the locus of authority to the student, where it rightly belongs.

Try This: At the end of a class, ask students to compose one meaningful question to which they genuinely don't know the answer. One at a time, have the students read their questions aloud. No one answers; they simply hang in the air as they leave.

Why it Matters: This centres uncertainty and defers authority. It suggests that knowledge is emergent, not transmitted, while signalling that the teacher is not the source of truth, but its medium.

Dogma 2: Some kids are naturally gifted, and school is about sorting them.

Excellence matters. Students have different aptitudes, and education must recognise those differences. Sorting is about nurturing potential in a system of meritocracy. To foster innovation and leadership, we must identify exceptional ability early and challenge it appropriately.

Perhaps, but excellence at what? What genius are we sacrificing on the altar of good behaviour? Sorting reveals our priorities more than our students’ potential. We prize argument over reflection, certainty over curiosity, and speed over depth, then anoint the fastest and the loudest. This is not excellence, it's compliance dressed in accolades.

Education worthy of a human being does not ask 'How high can you climb?' but 'Why are you climbing, and to what end?'

Assignment: Have students write a letter to their future selves. I chose 2040, 15 years into the future, because this is the outer limit of what I can imagine. I structured this activity as a lesson in formal letter-writing.

Rationale: This undermines ability-based pacing and shifts the focus from performance to discovery. Growth shouldn't be sorted, because it's integral and emergent.

Dogma 3: Standardised competition is the pathway to educational excellence.

Competition is a training ground that establishes thresholds and benchmarks. In a world where performance matters, standardised assessment provides clarity, both for the student and for institutions. This is not only a filter for excellence, it's a measure of readiness. Without it, students may drown in the unforgiving battlefield of 'the real world'.

But what is 'the real world' if not that created by the intentions of people? By framing education as competition we create a world of competition. We reinforce a failure to change. Benchmarks may offer clarity, but only within systems that mistake performance for worth. They don’t measure depth of thought, beauty of spirit, sensitivity, or empathy - qualities that make us more human. We must ask if the game we’re born into is worth playing.

Humans are agents of creation. We must create the world we most hope to live in, not consume the one we were born into.

Activity: Assign students (or small groups) a period on a timeline to research and summarise. Together, they should compile and submit a shared document - including a cover page. All students receive the same grade for the final submission. Criteria may include cross-referencing, consistent formatting, word limits, and citation of sources.

Rationale: This assignment rejects individual merit through competition in favour of collective responsibility and coherence. It draws on diverse student strengths - research, composition, analysis, design, coordination - and values interdependence.

Letting Go of Control

Socrates sacrificed prosperity, reputation, and eventually his life to practice a way of learning that reshaped the souls of his students. More than a method, he modelled a posture. Through questioning, he didn’t just unsettle individuals, he rattled the foundations of the Athenian state.

In many ways, school works exactly as designed. It asserts content to produce compliant citizens, rather than stripping assumptions to forge exceptional human beings. We feed schools with unique individuals and process them into standardised outcomes.

This processing works against the nature of life. From the same building blocks, life produces infinite diversity. That diversity weaves a web of interdependence - Life’s engine of creation. Education should prioritise diversity, but we fear it because it threatens our illusions of control. It demands we let go of the belief that there's one right answer, and we possess it.

School has become too safe. In this extraordinary time of global transformation, we’re compelled to reconsider what it means to be human. We have an opportunity for redefinition, but only if we have the courage to break free from old patterns; to create with life, not against it.

Learning is dangerous. It demands we step into the unknown; and the unknown, by definition, is dangerous.

But dangerous learning makes us more human.

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AI Disclaimer: All words, ideas, and composition in this article are my own. AI was used during planning and editing to support clarity, structure, and accuracy.